Xzibit has slammed the current state of Hip Hop — but has also offered some ideas as to how to get the genre “out of the toilet.”
TMZ was on hand when the “Paparazzi” rapper spoke at a panel discussion on Thursday (September 14) in Santa Monica, CA. The discussion, which also featured Layzie Bone, had X passionately decrying what had become of the genre he knows and loves.
AD LOADING...
“Hip Hop is huge,” he said. “And it made so many people so much money, they think anybody can do it. Everyone feels that Hip Hop is so accessible that anybody can do it.”
He continued: “It’s become a mockery of itself. It’s become too accessible. There was a time that there was somebody that you had to go into their office and get an investment into your career. Now, if you just have a laptop and WiFi, you can be an artist … People do themselves a disservice by trying to participate in that.”
AD LOADING...
Offering some ideas as to how to improve the state of Hip Hop, Xzibit continued: “We should have unionized. We should have had some kind of union, we shoulda had a board, we shoulda organized ourselves. ‘Cause right now, you know, becoming 50 years later we still don’t own shit.
“So until we own it, until we control it, until we have a say who gets to fuckin’ call themselves this and call themselves that — like everybody else — it’s gonna continue to spiral out of control. And that’s why we’re not on the Billboard [charts], because nobody is in the pilot seat guiding us to where we supposed to go.”
He added: “This is a billion dollar industry! But until we take the focus and we clean up our own backyard, it’s not going to have the same respect it that’s it garnished in the past.”
Xzibit hasn’t released a new album since 2012. However, back in 2022, he teased fans that he was hard at work on what was likely to be his final album.
“I have an album called Kingmaker that I’m putting the finishing touches on now,” he said. “I’ve been working on it for a minute. I feel like this is gonna be my last album.”
He continued: “Not that I’m gonna retire or make any weird statements like that … but I think as about full feature-length albums I think things have changed and people digest music a little differently now, but for my catalog of music, I haven’t put out a record since 2012.
“I will never lose love for Hip Hop, but what I do know now at my age is that time is the most important thing that we have. I’ve given a lot of time to the planet as Xzibit and my priorities are changing on the daily. So I will always be there for my fanbase and they’ve always been there for me, but I wanna be present for the people that I love.”
AD LOADING...
Despite promising to drop the album in January or February 2023, it has not yet seen the light of day.
