Article: Has hip hop taken a beatdown or is it just growing up?

With sales declining, popularity waning, and its authentic voice diluted, hip hop, the music of the urban culture for the past three decades, may be dying or dead, or so says rapper Nas.

The multiplatinum recording artist is perhaps the loudest voice in a growing chorus now calling for the genre's renewal, reinvention or possible destruction.

But, as he sees it, it may be too late.

"No one who knows rap, protects rap and loves it has the power to help," he told JET. "We don't have direct control at radio or the video channels. Those people who are in charge have always destroyed music, which right now is good. It's good they are messing it up ...

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