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without going on and on and on and on and on....
But I think the main point I want to put out there is that boom bap != underground.
Now I'm assuming the link gets made because of the notion of "keep it real" being closely related to that 'real boom bap' shit, but they can't be used interchangably or in this case used as a measure of undergroundness.
Boom-bap is a sound, while underground is more like an ideology (gets tricky).
Underground is an attempt to address something in a form (in this case music) which the main outlets for that form do not because of perceived broader acceptability. That's the general idea but I think the nature of any particular underground movement develops of its own accord.
Hip-hop began as an underground music. Throughout the early to mid 80's there were plenty of attempts to take it to the mainstream with moderate success until the end of the 80's. So during the 80's there was crossover hip-hop and there was an underground hip-hop, both coming out of an underground music. As the crossover gained traction however, it took the music as a whole out of the underground.
By the 90's hip-hop was a mainstream music, with underground elements. Actually let's say at the time there was mainstream, underground and underexposed. I think a lot of the disconnect comes out of confusing underexposed for underground. Underexposed happens once a movement gains mainstream traction, but a number of the artists which potentially could be in that crossover area end up underexposed to actually pop. But underground has no goal of crossing over.
What I'm seeing you doing in your initial post is attempt to compare underexposed artists to underground artists. In the 90's a lot of those underexposed artists gained a lot of traction so that they were out there. But that was there goal.
Using Rawkus as an example Company Flow was an underground group, Black Star was an underexposed group. There wasn't anything about Company Flow that could have been done differently to break them in the mainstream. To lyrically dense with a dirty production aesthetic to ever capture more than the niche audience that was into that. Black Star however had all the makings of a group that could crossover.
Not to speak for El, but IMO that's why Def Jux was born. Because Rawkus was not really looking to push underground music but underexposed music, which became more and more evident with each Sound Bombing volume.
Not to go on and on, but my main contention with your post is the marginalization of folk that were on that underground shit, because they didn't achieve what the underexposed were doing. The objectives were different. Even further what they were doing was just as important as everyone else. Because they weren't putting limits, or trying to fit their sound into the 'in' sounds, they were able to experiment sonically, lyrically, etc. The benefits of this always trickle up through the underexposed to the mainstream.
Don't get me wrong... a lot of that shit sucked. I wasn't a fan of 95% of the underground in the 2000's. I think it was a poor decade all around. Mainly because all of these things feed off each other. So if the mainstream is horrid, it makes the underexposed aspire horribly, and the underground react to the horrid.
I stop now.
█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃ Big PEMFin H & z's "I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles
"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."
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