Rap is dead

A few weeks ago on Twitter there was a proliferation of tweets that could be categorised as ”Twitter should X”, and they were sparked by the rollout of the 280 character limit. Like all fundamental changes to a mainstream company’s core offering, it was met with positivity, negativity, and most amusingly, a slew of gentle and not-so-gentle advice.

This isn’t an extraordinary situation but, to me, it reaffirms the tendency for us to favour criticism over creation. We tell our followers that Twitter should do this, or that. What we don’t do is go out and do it ourselves. We blast a company for doing something unethical, but we don’t build our own, better vision of what a company should be. It reminds me of a verse from one of Kendrick Lamar’s songs. I can’t remember which—and I’m not even too confident it was from a Kendrick Lamar song, actually—but it goes something like this:

First, he highlights the people saying, “Rap is dead.”
Second, he tells them to pick up a mic or write a verse instead of complaining.

Sure, it’s our right to be vocal, to complain, to analyse and offer our thoughts. I just think it’d be better if we realised that our criticism is less of a damning statement than our attempt to build an alternative to the object of our fury. Because if something is so bad, and we know exactly how to fix it, why are we talking instead of doing?