On the streets beyond the empty club, harder hip-hop will fare no better. It's already long gone from the charts and seldom intersects with mainstream pop culture, but in 2013, we will officially pass "peak hip-hop," when dopeness becomes a diminishing return. We'll watch the painful attrition on WorldStar, where the unsigned hype will slow to a trickle. The new tracks will be gradually replaced by viral content, and children born in 2013 will never know "hip-hop" as anything more than videos of bus scuffles and big-booty models. Chief Keef — the last rapper — will die in 2083; the tradition of MCing will die with him, and the four pillars will crumble; to future scholars, their ruins will be inscrutable as Stonehenge.
Oh, and rock music will die because of Mumford & Sons, but everyone already knew that.
>>DTHORPE@PHX.COM:: @ARR
Topics:
Big Hurt
, Music, Sophocles, the jonas brothers, More 
, Music, Sophocles, the jonas brothers, Pop, future, The Weeknd, yearahead2013, Less 
