Street Hop

Street hop is gangstas at play, the prosecution in motion, and the dreary and sometimes scary poetry of N.Y.C.'s and Philly's mean streets. At its root, street hop is more or less an extension of the '90s boom bap era, and thus the emcees tend to focus more on lyrical content than they do stylistic embellishments (though artists such as 50 Cent have proven that there are exceptions to this rule). Distinguishing street hop from '90s boom bap can be difficult. Many of the players -- such as Mobb Deep, D-Block and Nas -- are the same, and there are few differences in terms of sound and lyrical content. In fact, much of the criticism against the genre is that it's artistically stagnant, too weighed down by its own history.

While this criticism does have some validity, there are some stylistic differences between two genres. Street hop artists such as G-Unit, Juelz Santana and even Mobb Deep are willing to affect an R&B sheen in order to obtain commercial success. The emcees do this more by necessity than by choice; at its essence, street hop is no longer a commercially viable form of music. The tracks of producers such as the Heatmakers, Trackmasters and Just Blaze bump, but they lack the synth-propelled bombast that now almost entirely permeates club culture.

While street hop may not carry the same political implications as, say, Golden Era hip-hop, when militant Afro-centric acts such as Public Enemy and Brand Nubian ruled the airwaves, there are lyricist such as Jadakiss on his hit "Why" or Nas on "I Can" who tread into deeper waters, tackling issues of racism, classism and self-determination. If nothing else, these artists prove once again that the line between the pimp and the prophet is a precarious one, and that true hustlers carry both bullets and a Bible.