Arrested Development is Back!

I guess I'm officially on a Hip Hop streak now.

If you had asked me about the state of the Hip Hop music industry just a little while ago, I would have been very pessimistic. It looked like materialism, gangsterism, and chauvinism were winning the day, and socially and spiritually conscious Hip Hop was being relegated to the margins.

I think we can all agree that commercial success doesn't make an artist good. But it can help us get a handle on the media exposure a particular artist's work is getting. For once, real Hip Hop seems to be coming to the fore. Look at what's happened this year.

Exibit A: Common, a rapper who's been underrated for a long time, is going mainstream. A couple of years ago, before the album Be came out, if you asked most casual Rap fans who Common was, you would've gotten blank stares. In the course of the last year he's appeared in two big budget films (Smokin' Aces and American Gangster) and advertisements for the Gap. And lets not forget his latest album Finding Forever debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. That means he's almost certainly becoming a household name among people who don't even listen to rap.

Exibit B: Talib Kweli is in a similar situation. His latest album Eardrum debuted at #2 on Billboard. I think you can officially say he's no longer underground. The HP-commercial-inspired "Hot Thing" video is so clever, I had to put it on the blog. (For purely journalistic reasons, of course.)

Exhibit C: After a 12-year absence from U.S. charts, Arrested Development, the drum majors of the Afrocentric wave in the early '90s, put out a new album, Since the Last Time, on Tuesday (10/30/07). They were everywhere for a hot second. Remember all those folks wearing Malcolm X caps blasting the song they made for the soundtrack of Spike Lee's film? I've heard a few tracks of their album (check out the Arrested Development website), and think they have a real shot at hitting it big again. I'm pretty broke, but I can't help but part with few dollars for stuff like that.

If Lauryn Hill were to announce she's finally working on a third album, somebody will have to pinch me. That would make my day. Or week. Or month.

So let it be written, so let it be done. Real Hip Hop is on the rise. But as LL would say, "Don't call it a comeback." They've always been there. They're just finally getting the public recognition they deserve.

It's about time.

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ