The Death and Resurrection of Conscious Rap, Pt. 3

If Kanye West's binary-breaking rise to superstardom didn't kill off what was left of conscious rap, then the cratering of record sales, which led to a mass rapper exodus to the Internet (and the creation of a new "underground") most certainly did. Though there's not much money to go around these days, there's almost an overabundance of smart, sensitive hip-hop right now and it has led to a sprawling, multitude-filled rap scene separate from the mainstream.

Here's the place where I should list a bunch of current rappers who are carrying on the conscious rap tradition. But that's not really for me or anybody else to declare, at least not yet. To do anything more than document the scene as it's happening seems unwise, so this last installment of "The Death and Resurrection Of Conscious Rap" will extend its narrative no further: Something is going on right now in rap and it has a lot to do with the Internet.

Check out 'The Death and Resurrection Of Conscious Rap, Pt. 1' and Pt. 2.

Two rappers who I think represent the vanguard of conscious hip-hop are Big K.R.I.T., a painfully sincere MC/producer, and Kristmas, an earthy lyricist and cell-phone salesman (and friend to buzzing Alabama rappers G-Side). Both are products of the Internet, but not the obnoxious, of-the-moment, blog sector; they exist in a world where it's simply possible to build a name and fanbase without the luxury of conventional promotion.

K.R.I.T. has been around since 2005, but 2009's The Last King was his first great release. The Mississippi rapper grabbed from '90s Southern rap with wild abandon, tapping into the introspective, sneering side of sensitive, old-soul assholes like Pimp C and 8Ball. Last year's K.R.I.T. Wuz Here was more aggressive, best exemplified by the title track, which features K.R.I.T. announcing, "It's the return of forever hoe." At the same time, he was more heartfelt: See "They Got Us," a righteously indignant attack on institutionalized racism. K.R.I.T. signed to Def Jam not longer after K.R.I.T. Wuz Here dropped.

But rather than quickly roll out an official album, K.R.I.T.'s approach on this year's Return Of 4Eva mixtape was to further develop his voice. He's slowly letting go of the pimp-rap cliches and almost exclusively indulging his searching, conscious rapper side. "Rise And Shine" is a tribute to OutKast's "Git Up, Git Out," and it lives up to that song's affront to hood apathy. Return Of 4Eva's production is more OutKast than UGK this time around, with less focus on whether this stuff will sound good in a car and more on how it'll make a listener feel.

At times, the sound sneaks away from K.R.I.T.'s country-rap comfort zone entirely, moving toward a more nostalgic, throwback style, focusing on sample-based beats that have a kind of animal-brain emotional appeal to almost any rap nerd. "Dreamin" is based around a slightly sped-up soul song, and in the video, K.R.I.T. appears as a janitor; in another scene, he digs through records, positioning himself as a decidedly non-flashy, worker-bee rapper/producer. Though the Internet is responsible for his success, K.R.I.T. is a traditionalist at heart, and he's ignored the viral hype loop, using the immediacy of the web to drop fully-formed albums.

In 2008, Kristmas' song "Bama Gettin' Money" was remixed by Diplo and Benzi's for Fear & Loathing In Hunts Vegas, their hipster-friendly compilation of Huntsville, Alabama hip-hop. In 2009, Kristmas showed up on Rocket City, another Huntsville compilation curated by the blog Traps N Trunks. "Dopeman Girlfriend," Kristmas' song from Rocket City, is a hilarious storytelling rap, but he also slyly pulls back the curtain on the day-to-day life of drug dealing. See, Kristmas boasts that he's "fuckin' the dopeman's girlfriend" because the dealer's busy all day, every day trying to keep his money up. "He's always with his clique and they always in the trap / So I'm always at his house with his lady in my lap," jokes Kristmas, bringing a very Wire-like focus on dealing as an all-compassing hustle into an "I stole your girl" song.

Clever, corrective verses like that kept coming. On G-Side's "Rising Sun," Kristmas branded himself as the straight-and-narrow "W2 boy," whose "central tenet," as described by the blog Southern Hospitality, was "that it's better to be a rapper with a day job than one who sells drugs or gangbangs part-time." The rhetoric ramped up on "Y U Mad," a G-Side song from this year's The One...Cohesive, in which Kristmas lets out a downright Cosby-like verse that tells thugs and dope boys, "piss-poor excuses such a poverty don't bother me / You could've chosen college, [you] ain't have to choose a robbing spree."

Kristmas' W2 Boy was released in April via BandCamp, and it's like a bizarro Young Jeezy album: Big, hulking electronic beats about not dealing drugs. Other than his use of the Internet, Kristmas' career is old-fashioned: Using guest appearances to make a name for himself, and then, finally, dropping an album. Releasing music online isn't the same as bouncing around the country doing shows, but it updates the underground's sense that hip-hop success, of any sort, is gained through hard work and paid dues. Both of these guys have paid their dues.