Benny The Butcher Says Nerds Have Taken Over Hip-Hop Culture

Benny The Butcher doesn’t believe the streets matter much in contemporary hip-hop. Speaking during an Instagram Live session, the Buffalo-bred emcee bemoaned what he feels is street credibility being marginalized by “nerds” and “weirdos” who he feels run hip-hop. 

“Yo, y’all see the state the game is in when the streets don’t hold the culture or the game,” Benny said. “Now you got the weird Twitter nerds and the nerds and all these weird muthaf**kas got they hands on the culture.”

Benny added that the streets not being centered in hip-hop has been to the game’s detriment. Without delving into specifics, he says that the streets may have brought a lot of negativity, but things were better off nonetheless. 

“The voice of the streets don’t mean as much as it did when we was coming up,” he goes on to say. “It was a lot of cons to that, as well. I gotta say that. But you see what happens when the streets don’t control the game no more. It’s a lot of f**k n***a sh*t going on. And a lot of people are okay with it because they f**k n***as.”

On the music side of things, Questlove recently announced that Benny is collaborating with The Roots on their new album. 

The project will be the legendary Philly crew’s first album in over a decade. During an appearance on Score: The Podcast, Quest was asked if there were any “unexpected” collaborations on the album, which is titled End Game.

“I think we’ve worked with everyone,” he began, “The Benny The Butcher song from Griselda is still on there. Syd from The Internet—her song is still on there. Everybody and their mom has kinda been working with us, but I still don’t know what the final configuration is.”