Let's Talk About Mumble Rap part 1

Well, now’s as good a time as ever to talk about it.

Mumble Rap has recently come into the lexicon of rap and it’s already taken the world by storm. White people don’t get it and old head, 90s diehard hip hop fans are pissed off. Mumble Rap is something I’ve grown impartial to. At first I hated it like any hip-hop purist would, but eventually I grew to be a casual fan. While it’s irritating to see folks my age get rich from repeating themselves over bass heavy beats, I can’t help but nod my head to the music. I can’t find the strength to get through Playboi Carti’s mixtape, but “Magnolia” bumps in the whip.

You can date the origins of Mumble Rap as far back as the 90s with ODB and maybe even further, but its relevance and widespread use is relatively new. Here are a couple milestones in recent Mumble Rap history:

2014 Rich Gang release “Lifestyle” which is notable for Young Thug’s garbled hook.

2015 Future explodes to stadium status with 56 Nights and DS2.

2016 “Panda” becomes #1 on the Billboard 100. Lil Yachty releases the Lil Boat mixtape, XXL’s freshman lineup consists of Desiigner, Lil Uzi Vert, and Lil Yachty, Wiz Khalifa coins the term “mumble rap” in a Hot 97 interview.

2017 “Bad and Boujee” becomes #1 on the Billboard 100.

Let’s get into why older fans and young Hip Hop purists are upset right now. Old heads seem to get riled up whenever a newcomer comes in and does anything less than aggrandize 90s hip hop. Anything short of sucking up is considered blasphemy. Tyler, the Creator got a ton of flak for saying he enjoyed Earl more than Illmatic and Vince Staples was under fire for saying the 90s were overrated. To a certain degree he’s right. It’s time to let the 90s die. We can keep the memories, but we must move on. This goes beyond the music. Radio needs to evolve too, Joey Bada$$ recently mentioned this when discussing New York radio. Most millennials don’t know anything about Funkmaster Flex and personally, I don’t care to hear Ebro disrespect new artists because they aren’t like the rappers of yesteryear. 

40-year-old men talking down on the youth does nothing for the culture. We don’t need a history lesson every time; we have the internet for that. If we’re interested, we’ll look up it up. Let the young kids get money. Just look at how Lil Yachty gets treated during radio interviews. I am convinced that he will go down in history as a Mumble Rap martyr. When he first got on Hot 97 Ebro pretty much set him up for failure by having him freestyle over 90s beats. They tried doing the same thing to Uzi but he wasn’t having it. About a week ago Joe Budden became a trending topic after he went off on Yachty during an interview on Complex’s show, Everyday Struggle. Lil Yachty may not be a good rapper, but he's a great entertainer. It's hard to hate on someone who encourages people to be themselves and passes out PB&Js during concerts.

There isn’t anything wrong with Lil Yachty not knowing a Tupac song or thinking Biggie is overrated. I don’t think it was smart for him to openly take pride in that, but that’s his business. He’s not a student of the game. Soulja Boy and Lil B are his influences for crying out, what did you expect?

Not every rapper is from the streets. Hip Hop may change people’s lives but it doesn’t save every life. I’m sure Yachty would’ve been just fine if he never started rapping. He’d be a regular red haired teen working at McDonald’s in the Atlanta suburbs. Besides, the rags to riches story is cliché anyways. I’d rather not have every rapper tell me about how they’re selling drugs to make ends meet. I’m from the suburbs, I need a little silliness once in a while. I love Kendrick, but he’s not going to rap over the Rugrats theme song when I need him to. Lyricism wasn’t always a staple in rap music. Rapping began in parties. The first rap records were simplistic, non-threatening and fun. They weren’t loaded with multi-syllabic rhymes and double entendres. That’s not what got the party jumping back then and it isn’t what gets the party jumping now.