Drake dominated the headlines, but this was an all-around team performance.
What a time to be alive.
Drake was right in naming his latest mixtape after cliché. Life is good in the rap industry. Views from the 6 had more hype than any album and that was before he announced a mixtape collaboration with Future. But this isn’t about Drake. This is about the greatest era in hip-hop history.
Rae Sremmurd; Drake; Big Sean; Nicki Minaj; Kendrick Lamar; Action Bronson; Wale; Tyler, the Creator; Young Thug; A$AP Rocky; Chance The Rapper; Meek Mill; Lil Wayne; Future; Migos; Dr. Dre; The Weeknd; Travis Scott; Mac Miller and Fetty Wap have all released albums this year. This amount of new music is exponentially larger than anything seen in recent history. J. Cole released 2014 Forest Hills Drive in December. Despite it missing 2015 by one month, it still should be included in this year's discussion of the genre. If you listen to rap even remotely, you have heard these names. And the best part is, we’re still waiting on arguably the two best in the industry: Drake and Kanye West.
In the late 2000s, hip-hop was declining. The flavor and flair was disappearing, and most artists did not have a unique style. Yeah, they had Kanye, but Kanye wasn’t Yeezus until Kanye had Kim K. And after Kanye found Ms. Kardashian, he found Travis Scott.
Scott is the culmination of every top-tier talent in the industry. He mixes Kanye’s darkness, Young Thug’s confidence and Drake’s innovative nature to create what I see as the future of hip-hop. Joining him in the next generation is Fetty Wap, Migos, Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug, just to name a few. But I digress.
Rappers tend to drop albums every other year with their mixtapes acting as placeholders in the years in which they are not producing official albums. Logic would say that 2013 was another boom year in the industry, but that year pales in comparison to 2015. Three incredible albums — Yeezus, Born Sinner and Nothing was the Same — dropped in 2013, but it is the next tier of talent that separates 2015 from 2013. Besides J. Cole having gone platinum, 2014 saw virtually everyone else producing flops, making the year barely worth mentioning.
Big Sean started this year with the release of his third studio album Dark Sky Paradise. He joined J. Cole on the 2014 Forest Hills Drive tour in 2015, which garnered massive amounts of attention because of Twitter and Vine videos. Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late saw every single song on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop songs, and his What a Time to be Alive recently did the same. Yet, somehow A$AP, Meek and Future were all able to make us forget about these incredible albums for weeks at a time with quality projects of their own.
Kendrick Lamar used his position to promote black culture in To Pimp a Butterfly; Lamar cemented himself as a transcendent artist with the likes of Tupac Shakur. Lamar's album combines soul, jazz and blues to showcase that hip-hop isn't everything parents tend to believe it is. Lamar has the talent to produce an album of hits like his debut album good kid, m.A.A.d city. Instead of focusing on releasing hit singles, he dropped the album all at once in order for his message of social equality to be heard.
The real reason why 2015 has excelled is not only the music, but it's also the raw emotions that the artists have let loose. Big Sean brought in Kanye and John Legend for a tribute to his grandmother. Chance The Rapper criticized today's youth in "Wanna be Cool," pleading them to become their own individual instead of emulating him. Before this year, it seemed that everyone rapped about doing the most drugs, having the most female partners, making money, etc. Fortunately, hip-hop artists have diverged from that old style.
2015 will go down as the year that changed rap. Instead of material items influencing rappers' music, the artists have opened up their minds to real world issues.
via giphy.com
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