Vince Staples Vs. The ’90s Rap Canon

Vince Staples is 22 years old. He was born in 1993. When Illmatic and Ready To Die came out, he was a baby. Staples made one of the best rap albums of the year, by any metric. He put it together with No I.D., a producer who was making classic music when Staples was barely born. But Summertime '06, Staples' astonishing debut album, does not sound remotely like a '90s rap album. It's all harsh, buzzing electronic textures and thoughtful-but-deadpan incisiveness. It doesn't even sound like any music that's being made now. It carries distant echoes of, say, Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury or his friend Earl Sweatshirt's Doris, but it's not an album built on a foundation of other things. It's its own album. That's a good thing. We are lucky that there's a 22-year-old kid out there making incredible rap music that doesn't sound like other rap music. That's the way music pushes forward and evolves and keeps its power. Rap's way forward is not Joey Bada$$ doing his '90s-revivalist shtick, as fun as that can be sometimes. It's this kid, and kids like him, with their own influences and ideas and experiences. That shouldn't be a problem for anyone. The problem, it seems, comes when one of these kids dares to have opinions that fly in the face of canonical received wisdom. Staples has those. Right now, thanks to the whole Twitter mob mentality, Staples is in danger of becoming better-known as the guy who hates '90s rap -- something he's never claimed to do -- than as the guy who made Summertime '06. That would be a fucking tragedy.

In a recent Time interview, Staples had some things to say about '90s rap. Here's the money quote: "The '90s get a lot of credit. I don't really know why. Biggie and Tupac, those are the staples of the '90s. That's why they get the Golden Era credit. There's not a 50 Cent in the '90s. They didn't even have a Kanye." (I'm pretty sure he meant "staples of the '90s" and not "Staples of the '90s." That would be a different thing. That would be pretty interesting, too.) And if you're the type of overbearing '90s rap fan who's determined to discredit Staples, here's the other money quote: "The first song I remember listening to is Lil Bow Wow 'Bounce With Me.' Lil Bow Wow is one of my favorite rappers ever. You could never take that from me." Now: Staples is not being entirely sincere here, something that should be evident if you've ever listened to Staples' music. He likes fucking with people, both musically and in his general extramusical presence. (He has a running Twitter joke in which he constantly shouts out Sprite, putting on a straight face to put on a commercial-pitchman persona whenever it suits him.) Staples probably enjoyed the shit out of some Bow Wow songs when he was nine, just like I enjoyed the shit out of some MC Hammer songs when I was nine. He's also fucking with us, the rap-listening public. That can be a lot of fun. (Trust me, I know. I wrote this.) But he's also making a point, and it's a point we would do well to consider.