Is Hip hop too easy for Elavi?

Right now the hip hop genre seems to need a certain reinvigoration and is Elavi the man to do it?
By: andre cheon
 
March 12, 2009 - PRLog -- With the recent  release of Kanyes West 808s & Heartbreak hip hop has seen one of its biggest names jumping ship and claiming that hip hop is too easy and he was forced to create a new genre called “pop art”. Then there is Nas who, a few years ago, released ‘hip hop is dead’. Can it be that hip hop no longer has a future as a creative genre?

Not according to Elavi. The UK artist has never really been too fond of definitions within music as his 2007 debut Soul Science so creatively shows. However, rather than shunning genres that have informed his music he embraces them all.

Because I play instruments many of the hip hop purist have found it hard to define me as hip hop but what I do is look at that as a positive I still have hip hop as a string to my bow but I don’t feel any one genre can define an artist anymore than one colour can define a painter.

It seems that Elavi has a point because although his album can not be totally defined as hip hop it clearly has all the key components and unlike Kanye he didn’t create a new genre just a sub genre. Yeah I like to think of what I am doing right now as “Electronica Soul” I mean if hip hop had a pocket then Electronica Soul would be in it. I can do what I want. I can sing, I can play, I can rap its all Electronica Soul as far as am concerned but to me its still hip hop just my version, my voice. I think it is egotistical for Kanye west to say ok am gonna throw hip hop out and start a new genre. A genre comes from a people not a man, yeah you can have you own style or even create a part of that genre but without the people and the context then you are lost.

Maybe Electronica Soul is hip hop in its purest form, a way of protecting it from the bullshit and the bling. I want to buy a hip hop album for a change that doesn’t have a parental advisory stamp on the front even this is a convention that needs scrapping its almost as if it has come to stand for hip hop and without the cuss warning then it aint hip hop.



Elavi can be seen at this year’s futuresonic international festival and his second album will be out soon.

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Elavi is most well know as a musician and singer songwriter. He originates from the Uk and in 2007 set up a media company called SPR. http://www.elavi.co.uk
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Source:andre cheon
Email:***@elavi.com Email Verified
Tags:Kanye West, Hip-hop, Genre, Music, Album, 808, Heartbreak, Kanye, West
Industry:Music
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