Where you're at, so to speak, and how you choose to cultivate and represent that space – whether real or imagined - matters. In hip-hop, as elsewhere, the personal is always political. It's sonic uprising happened amid a national backdrop of political upheaval, racial discord, violent demonstrations and revelatory reckoning around the systemic abuses of power and gender inequality that hits so close to home in this genre. But hip-hop did not ascend to new heights in a vacuum.
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Indeed, the Internet is chock full of them. In a year this robust, it would be easy to make an exhaustive list of the best releases. And Rapsody reigned supreme over nearly everybody. Kendrick Lamar exposed his prophetic struggle on an altar of self-sacrifice. and Cyhi The Prynce transcended the traps and clichés of Southern rap. Lil Uzi Vert and Future went hyper-emo over loves lost and loathed. GoldLink and Open Mike Eagle erected memorials to the erased cultures, and cribs, of their upbringing. Jay-Z and Tyler, the Creator averted respective midlife and quarter-life crises with their most mature confessionals to date. And artists got pretty ( DAMN.) creative within those confines. While the power of playlists (and the ability to juke streaming stats with song loops) set new standards, the long-play album remained the definitive format for artists intent on making timeless creative statements.
Industry hype aside, rap reflected our collective conscience, and national crisis, like never before. It's impossible to overstate how golden hip-hop shone in 2017 - the shattered Billboard records, the most-streamed genre recognition from Nielsen.
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