Wu-Tang's most volatile member (at least currently), echoes my sentiments almost exactly in a recent New York Daily News interview where he speaks on Jay and Kanye:

“A lot of street people don’t put stock in them anymore because they aren’t doing enough to excite anyone,” he tells us. He suggests both superstars should “come back to the hood and drop $100,000.” And why doesn’t he do that? “I don’t have money on that level,” says Chef. “And I don’t know where to drop it.” What’s more, the Staten Island rapper doesn’t dig the NYC hip-hop scene now because “everyone is ignorant and arrogant. When you’re around that crap, you become part of it.”

Rae hit it on the head: it's not that American Gangster or Kingdom Come were awful, it's that they were boring. Both albums had some decent tracks--indeed, a few gems--but Jigga has sounded bored with music since he put out The Black Album. Shit's tired, and it shows.

Jay-Z recently attained the unattainable, tying Elvis with 10 albums debuting at the number one spot. It's a great accomplishment, and a particularly important one for rap music as a whole--how shattering to the status quo that Brooklyn's finest has equalled The King? Unfortunately for Jay, however, his feat speaks to his age and his fanbase: there's nothing wrong with being mentioned in the same sentence as Elvis, but it's important to think about just what that means in terms of age, style and hunger for the mic. As Rae says, he's just not exciting anymore.

I'm inclined to agree with much of what the Chef says of NY hip-hop as well. Most of what comes out of NY on the blogs and airwaves is indeed arrogant (to say nothing of ignorant; dudes won't even listen to music from south of Virginia).

Glad someone said it, but I have to call Rae on one thing: you can't buy street cred, $100k to the hood or not.

(As for Kanye, was he ever really hood? No comment on that, for now.)