“I’d rather be famous,” confidently sang Doja Cat in her recent song “Paint the Town Red,” lately topping the charts with its catch lyrics and soft beat. However, 30 years ago, there was an extreme difference to today’s top artists. The days of the violent lyrics and hard-hitting themes are long gone, replaced by the flexing and egotistical nature of today’s songs; many are written with lyrics to promote themselves. Following the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the explosion of West Coast and East Coast gang violence, and the introduction of gangster rap into the mainstream media, the theme of many current-day rap songs is misconstrued. When listening to many of the old-school rap albums, I find that many of the themes are far deeper than anything of today’s nature. Older songs reveal to be more catchy and filled start-to-finish lyrically, with little to no breaks in the words. Although the rap world is evolving with the taste of today’s media and mainstream trends, the original gangster rap will always reign supreme in terms of deep meaningful lyrics.
