Yes, the Holderness Family is Corny, but They Represent the Fall of Hip-Hop

I was around ten when "gangsta rap" became mainstream enough to draw a Congressional reaction (maybe younger). At the time, gangsta' rap was cool to me (as a white suburban kid) because, "yo, those guys are doing bad stuff in their videos." It was rebellious. Rebellion is cool to people at all ages. A few years later, I matured enough to actually appreciate the art being put forward. Young people, from incredibly "tough" neighborhoods, were telling their stories musically. Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" wasn't some big joke, nor was the music coming from Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Mobb Deep, Nas, Jay Z, or any of the other rappers who emerged in the 1990s. There was some storytelling going on.

So yeah, listening to the Holderness family parody hip-hop is ridiculous and infuriating. Yeah, they suck. I mean, seriously, "Gin and Juice" being re-done as "Kin and Moose" by some guy that looks like he should be a Southern televangelist is such a mockery of some of the best art this country has produced in my lifetime. I hope this family is just trying to be funny and cute for their neighbors, and not to mock real art. There are some racial overtones to this kind of radical change of a piece of art work, and that's a bit troubling.

But before we just dump on these people for probably parodying something they don't at all understand, let's understand that it's pretty representative of what hip-hop has become. Rappers aren't rapping about anything anymore. Hip-Hop is parodying itself. If you listen to the radio, you'll hear the same 20 songs on a hip-hop station, and at least 18 of them will talk about money, girls, girls they met in the club last night, and then some kind of non-sensical banter about being real or important. There are no Nas' "Illmatic" types of work coming out, there is no "Reasonable Doubt" even by Jay Z these days. Hip-hop isn't storytelling, it's not authentic, we all know that Drake never shot a gun in his life, so can he please stop claiming it, or calling himself "Real."

The Holderness family is a complete joke, and their videos are so terrible that you shouldn't watch them. What they're doing to actual great storytelling is awful. Don't sit here though and say that it isn't somewhat emblematic of a genre of art that right now is in desperate need of some authenticity and story-telling again.