Aging could be a humbling course of, but it surely’s particularly fraught in hip-hop. The inevitable march of time has usually been handled as an unforgivable weak spot in a tradition that always celebrates a specific masculine thought of energy. As a then-26-year-old Compton rapper the Game as soon as put it in a presumed shot at Jay-Z: “You 38 and you still rapping? Ugh.” (The Game is now 41 and reportedly making ready to launch a brand new album this yr.) The mid-to-late-30s has lengthy been considered as retirement age for rappers regardless of the actual fact so many qualities required of the job — sharp thoughts, fast tongue, storytelling acumen, life knowledge — are as prone to be rising as diminishing in center age.
So the place does that depart Mount Westmore? At 49, Snoop is, in his phrases, “the baby of the bunch.” Ice Cube is 51, E-40 is 53 and Too Short is 55.
“People have their hangups about it,” stated Cube, “but if people love what’s coming out of the speakers, they’ll tolerate some gray hairs.”
Snoop famous that the Rolling Stones are of their late 70s, and that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards don’t at all times appear to get alongside. “You’ve got that being praised and we’re being questioned,” he stated. “We should be praised because we’re in our right mind, we love each other, we’re family men, we’re business men, and we’re Black men. If you look at the Cubes, the Will Smiths, the Jay-Zs, the Puffys, the Snoops, the Dr. Dres, the E-40s, whoever — they all flipped from rap to other businesses to show that if you close that door, we’ve got seven or eight other doors we’ve opened up.”
Accordingly, music is barely part of the Mount Westmore plan. There’s speak of name partnerships with Monster power drink and the Cash app, a documentary, a scripted film, podcasts and NFTs. As such, introducing the venture throughout a social media-focused, music-heavy occasion spotlighting a former star of “Bizaardvark” boxing in opposition to a man who’d by no means boxed earlier than has a sure sort of insane logic to it.
