The last week brought us new material from Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Nas - but not in the form of new, official singles, mixtapes, or albums. Instead, the constantly churning depths of the Internet have spat out three of their demo tapes, dating back to 2003, 2001, and 1991 respectively, from far before they reached the levels of fame they’ve now achieved.
Naturally, none of these efforts are exactly the epitome of musical transcendence. They’re rough (the sound quality of Nas’ 1991 demo tape is almost unbearable at times), cringeworthy (imagine the uproar ‘Ye might cause if he released a song called “Never Letting Go (The Stalker Song)” given Rick Ross’ “UOENO” scandal), and, frankly, quite average at times. But no one downloading these tapes should expect these tapes to be on par with these artists’ more developed masterpieces.
Instead, these hip hop artifacts provide valuable insight into what musical progression really means. Today’s hip hop industry has been split open by the advent of social media and the proliferation of technology. I could feasibly walk out of a Best Buy with a condenser USB mic, Pro Tools, and everything else I need to record my own abysmal but professional-sounding debut mixtape. And once it’s done, I don’t have to stand on street corners and peddle my work, because I can then proliferate my tape with a little social media savvy to the entire Internet community through Datpiff, Facebook, Twitter, and Internet forums. As a result, hip hop heads are being simultaneously exposed to a previously unimaginable amount of talent and an equally unimaginable amount of futility. Anyone has a chance at success, but at the cost of industry saturation. Things have changed.
So what’s most compelling about these three demo tapes is their ability to throw us years back in time to when today’s stars were trying to give away their demos on the streets. We’re being transported back to when Nas was a skinny 19-year-old on the streets of Queensbridge, praying he’d make it as an emcee. We’re listening to music from when Kanye was just the guy who gave Hova a couple hot beats on The Blueprint and no one believed he’d succeed anywhere but behind the boards. We’re being taken back to when Kendrick Lamar was just a kid in Compton, christening himself the YNIC before he had his high school diploma. These tapes represent rare opportunities to take our heroes down a notch or two to our level, because there’s something inherently humanizing and endearing about mediocrity.
Yet, that’s not the real reason that we should be listening to these tapes, because they’re certainly not about ridiculing our legends. The real takeaway from Nas’ tape shouldn’t be your perceived right to look at Nas and think, “He used to be pretty average.” No, it’s not about projecting “old them” onto “new them.” It’s about using the “old them” to contextualize the “new them.” You know where they came from, and that gives you a unique insight into just about how much work they had to do to get where they did.
Kendrick wasn’t born churning out smooth jazz/hip hop hybrids like “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” much like Kanye wasn’t born a troubled experimental hip hop artist and Nas wasn’t born painting arguably the best images of New York. They came from somewhere a lot lower, a place that we’ve been granted a privileged glimpse into. These tapes aren’t about gaining a sense of misguided arrogance. They’re about gaining a new, deeper sense of appreciation for the music we’ve come to love so much over the years.