All the media pages and rappers in this world, the Opium / øway / rolling loud world, have gotten accustomed to calling this world the "ug"/underground scene, but do you guys think they are actually "undergound"?

When you think about older generations of "underground" rappers like DOOM, Juggaknots, Immortal Technique, whoever, I feel like they firmly existed outside of the mainstream and establishment of the industry. I don't know that this scene currently does

Then there are other acts like MIKE / billy woods etc who I think fit the definition of the term better

So the word's meaning is evolving after years of it not really meaning what it used to mean - just like "indie" music, which once meant independent and now means like, guitars, sometimes

Does that matter?

cant watch rn but yeah

spend less time trying to define music with labels and just enjoy it

Nothing wrong with that

Just another term eventually being turned into a genre/scene

Doesn’t mean independent music doesn’t exist anymore

same happened to pop

at the same time they’re not really mainstream either so idk

Niggas itt are missing the point

How tf is ken carson underground

Great point

go enjoy the music instead of entering conversations you don’t want to participate in anyways lmao

Maybe my statement was my participation on the conversation in question

the artists often times push the labeling

go enjoy the music bro

Just terms changing meaning. Let’s make some new ones.

they were still calling Carti underground til WLR

words have lost all meaning

Just another way rap is following rocks path into the musical cemetery

One doesn’t negate the other

Let’s start calling real underground music , groundhog music

subterranean music

Nah the nettspend, opium, type crowd is definitely mainstream at this point, everyone from that camp is. They just have reached their ceiling for how popular that sound will grow- they were prolly never gonna recapture another Carti magnolia or WLR era

I get your point, but I’m not really here to define underground, instead to question the choice (that other people made) of a term for a scene that I actually like a good amount of

Calling niggas with buzzing songs and co-signs underground who been in the game 4-5+ years (Ken Carson) is like game devs who keep calling their product “in alpha” for 5+ years to avoid why so many features are lacking

they’ll see someone with Drake & Taylor Swift cosigns & call em underground because they wear Balenciaga

Emo doesn't stop being emo just because My Chemical Romance and The Promise Ring sound like completely different things and it's the same case for underground rap.

I don’t really feel like this new “ug” scene has any actual tenets of the word “underground” though. It’s not outside of the mainstream, it’s not anti establishment. Even if it once was, those things were never the main point of the scene, which is why I feel like it could have used a better term. Even “new wave” would have been better than underground because underground carries some social and potentially political implications imo

Lotta dudes aint really underground. They're signed to a label but can't move any albums so it just sounds better lol.

this is like the opposite problem of when people listen to metal music or electronic music and argue over its super specific label.

like no this is blackended grindcore with mathrock influences. dont call it screamo. thats a specific sub genre of emo with strained vocals etc.

but now its like asap rocky? underground lol

bit of an exaggeration but i think its funny