I thought a lot this weekend about what it really meant for me to be listed in Vibe magazine’s article on the top 50 Hip-Hop weblogs. I am grateful for the honor even though I bristle at the notion of being a “Hip-Hop” weblog. For the overwhelming majority of people out here “Hip-Hop” means rap music, and rap music only.
I wonder what it should mean sometimes. For better or for worse Hip-Hop was an outgrowth of American society’s response to the poor after the wave of civil rights achievements, post-Vietnam protests and the constriction of the U.S. economy. The poor were still second class citizens left to fend for themselves with whatever they could find in the smoldering vacant lots. Bits and pieces were cobbled together in order for the poor to validate that they too were part of the American fabric. A megaphone made out of a curled up newspaper was used to tell the whole world that they existed.
The world heard them. The world took their voice and their graphic art and their fashion style and everything that made the poor so damn cool and so fucking irrepressible and put it all inside a package that could be put on a shelf and sold. The poor people then in the Bronx and Brooklyn are still the poor people now. What I mean to say is that in thirty years of the artistic movement called Hip-Hop being disseminated across the globe we have done little to nothing to stem the reason for it’s creation. In fact, we have prA’li exacerbated the need for it’s rebirth.
Vibe magazine gave me a soundbite platform and I did with it what I thought was I could. As I checked my stats and back end data I see that there were no big changes in the IP trends that usually come here to DP.com on the regulack.
For the fourth year in a row Nah’Right has been in the top 3 referral spot. Shouts to Eskay, n8 and Dre for keeping the lights on here at DP and at so many other sites as well I’m sure. Concrete Loop comes in second. CL, Nah’Raight and Crunktastical were basically the leading referrers to this site for the life of this blog. Big shouts to Angel.La and Fresh for having my back all these years. Bossip is in the third spot and I wonder why I haven’t made any contact with them. They are consistently sending traffic here since they launched their site. The fourth spot on my referral list ahead of Vibe’s traffic was from 2DopeBoyz. 2DBZ def holds me down with the videos I post on YouTube and Meka hooks me up on .mp3s I may have missed during the week. The final spot in my own top 5 referral list is The Shoe Game. TSG runs all the Sneaker Fiends Unite! videos that we pass them and is directly responsible for putting my sneaker beef with Lil’ Bow Weezle on the minds of many kicks collectors.
If you want five websites that document what the masses consider to be Hip-Hop then you won’t miss a beat with the five(6) I just mentioned and they all sent traffic to DP.com greater than the bump I caught from the one-time posting of the Vibe.com article. I’m not trying to throw Vibe under the bus either. They definitely do their thing to their audience. I definitely do my thing to mine. If our paths cross in the future I won’t feel any kind of way, but for my internets money I am running with the people that I came to the party with. Even though that sexy chick is flirting with me word on the streets is that she is giving brothers the clap.
They weren’t one of my top referrers this month but I need to shout Passion Of The Weiss for sending their traffic my way. Between Jeff, Sacha, Dan Love and Zilla POTW is building an all-star squad of dudes ready to take OhWord’s spot in the sentimental mind’s of rap purists and nerdists. Someone call up Soderberg. These dudes could be as good as the 1980’s Boston Celtics. And even whiter.
