Hip-hop culture is currently experiencing a decline in sales and global influence because the industry has become over-saturated and overly focused on business rather than the core elements of the cra

“Sales are dropping. So yeah, "Oh, we're the BIGGEST IN THE WORLD. WE'RE THE BIGGEST IN THE WORLD." We're [ __ ] dropping. We're dropping. And for the first time ever, why? Why, if we're so big, we're so great, why are we dropping? Well, there's 100 good [ __ ] reasons.”

Hip-hop was originally intended to be a foundational economic, social, political, and spiritual base for the community, but was co-opted by commercial interests.

“hip-hop was supposed to be our economic base our social base our political base our spiritual base if we had contained ownership of it because hip-hop is making more money than anything else I learned about Malcolm X there's so many different people”

Jaz-O believes that commercial radio has compromised creativity in hip-hop by broadcasting uniform playlists nationwide, which has led to a loss of regional identity.

“it runs universally across New York period because of the influence of the media is sort of compromised the creativity. And what I mean by that is radio, commercial radio at that time, before even before digital radio, radio at that time started playing this the same music nationwide.”

Gunplay argues that the artistic integrity of hip-hop has been compromised by a shift toward treating the genre as a hustle rather than a craft.

“The bar that stood out to me the most was when you said when rapping was a art and now that [ __ ] a jug because I feel like a lot of people probably didn't know >> how much you cared about hiphop and really rapping at that moment.”

Artists should avoid mimicking the styles of those who came before them and instead focus on creating their own niche by speaking to their own experiences.

“but we wanted to kind of carve our own lane because doing imitations of what they were doing wasn't working for us so we started to carve our own Landings just like let's just talk about the [ __ ] that's going on in the hood let's just talk about what's going on around here”

Artists should only rap about what they have actually experienced to avoid being exposed as inauthentic by the streets.

“If you going to try to rap, rap what you know because if you don't like say you rapper, you talking about how you knock out, I do this, I do that. You know, I sold all the bricks from your neighborhood are never going to let or from where you from, they never going to let you take off.”

The hip-hop industry has an inherent expectation for artists to be authentic, where performers who are revealed to be fabricating their lifestyles face significant career damage.

“I mean like for real. He was involved in a shoot a shootout at the um Marin County Festival where he lived um where he had just performed that killed a six-year-old who was playing on a school ground nearby. >> Yeah. >> Um he shot at offduty police in Atlanta in 1993 when he tried to prevent them fr”