The No. 1 selling genre of music in the world is pop music, largely in part to the No. 2 genre of music in the world, hip-hop. In 2006, media giants like Viacom and Clear Channel started believing in the earning potential of hip-hop. Viacom staked their claim by green-lighting shows like Flavor of Love on their previously all-pop network. Clear Channel did the same by allowing artists like Kanye West to grace their airwaves for the first time in 10-plus years.

The adoption of the sub-culture by mainstream broadcasting giants led to exponential growth that opened the doors for top-selling artists like Drake, Post Malone, and Kendrick Lamar, yet small towns like SLO refuse to accept hip-hop as an institutional art form. They fail to realize that they're signaling to two generations of constituents that they don't care about a culture that raised us.

When local restaurants and business make it a point to exclude our music from their playlists, they may not realize that it signals to us that our patronage is less valuable than others. When parents and grandparents go out of their way to express their disdain for the way the young express themselves, children and grandchildren translate that as a sign their interests are of no interest to the ones they love, and that has lasting effects. Community is built on inclusion, and it should go beyond people from cultures you're most comfortable with.

Lorde Sanctus

Connect the Coast

SLO