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There's Now a Rap-Themed Trading Card Game

Let's get this out of the way first: there's a difference between rap, which is what rappers do, and hip-hop, which comprises the whole culture of rappers, DJs, b-boys, and graffiti artists. I bring this up because, while styles and trends are...

Let’s get this out of the way first: there’s a difference between rap, which is what rappers do, and hip-hop, which comprises the whole culture of rappers, DJs, b-boys, and graffiti artists. I bring this up because, while styles and trends are continually changing in each of those four pillars, hip-hop itself has been continually co-opted by brands and marketing firms looking to get a foot in the door of the young, hip market. The caricaturization got particularly bad in the mid-aughts — see Homies, Def Jam’s fighting games, wildstyle soda cans, and the like — but in recent years the trope has seemed to be superseded by the Apple-driven obsession with hipsters. I thought for awhile that the change has blessedly reduced the number of Skippy dancehall elephant abominations and given hip-hop the chance to do its own thing again.

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The Mountain Dew-Weezy collaboration aside, I’m realizing now that I was pretty far off. A new Kickstarter popped onto my radar recently that’s funding a turn-based card game that takes place in the hip-hop ‘universe.’ Legend of the Cipher: the Game of Hip Hop is designed to be an all-inclusive strategy game that puts you directly into the industry. It’s designed just like Magic, with power-ups and energy orbs and allies and all that jazz, just Krink-washed with a rap sheen. This is how Legend of Cipher describes itself:

LOC is a race to 100 Hype and 100 Cash. Hype and Cash are accrued through successful Venue performances or business Ventures. The success of Venues and Ventures is determined by die roll… or by rhymes. But beware! If you choose to spit bars, opponents can challenge your performance to hijack your rewards. Players build up Hype and Cash while defending their Rep. They must maintain at least 1 Rep, while trying to surpass 100 Hype and Cash, simultaneously, to become a Legend of the Cipher; one who has mastered both the art and the business of Hip Hop.

I shouldn’t hate too much; the game is well-presented and the LoC team says its pushing original artists and MCs through its card design and coming online portal. That’s cool, and the reviews from the board game world sound relatively positive, so I’m guessing the game is going to be at least somewhat entertaining.

But hip-hop is such a tactile culture, with its collective brain full of sticky, paint-covered fingers; the cool floors of warehouse b-boy battles; the dusty, cat-piss smell of old record shops; and the smoke-filled, beer-soaked heat of a packed cipher in some dude’s living room. Those are all my own memories, in fact, and it’s hard to reconcile those with a candy bar that’s been covered in MS Paint graf to make it stand out.

So even if LoC lets you build a crew and has a trippy spaceship for you to cruise around in (apparently it does), it’s hard to argue that the game is representative of hip-hop at all. I know it’s just a card game for fun, but there’s a fundamental difference between something like Magic, whose subject matter doesn’t exist outside the game, and LoC, which represents something that does. Hip-hop is more accessible than ever these days (for good and bad), which makes playing an industry-obsessed game, one that feels superficial enough to be a Puff Daddy biography, feel empty.

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