In many ways, the internet has democratized both art making and art criticism. While this might have helped independent hip hop artists, it has also helped diminish the effectiveness of traditional music critique.
The internet has been great for independent hip hop artists. In a way, it’s almost like a return to the roots of hip-hop. Part of the beauty of the movement’s early days was that it gave marginalized communities a vehicle through which to express themselves. Many early rappers lacked any sort of formal training in the arts, and part of what hip hop did in the earliest stages was blur any sort of distinction between cultural consumption and cultural production by employing commercially mass-produced objects — records and turntables, etc. — in the way that musicians historically employed traditional instruments. All an aspiring hip hop artist needed were vocal chords, a nimble mind, and, ideally,