"Diamonds & Wood" is an ongoing series in which music critic Shea Serrano breaks down the 5 hip-hop tracks you need to hear this week.
I got into an argument recently with a man that I suspect either likes me a little or hates me a lot (those two are easy to confuse, in that they both involve occasionally acting like a total dick). Initially, the conversation addressed the assertion that Donald Gambino makes in this video clip around the 1:30 mark about old rap not being nearly as amazing as most everyone likes to pretend it is.
Mostly, I agreed with Glover (because it's so clearly obviously true). I did offer a concession however: While rap from the last fifteen years is dominant in nearly every way when compared to the first 15 years following its genesis, the fashion trends of recent are no less disastrous. I mean, sure, there's of course the backwards clothes thing and the puffy pants thing and the overalls thing and so on, and those are absolutely ludicrous THINGS, for certain. But, dudes, do you even have eyes? Because, for realsies, today's today is a byzantine complexity. Here are a few of the most egregious...
Shea Serrano is a writer living in Houston, TX. His work has appeared in the Houston Press, LA Weekly, Village Voice, XXL, The Source, Grantland and more. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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