Almost All My Favorite Rappers Are Dead, Retired, or Having Babies with Kardashians and Jenners

Three Troubling Categories

I have talked about how I can be a whiny old man when it comes to today's popular music, hating a lot of the new stuff. That said, I still keep-up on what's hot and what's not, because I feel if you're going to talk smack about something, you should at least know it pretty well--otherwise you're just an ignorant asshole as opposed to...a know-it-all-asshole, I guess? Anyways, I was thinking about my favorite rappers from the past and present, with it occurring to me almost all of them fell into three categories, all troubling in different ways. Let's review.

Tragically Deceased

Tupac Shakur was a musical genius. Ol Dirty Bastard was probably the weirdest and wildest member of the Wu Tang Clan. Jam Master Jay was a key element of the success of Run DMC. Adam Yauch's voice always stuck-out the most to me (in a good way) on Beastie Boys Records. So many talented voices all silenced by terminal illness, drugs, or violence. It brings me so much sorrow that when I think about a lot of my favorite rap-groups that the member I liked best has passed, or that we've gone more than two decades now without Tupac on this planet. It sucks, but there really isn't anything we can do about it, is there?

Retired or Mostly Retired

Andre 3000.

Andre 3000 is a Goddamn genius but he only seems to pop-up on a record here-or-there to show it. The man knows he is the greatest rapper currently alive and realizes he doesn't have to do anything to prove it. He got bored with rapping and quit. Then we have talents like Queen Latifah and Will Smith who discovered they could make even more money just acting than doing much of any rapping.  The two men behind Clipse--No Malice and Pusha T--dissolved the group and do solo work but it just doesn't feel the same, Childish Gambino is moving more into singing than rapping as his most recent album illustrated, and Lil Wayne has threatened to quit (multiple times), which kinda sucks as he sometimes spits some solid bars.

Rappers threaten to retire to all the time without doing so, but ironically the ones I actually really like either made good on their claims of finding rap boring (Andre 3000 said it a lot before mostly stopping his raps) or just kinda stopped one day. We can't do anything about dead rappers (outside of creepy holograms) but retired ones can get back in the game...they just have to actually want to do so, and clearly lack that urge.

Having Babies with Kardashians or Jenners

Kanye West (Left) and Travis Scott (Right).

Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? I love Kanye West basically no matter what because, "The College Dropout," is a sheer masterpiece and, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," is ingenious as well with plenty of his other works impressing. That said, I still can't believe he married and has continued to have kids with Kim Kardashian--AKA the biggest waste of publicity I've ever seen in the world. I figured one rapper having a baby with someone in the Kardashian and Jenner crew was fluke, but now I read that Travis Scott (AKA Travi$ Scott), one of the few newer rappers I like, is having a baby with Kylie Jenner?

If something happens once it is by chance, if it happens twice it is a coincidence, three times and we have a pattern. So, if a third rapper of the increasingly small number of them I enjoy gets another one of these women pregnant (or a female rapper has a child by one of the male Kardashians or Jenners) I'll have to put my tinfoil hat on and start babbling about a conspiracy. I'm already halfway there, as this article illustrates--especially seeing as I have three categories!

The One Glorious Exception: King Kendrick

All hail King Kendrick!

Kendrick Lamar is a rapper I can't quit singing the praises of and he is without a doubt the best rapper currently alive who is willing to--you know--actually rap. As long as he stays alive, chooses to keep rapping, and doesn't knock-up Kendall or any other of those girls he will get to be my glorious exception to this troubling trend of all the rappers I love the work of being dead, retiring, or having a child with the celebrity family that to this day makes me marvel at how loosely we define, "Celebrity." I'm begging you, Kendrick, please stay healthy, stay motivated, and stay away from those Jenner and Kardashian girls!

In The Words of The Young People Pepsi Was Trying to Market To With Their Ad About Protesting, "Epic Fail!"

Even the headline about this sounds absurd.

Pepsi made an advertisement that upon watching I think is giving us the message that next time people want to protest something they should offer the police Pepsi and that'll resolve all the World's ills, I guess? Really, it's a horrendously stupid advertisement and the words, "Tone deaf," have been used extensively to describe it. I won't bother embedding it here because Pepsi is working hard to pull the ad and--I assume--try and burn it out from our collective consciousness as quickly as possible. Wired talks about the video and has a copy of it though, and I bet they will stay pretty up-to-date on making sure it doesn't disappear from the web.

Basically, if you haven't heard, the ad features a diverse group of young people (A Muslim lady, an Asian man, rich people like Kendall Jenner) joining a protest about...something, and marching proudly to show how they are hip and proud millennials in-between taking short breaks to drink Pepsi and engage in break-dancing (I'm not making this up). It all comes to a head however when the protesters encounter some cops and Kendall Jenner hands a Pepsi to the police officer who cracks it open and drinks it to the loud cheers of the crowd. Racism/Sexism/Homophobia/Xenophobia solved everyone, we can go home now!

What the dickens are they even protesting?

Shit, when counting all the times I've been happy to prefer Coca-Cola over the rancid taste of Pepsi this is easily one of those moments. It seems like everyone is either enraged by the video, mocking it, or is asking, "Who the Hell is Kendall Jenner? Is she like a less-famous version of the Kardashians?" Pepsi, when it comes to marketing soda-products you done fucked up at a level I didn't even realize was possible outside of that time Mountain Dew made an ad with a police line-up making light of institutional racism.

How the Hell could Pepsi make a video about protesting where a bunch of people mad (although they don't even look upset) about nothing in particular are able to make the world a happier place by simply sharing a Pepsi with a Police Officer? Is that all everyone who ever protested had to do--offer the police a Pepsi? I think Bernice King, one of the daughters of Martin Luther King Jr. summarized it best in this actual Tweet she sent out today:

That is without a doubt my sarcastic comment of the day (trademark pending) and one fiery burn against Pepsi. It is a burn they are surely due, however, because the most insulting thing in my opinion is that Pepsi isn't actually making any kind of statement here. The young people aren't protesting for a cause Pepsi does or does not support, they just are out and about, looking like attractive millennials and drinking some sugary sludge. If Pepsi at least had made this about a real issue they would be saying something, anything. The only thing they are saying here is that in their theoretical world everyone can just drink Pepsi and get along (which as a lover of Coke sounds less like a utopia and more like a nightmare--the Pepsi part, not everyone getting along).

Pepsi wanted to seem cool and hip by talking about protesting and having a blasé celebrity appear, but instead just came off as even more removed from reality. Pepsi's ad is as much an example of talking to the youth-culture of today as that joke where Steve Buscemi pulls a, "21 Jump Street." We clearly see what you're trying to do, and it ain't working.

This whole fiasco is as hilarious as it is depressing and can teach us...um, what does it teach us? Perhaps there isn't an actual lesson to be gained from this outside of, "Fire your marketing team, Pepsi." Oh, also, "Don't try to co-opt a cause without actually co-opting anything." Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to grow drink some water because even if I admit preferring Coke I should really drink more H2O as opposed to carbonated chemicals, no matter how good (or bad, in Pepsi's case) some of them taste.