Stylish hip-hop thrives

Rapper Tahiti is pretty frustrated with the way hip-hop is going: The bling. The hoochies. The violence.

But it really hit home when his 8-year-old son had a request.

“He wanted to get gold teeth like Juvenile,” Tahiti says. “I said (to myself), ‘I’m going to make a CD that he can listen to, not talking about the negative stuff, that he can enjoy.’ “

With his self-distributed, seven-track “The Birth of Whack” – a mix of classic old-school beats, self-mocking lyrics and socially conscious rhymes – the Fort Worth, Texas, rapper may be tapping into a broader frustration with the current state of mainstream hip-hop.

Last year, Kanye West emerged from Chicago, a city not known for hip-hop, with the multiplatinum “College Dropout,” a disc that melded intelligence and awareness with a stylish sense of cool that appealed to a broad range of fans.

This year, West threw his production weight behind celebrated but comparatively little-known, socially conscious rapper Common. Last month, the resulting album, “Be,” crashed into Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop charts at No. 1, pounced onto the pop charts at No. 2 and spawned a hit single with “The Corner.”

Coming on the heels of lesser breakthroughs for the likes of the Roots, Dilated Peoples and Jurassic 5, this style of hip-hop – alternately labeled “progressive,” “alternative,” “underground” or “conscious” – might be poised to make a leap into the mainstream.

It can include everything from jazzlike improvisation to rockish noise, from hard-edged politics to avant-gardist abstraction. What these artists have in common is moving beyond hip-hop’s obsession with materialism and turf wars, and making good on its initial promise of experimentalism and adventure.

It might not rival hip-hop’s creative heyday in the late ‘80s – when the likes of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim and Arrested Development were at their peak – and it’s not going to hurl 50 Cent or Ludacris onto the unemployment lines.

But the subtle shift in tastes could help re-energize a genre that has grown repetitive.

“Part of (what’s happening) is an opening up of the marketplace for hip-hop,” says Vibe magazine senior editor Noah Callahan-Bever, who points to Jay-Z and Eminem as mainstream rappers who’ve incorporated underground elements.

“Then you have Kanye West, who grew up listening to A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul but also (to) Puffy and Biggie,” Callahan-Bever says. “He was able to infuse a pop sensibility into his otherwise conscious or progressive hip-hop, and it’s definitely more of a throwback to classic rap than a lot of the stuff that is successful.

“It indicates that now rappers don’t need to follow the formula of rap. Kanye served to bridge the gap. … Now, both sides are edging toward the center.”

With Common riding West’s coattails to chart success, the music industry is taking notice.

“I think he actually will open the door for other hip-hop artists like him,” says Amy Doyle, music and talent programming vice president for MTV, MTV2 and mtvU.

“The gap between Common and a 50 Cent is getting smaller and smaller,” she says. “There’s still an appetite for the Ying Yang Twins and 50 Cent, but (fans) are expanding their libraries to include the deeper side of hip-hop.”

Last fall in Los Angeles, a radio station revived the call letters of the legendary ‘80s L.A. hip-hop station KDAY and is programming current hits with a heavy dose of the classics that were an influence on the likes of West and Common. Its slogan: “Hip-hop today and back in the day.”

“People are looking for a thinking-out-of-the-box kind of radio station,” says KDAY program director Anthony Acampora. “There’s absolutely a widening of taste. There’s not a lot of good current product out, and kids love this. They’re learning about (hip-hop history).”

But for all the hope and promise, the sales numbers for progressive hip-hop remain low compared with its mainstream counterpart.

One of the most admired underground labels is Definitive Jux, and rightfully so. The company includes such acclaimed acts as Aesop Rock, RJD2, C-Rayz, EL-P and Murs on its roster and recently released “Black Dialogue” by the Perceptionists, one of the year’s best CDs in any genre.

But the label still measures success in terms of shipping thousands of albums, not millions.

“It’s premature to say the audience is changing wholesale,” admits label manager Jesse Ferguson.

“Rap is going to change and an audience is being developed as it changes. … But there will always be a place for commercial rap that glorifies money and violence,” he says. “People like to hear that. There’s something refreshing about bravado in music.

“But there will always be a place for something that’s thoughtful and well-informed. I’m confident there’s a place for these guys. … There needs to be a voice saying something other than violence.”