Do You Love Hip Hop?

As I ventured into the world of "Rap" "Hip Hop" or whatever you want to call it.. I wasnt naive nor did I have some illusion of automatic grandeur.. Ive grown up around it.. I studied it.. I lived it.. I always knew the industry was shady.. Tribe told me that.. I always knew the money wasnt forever.. Hammer told me that so did almost every other rapper.. But something I learned for myself was that the art as pop culture was dying.. Like any trend.. People get tired of the same shit over and over and end up moving on.. I never thought that hip hop was dead.. as Nas proclaimed.. but I did believe that we were beginning to reap what we sow.. People stopped caring about buying albums because they were always disappointed.. And when you can get something for free you arent as disappointed or mad about the purchase.. You really dont care.. You accept what you get and most of the time cherish it more because it was like a gift.. I remember when I first started downloading music it was mainly obscure singles that I loved and wanted for mixtapes.. and secret pleasure songs that I could never buy the album but secretly loved the songs.. case in point "Whats Your Fantasy" by Ludacris.. See I figured that I wasnt hurting the industry because I continued to buy artists that I loved music and continued to support the cause of "Real Hip Hop".. As time progressed I realized that I wasnt making a difference nor did it matter What I did.. Certain shit was selling despite how good it was or not.. Some things were selling based on the artist name and other shit was selling just based on I dunno.. I still dont understand how Country Grammar sold so much or why the St Lunatics are famous.. nor do I get the bling era of hip hop.. Where you had people say "they dont write rhymes they write checks".. But then I began to notice even the shit I loved began to fall off Tical 2001 or whatever was trash.. Nas everything after It was Written until Stillmatic.. I actually pretend those years dont exist.. I realized that as time went on the music became stale.. and everything new was overly catchy and just extremely stupid.. It was like the artists forgot that people had brains and loved hip hop more for the lyrics and beats than anything else.. No one cared about a hook or the nostalgia of a video game sample.. We loved Ready to Die because it was sample driven but in a way where you couldnt believe Biggie was rapping over Juicy Fruit.. But more so about what he was saying is what made us love it and want more of it.. As time progressed we seemed to stop caring.. We'd rather there be a back story to the song rather than the song tell a story.. And now we wonder where hip hop went.. We wonder why sales have dropped 21% in two years.. Why our "Major Stars" are doing Project Pat numbers and everything new is doing non existent numbers.. Cause People aint saying shit.. and the perception was always the ones who are saying something wont sell.. but how is it Talib Kweli sold Fifty Numbers as did Common.. Or, As much as this hurts to say this, Kanye outsold them all.. We are searching for growth for something different.. Its like this whole 80s movement "We want that old thing back.." But as we continue to blame the internet and the labels and economics.. We watch soljah boy sell 800,000 and Lupe push 150,000.. and we wonder where our souls went.. The NY Times did a great article thats been passed around to different people and commented on at length.. but to me this only tells half the story our culture and the path its on is telling the rest.. Because one last question.. Why were and are mixtapes never blamed for the death of hip hop? even though they essentially do what most downloaders do.. Why are they accepted as part of the culture rather than the demise? In my opinion.. Because we are a culture of Word of Mouth.. We like what everyone else likes.. We are a culture of belief.. We believe in new things and new artists.. The mixtape has always been that place to find it.. as the internet has been for most of this new generation.. and like the mixtape most people usually download their favorite ish and put it on their own playlist because everything else is wack from said album.. Just an observation I made when going through the old tapes...