Whither hip hop? Since it's still relatively young, a better question might be: When will it become as redundant as rock? I think it already has, and not because, musically at least, hip hop is by definition a pastiche, but because thematically it's stuck in a rut.

MCs have been obsessed with "hard and real" since the late '80s, an understandable development considering the environment that gave rise to rap. Few rappers, however, seem willing to break out of the tight emotional corner that hip hop has wedged itself into. Every major artist spouts an agenda that is reflexively cynical, whether it's tied to dark spirituality (Wu-Tang Clan), psychosis (DMX), discredited but by no means gone gangsta cliches (the so-called New York-Cali rivalry), or plain old-fashioned me-first materialism (the Dirty South, Jay-Z).

With a lot of hip hop, it's easy to feel the beats or get sucked into the flow, but often the need for rappers to come on hard and real, no matter what, has gotten in the way. Two years ago in an interview with The New Yorker, producer Prince Paul despaired over the same thing. "There are so many other interesting things to write about in the world," he said, decrying hip hop's loss of imagination and, he implied, nerve.