S*** came on shuffle and made me realize part of what made music much more exciting and unique was anthems where it would take different sounds from areas and blend them together. With the combination of the modern music scene and frankly just a lot of baseline hip hop sounding the same more or less really devalues what made being from a specific area meant back in the day. Not really much commentary to add but I do miss it and it’s no surprise it holds up well

drake

Another obvious example

Jay Z was actually really good at this and he didn't absorb or water down or intermix the sound of West n South regions when he would do them and he would also collab with them and let them do their thing

One thing I genuinely feel he don't get props for, or it gets forgotten about

Scarface, Too Short, Snoop, Juvenile, Master P, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Young Jeezy, Dogg Pound etc.

the trapification of all hip hop production is killing the genre

Trap isn’t as homogenous as we think anymore

I do have an issue with MCing as an art dying tho

But yes collaboration is also not very good these days

there’s too much money to be made now. it all sounds the same cuz all the up and comers are just kids who do it for the money not bc they love making music. can’t blame em.

I think he did it so good people didn’t even realize how effortless he was making it seem. He’s like the originator of hop on any beat and murk it to me

He'd also give props and respect

And not only would he hop on their ish, but he also had them on his own albums and/or his own remixes too which is sumn that like Drake rarely does outside of the same few

Can’t single Drake out for this imo

He's the only one that does it as much as Jay Z that I could think of tbh

It wasn't a slight towards Drake tho, but that imo Jay Z does even more without getting any props

I disagree to an extent

I think parts of it is moreso Rappers don't really listen to other forms of music that much, a lot of 2020s Rappers grew up on the internet so they're cycling each other and absorbing "everything" at once, and the use of loop kits becoming easy to get on the front market with price ranges and popularity rankings has a lot of people dipping into the same bag with slight variations

this is less true than its ever been btw

Yep. The Volume albums were ahead of their time in that sense.

Dynasty, KC and Blueprint 2 has dope regional remixes too

And Jay Z would actually do new verses for them and incorporate the guests into it

Like these:

That’s why GNX was so successful

Honestly I was thinking about that album and how it was unique in that sense. Would’ve been cool to see Jay hop on a song even as a remix that really would’ve been exactly what I’m talking about

Yeah that would’ve definitely been the icing on the cake, I commend him for keeping it super regional with the features, but someone like Hov would’ve been absolutely crazy

Wish those NLU remixes came out

Lot of it now falls into "hobby" tier that some of them just happen to blow up from moreso than a plan to make it rich or do it for just the fame/money

In that regard

Dupri deserves more mentions in general imo

this is why all the sexy drill / cash cobain collabs last year especially were dope

How could I not include this in OP