From the boogie-down Bronx to present day...

The universal issue with music today is the inability to find some decent hip-hop. Admittedly, that's a pretty broad statement to make, and I know that hip-hop doesn't influence all genres of music, but it does affect all types of people. Up until this point, things for the hip-hop community and the people who follow it are in a fast decline. I'm not old enough to start a sentence with "back in the day" comfortably, but I must go on to say that back in the day, hip-hop was the best it ever was-and from the looks of it, it's the best it ever will be.

The hip-hop phenomenon got its start in the 1970s with largely influential DJs like Afrika Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash mixing and scratching their beats on the turntables. The rhythmic form of their music style spread very quickly and hip-hop not only became a music manifestation, but created itself a body and branched out to form social factions like B-boys, graffiti artists, breakdancers, and beatboxers, (which didn't start to get its wings until much later when Doug E. Fresh made it staple of his talent). Later on, emceeing eased its way into the picture, and artists were starting to join the music with rhythmic wordplay. These days, we call it rap, but what many don't know is that rapping begin maturing outside of the hip-hop forum and didn't join hip-hop until a little later in the 1980s and early 1990s. Soon after, a Jamaican DJ named Kool Herc and his partner Grandmaster Flash would expand the floor for DJs. Both Herc and Flash forcefully acquainted our ears with something known as break beat deejaying, which, in its most simplistic definition, added lyrics and breaks to funk music for people to dance to. I'm pretty sure that everyone has heard "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow, or Sugar Hill Gang's "Rappers Delight." They're very popular songs but for good measure, I suggest you download them.

So in the late 1980s, "Planet Rock" was released by Afrika Bambaata and the Soulsonic force, which redefined what DJs were doing by using synthesizer technology to make beats. The synthesizer lead to the boom box, and the boom box created, though not literally, early rap artists like LL Cool Jay, the Fat Boys, Run DMC, and Jazzy J, to name very few. For examples and your personal amusement, download, "Roxanne" by UTFO, "Captain Rock" by Captain Rock, and "Fly Girl" by Boogie Boys.

But good hip-hop music was just as brief as the previous rough historical outline. In my opinion, hip-hop ended in the 80s, when artists like MC Lyte, Mellow Man Ace, Eric B. & Rakim, Salt N Peppa, Red Alert, Quame, and Slick Rick were blind-sided by an entirely new kind of rap music.

This new sound made it to the airwaves in the early to mid 1990s. The old stuff couldn't compete with groups like N.W.A. Once Dr. Dre began to push gangster rap, break beat emceeing and everything like it fizzled out completely. The east coast/west coast feud started the seductively attractive decline of hip-hop music. Rap became more politically charged and violent and artists were openly slamming each other in their songs and in their albums. The east and west coast feud somewhat "resolved" itself producing some of the most well-known and tragically dying stars of the age such as Tupac Shakur and Notorius B.I.G.

In the long run, none of the fights made sense and I'm pretty sure it ended up with Suge Knight being in jail again. Anyhow, here are a couple throwbacks to download: "Player's Anthem" by Junior M.A.F.I.A, and Craig Mack's "Flava In Ya Ear."

Let's get back the point. We aren't living in the 80s anymore. Instead, we're living in the age where somebody somewhere let William Hung, Paris Hilton, and virtually anyone else who has a "lil'" or a "young/yung" attached to their "names" sell records. Rakim set the bar and perfected the internal style of rap, which pretty much is the art of making your lyrics fall in a stylistic pattern between the bars and on specific accents in the beats. If you're a lover of hip-hop, or of any music in general, and have never heard a rap song by Rakim, there's something very, very wrong with the way you live your musical existence.

All of the above was what hip-hop used to be like. So what was it that put the bow on my distaste for the art? Snap music. Until last summer, I was doing a great job of sifting through the bad rap and finding some good stuff until some chump in Atlanta, Ga. created snap music. We all know what it sounds like. It all started when we all snapped our fingers every third beat to "Laffy Taffy" by D4L. From there, there was a snap music revelation and we couldn't stop. We indulged in all the less-than-substandard music that came out of the speakers. There was Dem Franchize Boyz with "Oh I Think They Like Me" and "Lean Wit It Rock Wit It," and Lil' Jon with "Snap Yo Fingers." There are more, but it hurts me to name them.

But the absolute idiot that officially knocked hip-hop off the map, where it landed somewhere beside country music, was Souljah Boy when he released "Crank Dat Souljah Boy." I've always said that Souljah Boy was an idiotic genius, simply because he has the ability to make millions off our unparalleled ability to settle for mindless music and stupid "dances." The Crank That Phase sucked up the Snap Phase and turned the American hip-hop community into a hopping, snapping, jumping cult of fools. There is Crank Dat, jump rope, grandpa, Batman, Spiderman, Superman, homeless man, Aqua Man, Spongebob, roadrunner, Chicken Little, Robo Cop, boogey man, Roosevelt, Michael Jackson, skater boy, teapot, Harry Potter, Forrest Gump, Super Mario, Peter Pan, and apparently you can also crank dat yank. Each version has it's own dance, music, lyrics, and optional male/female versions. Thank goodness the movement is starting to fizzle out because I was starting to think things were hopeless. Now if we can get T-Pain and Lil' Wayne off everybody's remixes I think that would be a great move in the hip-hop world.

What hip-hop should be now is what Afrika Bambaata created when he was the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation. The UZN was an international hip-hop awareness group that incorporated good music and people from all over the world to get together and make a peaceful, knowledgeable, justified genre of music. There are some artists today who are trying with all their hearts to sweep the filthy musical stains of the past few years under the rug, and they're doing a good job.

First, there is Kanye West. It doesn't matter what the man says, or how much of an ass he makes of himself, it is undeniable that he makes good music. Whether he's producing or rapping or talking entirely about himself, if his lyrics aren't good then his mixes are.

Then there are my favorites: the rappers with the intellect. Rakim did it first, but his successors are some of the greatest rappers to date. Rappers like Nas, who recently started the Hip-Hop Is Dead movement, and afterward made an album titled as such, had been making good music since his 1994 debut with Illmatic. I strongly suggest you get Illmatic, or at least download a few tracks from the album ("Memory Lane," "It Ain't Hard To Tell" and "New York State of Mind").

A recent favorite of mine is Lupe Fiasco, who is changing the way I think about hip-hop with his latest album, The Cool. It's a themed album about, well, "the cool," or at least the idea of it. You have you try it for yourself. Download my favorites, "The Coolest" and "Streets On Fire." If you've heard his first album, then the switch over to The Cool may be a bit hard for you if you prided him on his cleanliness. He's toughened up his façade and quickened up the lyrics, but he remains genius as usual.

I've liked Talib Kweli since he was rapping underground. Not many people seem to have caught on to his music, but then again, you can expect people to bounce back successfully from crankin' dat Aqua Man, to some intellectual flows. Prisoner of Concious is due later this year, but his 2007 album Eardrum is still amazing until then. Download "NY Weather Report."

Everyone seems to like Jay-Z, just not me, though I'm willing to admit that he also makes some sensible music. I recommend anything from The Black Album, and download "Roc Boys" and "Amen" from American Gangster.

We can't talk sensible rappers if we don't mention Common. I'm willing to forgive the fact that the title of his first album was Can I Borrow A Dollar? Other than that, his latest album, is pretty good. Download anything from his album Be, or "The People," and "Forever Begins" from his latest album Finding Forever.

I don't know what happened to Lauryn Hill, but hip-hop misses her dearly. No one was as intelligible as she was in her prime, and no female rapper will ever be able to touch her, which is why no other female rapper is mentioned here. They are simply irrelevant in comparison. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is one of my favorite albums, and I recommend you download it. Other artists to check out would be A Tribe Called Quest, Mobb Deep, and any other artists from the Queensbridge crew like Juice Crew and MC Shan.

These days, you can't get your hands on some good, well-adjusted, rationalized hip-hop. Hip hop can be a much-respected field again if artists would be a little tougher on each other and the higher-ups would get back to governing and protecting what the art used to be. A large part of what's left of hip-hop or decent rap music is largely in the underground circuit, or is simply ignored. Nas was right when he said hip-hop was dead, but hopefully 2008 will give us a chance to grab the reigns and get out bearings back in the music world.