Hip Hop can be a very judgemental and at the same time hypocritical genre of music, just ask Eminem. If you don’t meet the very loose and fluid, at the same time solid and rigid standards, you might be labeled lame or corny; two of the worst things an MC could EVER be!
Have you ever wondered just what the hell IS corny?
Well you could start with a dictionary’s definition:
Corny
adjective informal
(especially of jokes, movies, stories, etc.) showing no new ideas or too often repeated, and therefore not funny or interesting
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/corny
By this definition one could suggest that Hip Hop itself is starting to get corny. If you’re really listening there really hasn’t been any fresh ideas in a while. In fact, it’s been the same ideas and messages, just different forms of delivery.
For example, I really like Devin The Dude. I like him more than Afroman.
I like both of them but for more reasons than one, I am more partial to Devin The Dude. At the end of the day, both of these MCs have the same basic message in most of their catalogue(s).
I really don’t know who can be credited with being the first rapper of their kind but are we to consider these titans of the space, corny?
How about NWA vs The Geto Boys? Or really any rapper who wasn’t the first to deliver an idea to the genre?
I guess corniness is always left up to debate.
If you ask me, the only standard in Hip Hop is truth. Everybody should be free to express themselves anyway they feel as long as they’re being real. Even that standard is hard to live by when you realize that most of the stuff people rap about ain’t real. Or rather experiences and worldview lived out by others, not the rapper(s) themselves.
I guess the point is to entertain? Well when the number speaks, people seem to be entertained by all the same things over and over in an almost cyclical pattern so, are we all just entertained by corniness? Is it cool to be corny?
What do you think?
– Jay D. Penn.
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