I think it’s clear that we are not talking about the same thing, as I am talking about musicianship, craftsmanship, and skill… you sound like you are talking about pop culture… but I think that the point you are making is the same point that math Hoffa was making in those videos, his point was those artist should have performed their music/ artistry under the label of what it is and what they represent instead of being presented as something they are not, and I agree with you both.
Where you and I differ would be in the analogy of this happening before and being like punk vs rock… nobody ever misrepresented punk, and nobody ever claimed that when someone who played guitar in a punk band but couldn’t actually play guitar that they could… or claimed that any punk vocalist who couldn’t actually sing could sing, on top of that the artist themselves never tried to misrepresent themselves or present themselves as something they were not real punk bands bragged about the truth they didn’t claim to be rock bands or claim to have skills that they never had, that is why this has never happened before, the same can’t be said for what those xL. Clips represent.
In my opinion for some unknown reason hiphop as a whole has been gaslit by so many people from so many angles into thinking that it can’t have its own representation, as if there’s just not enough respect or slots to go around and everything has to all be considered one thing, instead of two, three, four, or five different things like you and Hoffa think, it’s not the same thing/genre that much is obvious so collectively it should’ve all never been thrown in the same bucket…. Punk and rock have that respect for each other… hiphop and what ever xL are doin don’t have that respect, on the contrary it was disrespectful to even call it a cipher.
As far as hiphop being dead and buried I thought that was cute and funny, I don’t doubt it’s dead to you but it’s certainly not dead to everyone (the true death)… just like rock is not dead… I can tell that you and I come from different branches of the experience because what you called underground was what we called gangster rap and later on pop, what we call underground rap music wasn’t gangster rap, we had gangster rap, rap rock, pop rap, r&b rap, underground, backpack, and conscious rap battle rap,real freestyle rap, country rap, and all of it very distinct.
We’ve always had enough respect for the art form as a whole to not lump everything in together and to acknowledge each genre for what it is, hell even horror shock and noise rap get their proper respect from the people who give proper respect to such things because there is a place for everybody, unfortunately in an industry that lacks proper respect and knowledge and only seeks to exploit that doesn’t always translate very well., that’s why Hoffa was saying that Red Bull is representing the cipher art form better than the people who are supposed to be representing the cipher art form themselves, xl was using the clout of the cipher art form as a cloak for something else which is inauthentic, the last thing any real punk band ever wanted was to be represented by a the cloak of something else, that would be fake.
I understand where he was coming from, his genre is the battle rap art form, also not dead, but in all of these different disciplines the one thing that has endured all the way from gangster rap to R&b rap is the acknowledgment of whether someone could actually rap or not, nobody ever respected someone claiming they had mic skill when they didn’t in any of the art forms until now… I love music too much to discriminate against it, I may not like everything but I respect all of it, none of it deserves the disrespect of deliberately being misrepresented and all thrown in one bucket without the compassionate care of all of these art forms individual ethos, that would be like saying all tattoos mean the same thing, that’s corny😁