I’m sitting at the airport with time to kill and decided to hunt down some new music since I’ve grown tired of about 90% of the tracks on my iPod. Seems like a simple task; right? There’s about 250 million hip-hop blogs out there (although many are just carbon copies of larger sites), so most would assume this would offer a plethora of new tunes to check out. Wrong.

These days the music is playing second fiddle to the soap opera we’ve allowed this culture to become. To find something new right now you’ve got to dig through 500 posts about 50 Cent vs. Rick Ross, Chris Brown vs. Rihanna or random videos of Cam’ron pretending he’s still relevant while attempting to beef with anyone that will listen. You could reincarnate Biggie and Pac and get them to cut a new track, but if 50 Cent makes a cartoon about Rick Ross that day you can bet everyone will be talking about that new 50 Cent cartoon.

How did we get here?

At one point in time, it was mildly entertaining to see 50 Cent instigating beefs, but at one point in time it was entertaining to hear new music from 50 as well. The beefs aren’t fun anymore (see Why Does the Saigon vs. Joe Budden Battle Suck?). There’s no sincerity or real emotion involved, just drama for the sake of keeping your name out there.

Obviously, these beefs aren’t proving to increase record sales. Sure, they keep an artist’s name fresh in your mind, but for all the wrong reasons. If anything, these beefs hurt record sales and if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the music industry you’ll understand that poor record sales aren’t helping anyone at this point.

Have these artists decided that music is no longer relevant and they’re better off trying their hand at being a net celebrity?

If that’s the case, bring some fucking creativity to the game. You and your homies sitting around mean-mugging a camera and making meaningless threats against your adversaries is played out. I would rather watch a Youtube clip of 50 Cent ordering a Whopper at Burger King. At least in that case I wouldn’t know exactly what was going to be on the video before I even hit the play button.

I’ve got no problem with rappers taking to the net with senseless videos (in moderation), but there also has to be a balance between the music and everything else because at the end of the day your job title is still musician.

I pray that this whole Youtube beef thing is just a fad that will pass quickly and hope some of the bloggers that continue propagating this stuff will get sick of it as well. If not, this culture will continue to sink so low that we’re going to lose the little bit of credibility we’ve got left.

Did we come this far to create a soap opera?

If you’re comfortable answering yes to that question, I dare you to turn on network television in the daytime and see what we’re striving to associate this culture with.