Throughout my lifetime, there has been a slow but certain pattern in the quality of music. Gone are the days of James Brown, Michael Jackson, Katy Perry, and My Chemical Romance. In 2018, popular music is losing its flair. The most extreme example of this would be rap.

In popular rap songs, there is one thing I noticed, and it isn’t good: lyrics. The instrumental of the song usually sounds good, great, even. But the lyrics, oh no. As of right now, the most popular rappers are, in no particular order, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, 6ix 9ine, and Lil Pump. I am going to be talking about two. Nicki Minaj, and 6ix 9ine.

If you look at any of their more recent songs, you will see just how bad they truly are. Take Nicki Minaj’s song, Chun-Li, for example. I read through the lyrics twice and the only meaning I could get out of it is that she is mad at somebody. That she isn’t “The Bad Guy”. Now, whilst I was looking through the lyrics, the amount of profanity in the music was just unnecessary. I understand using curse words in songs, but they should be used to enhance the meaning of the song. But in this case, there doesn’t seem to be any point. It only makes her seem angry, which she may be, which is fine. But in her song, we don’t know why she is angry. Just that she is — 12 curse words in a song with no meaning just isn’t needed.

Okay. 6ix 9ine. He looks incredibly… odd. 6ix 9ine is the 22 year old “rapper” that you should never show your grandmother. One of his most popular songs, Keke, is quite disturbing. From what I could gather from the music video, the song is about… killing people (and one other thing I can’t mention here). Like I said before, swearing to enhance your lyrics isn’t a problem for me, but this is disgusting. The actions he describes, how he refers to people, and the slurs (both racist and sexist) he uses are incredibly offensive and vulgar. The entire song doesn’t give the listener any feeling other than confusion.

It is 100% okay if you enjoy these artists, but when other people state that music was better in the past, they aren’t talking about how the instruments sounded. They are talking about the lyrics. How they went from expressing your emotions to murdering innocents. To me, 6ix 9ine will never be a good artist or a good person. To me, Nicki will never be a lyrical genius. They are just popular because we say they’re popular. Bands like Modest Mouse, MCR, and TWDY are no longer relevant, and this is quite honestly just sad. How does rapping about killing people translate to us better than the struggle of going through life? That, I do not know.