Death of Autotune

Is it me or is Hip-hop the most self conscious genre of music ever created? I know every genre of music has its die hard fan boys stuck in one era or another but with hip-hop it feels like we are constantly trying to control any kind of change in the genre as a way to prevent the death of said genre at the hands of the evil pop conspiracy. Don't worry you don't have to grab your tin foil hats to continue reading.

I made the above observation while listening to Jay-Zs most recent street leak "Death of Auto Tune". It is a solid NO.I.D production reminiscent of something left off of his American Gangsta album in production Asiatic but the lyrics bill Jay as the man who is coming to save us all from the auto tune fad and make everyone start acting grimy again. Now since it is Jay-Z I can only grade him against himself and this is another ok effort nothing lyrically to write home to mom about. However the thing that irks me most is how this track doesn't have a genuine sentiment to it. Not saying that he isn't as sick of the whole Autotune thing as the rest of us but this feels like the whole hip-hop is dead debacle(i.e. just a talking point turned into a song to provide people who hate autotune like me a theme song).

This leads me to why I don't feel this effort was genuine or necessary. I always say things like Autotune are fad driven and they run their course if left to social Darwinism. So why waste time making tracks about the death of the Autotune fad when you could just work on making some incredible songs with real singers on the hook to under mind autotune? Jay has so much industry clout he could take a indie soul singer and make him/her the next big thing with a cosign. Look at what he did for Rhianna or how a cosign from him really help 9th wonders career to further blossom. Can you imagine if this blue print album actually had studio musicians playing modern soul with hard hip-hop drums and bass. Throw Jay in there rapping about real issues in a clever way not just rapping to other rappers to prove he can still rap and you may just have a viable death threat to Autotune which will run its course in a few years if not sooner anyway. So I ask the immortal question what could drive him to come in all Anti-Autotune/hipster like most of the folks on message boards when he is making money off of one of the blatant missuses of Autotunes (808's and hot trash anyone)and then I realized this must be the marketing play to get these people excited about Jay-z's new release. I can see stans bristle with excitement at the thought of being rescued from the bad old hipster Autotune guys by their aging pseudo thug figure. Never mind the fact some of Jay's fashion is very street wear like maybe no girlfriend jeans but he or his stylist are definitely clothe whores just like most of the so-called hipster set. So why would a man who has seen styles come and go even wiaste his time addressing another mans poor fashion choice. Couple this with a plea to get violent, something the hip-hop culture needs like another BET and you have Jay-z's conversation with the hip-hop stan. Rather than just making a mindblwing return to force or a introspectively song that held weights Jay-Z chose to just phone in some talking points designed some of the chief concerns of some people in the culture.

The final word in the matter is this crushing Autotune, cats rocking tight jeans and getting violent isn't going to make hip-hop better. Substance presented in an entertaining manner would definitely help, Not to mention hire and promote our singers who can sing without the help of Autotune. But we definitely need to chill on the self conscious thing when it comes to pop,dance etc..... Pop will never provide a true picture of any genre of music and if hip-hop does not start cultivating more balance and demanding to hear variety rather than the one fad at a time distribution system we have going now it will be in any even larger decline. It would be nice if artist with the weight to do so like Jay-z worked to develope distribution systems that showed hip-hop in its many forms rather than the one dimensional pop machine. That would probably do wonders for hip-hops self conscious nature and its overall survival.