I use to love hip hop growing up, but now not so much. I know that same old “it isn’t real anymore” excuse is getting tired but frankly that is exactly what it is. Along with that, the genre is lacking creativity, originality and uniqueness which has turned the whole thing into a bore.

I always thought that it was because of my age and my non-acceptance of this new style like my parents before I, but it looks like there is a general lost of interest which is evident through the declining record sales. The popular excuse is that the decline is due to free downloads and piracy, but my objection to that is, if you are really a fan of the music and the artist you would take pride in collecting the official releases.

Toronto is not free of this declined interest and there are actually more factors that add to it. There are a lot of artist in this lovely town but there is only a handful that grow in popularity and there is only a handful of that handful that even gets recognize in a record label office.

This lack of interest is always confused with a lack of support for the artist. There is a lack of support but that is simply because if there is no interest there will be any support. Being a TOalien does not automatically grant you a “free fan base” card, the artist has to work just as hard to be creative and original. Many know that we are considered as a screwface capital but that can prove to be advantage by putting artists through an intensive screening process as opposed to just agreeing with the artist being great when in reality they are not.

The bottom line is, people are bored, and due to internet and all other forms of mass media our attention spans have minimized drastically. We just do not have time to waste on something unpleasant there are just too many things that are pleasant out there. That is one of the main reasons why people rather download then purchase (besides the fact that it is free) people do not want to waste that time to go out to a store and purchase merchandise that has the possibility of not turning out the way they would like, so the only solution for that was to get it free and rapidly.