Hip

Chris Spangenberg, Grade 12

Looking back, entertainment was encouraging. There was a lot to hate for hipsters, and there were a lot of hipsters to hate with their snobbishness and insistence of fusion and Tame Impala. My Chemical Romance broke up, along with the Jonas Brothers and The Mars Volta; the first of which was cause to an avalanche of tweets and Facebook posts to the inherent futility of life post-break up, and the last of which ensured manly weeps from progressive rockers. Gotye's song Somebody That I Used To Know redefined repetition through the airwaves, along with Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe. To the socially hip, Daft Punk released their anticipated album Random Access Memories in May, and Queens of the Stone Age released their album ...Like Clockwork around the same time, both to critical acclaim.

Notes on underground Hip-Hop: R.A. The Rugged Man released Legends Never Die to a hardcore fan base of teeth-clenching, bug-eyed old and new school loyalists, most who would out-debate any number one Eminem fan. They left optimistic. Legends Never Die is a dope injection in the vein of hope, a sign that underground music is still wilding out—and not without a middle finger to the mainstream.

Popular Hip-Hop really started the year with Started From The Bottom from yours-truly Ultra-Charmin-soft Drake. His track Wu Tang Forever was about everything but Wu Tang, and put him again in the crosshairs of his critics, who lost all their faith in his rhetoric. Unsurprisingly, the members of the Wu sucked it up and lined up to congratulate Drake on their new partnership. Yeezus returned to Earth in the form of a blank CD case with no album cover, which the man himself thought innovative and deep. Jay-Z released Magna Carta. And indeed, somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerking. Her obsession with ratchet culture is an ominous saga overshadowing other world events, like the war in Syria. The media focus on her rump is bigger than the object of interest, and why is the subject blown up to such proportion? Only the King of Pop reached such levels of infamy with his skin, and that was the King of Pop. Who is this Disney diva? Nearing the end, Eminem released the Marshall Matters LP 2, and they buffed 5 Pointz in New York City, the graffiti Mecca. Sad times all around.