Music has become all gimmick, fueled by celebrity gossip and social media bullshit. It's samey as hell and stagnant and lacks innovation.
Mumble rap is essentially just natural selection. Some random rapper started doing it, people liked it, and so it propagated. If people didn't like it, it would have died out quickly. You just aren't one of those people.
> It's samey as hell and stagnant and lacks innovation.
I've said the same thing about metal since the first time I heard it. Metal fans disagree. Who's right? Does it even matter?
But, something being selected for doesn’t imply that it isn’t a bad thing. Even if we assume that “how much the typical person likes it” or “how many people like to listen to it” or something along those lines is a good measure of goodness, those are not the only things involved in the selection pressure. Things like cost to produce, discoverability, etc. are all also things that influence the selection pressures. And if there are contributions to the pressures which aren’t entirely aligned with the direction of good, then it seems entirely possible that the selection could make something worse (as in, not as good, not as in, less successful)
Warning: lots of exercising 1st amendment in the above video.
If a genre is taken up through “natural selection,” that means a lot of people like it, and it is therefore good music to those people - regardless of what some critic might think.
You can also like conscious rappers calling for social change and still enjoy a club banger asking women to shake their butts. They aren't diametrically opposed.
And yet thats where it's at right now, with some exception.
Hiphop used to have diversity of sound.
Now, as far as popular rap goes, it's all homogenized.
Same beats. Same cadence. Same flow. Voices indistinguishableffrom each other.
This is how people used to talk about Hip Hop in the 90s. People familiar with Trap can easily distinguish between the different rappers and producers - just like people familiar with 90's Hip Hop could distinguish between Nas and Ghostface or DJ Premier and Pete Rock.
And, that's only Trap. There are still popular MC's and producers who operate outside of Trap.
This isn't true unless you're talking the bling Era of the late 90s.
Also, past criticisms existing doesn't invalidate new ones even if there's similarities in the complaint. So that's a side step.
Tribe, wu, west coast gfunk rappers, mobb deep, fu schnickens, onyx, bone thugs, cypress, busta, we're all wildly different. Even at the height of g-funk, I could have named 50 at least semi popular rappers who deviated from that style.
Now who deviates? Danny brown? He's like 40. RtJ? They're like 40 too. Kendrick tends to always be the modern exception to every hip hop criticism. So I consider him the exception that proves the rule.
>are still popular MC's and producers who operate outside of Trap.
And they're treated the same as Rhymesayers or DefJux rappers, Saul Williams or immortal tech were during the bling and Crunk eras. It's all "white" even if black, nerdy, back packing shit thats not considered part of the "culture". Thats the way most lyrical rappers are treated today. They're talked about like Atmosphere was in 2004.
So fuck the culture.
I would argue that they all sound the same when compared to any southern rappers that came after them. You keep referring to the bling and crunk era like they are sneers but I would argue that if New Yorkers had gotten their way and got to be the gate keepers of hip hop and you were only allowed to rap in a style like Wu Tang and rappers like Outkast, The Hot Boys, and just the dozens of ATL rappers were not allowed on the air ways that the art form would have gone the way of disco and died. Sure its cool when a song has a multilevel meaning and deep metaphors spread through out the song, but its not a necessity to make a good hip hop song.
My hot take is that if you can only appreciate NY State of Mind, I Got a Story To Tell, 1st of The Month, but can't appreciate Back That Azz Up, Crank Dat, and XO TOUR Llif3 then you don't actually appreciate hip-hop. Just a very narrow subset of it.
And then gatekept who's "really appreciates hip hop?"
Freaking lol
You lived in a different 90s than I did then.
>Now who deviates? Danny brown? He's like 40. RtJ? They're like 40 too. Kendrick tends to always be the modern exception to every hip hop criticism. So I consider him the exception that proves the rule.
Who deviates from what?
>And they're treated the same as Rhymesayers or DefJux rappers, Saul Williams or immortal tech were during the bling and Crunk eras. It's all "white" even if black, nerdy, back packing shit thats not considered part of the "culture". Thats the way most lyrical rappers are treated today. They're talked about like Atmosphere was in 2004.
Not my experience. During that time, and a little before it, you had Blackstar, Common, Dead Prez, and a bunch of other underground acts who were respected - to the point Jay Z name dropped Talib Kweli and Common in the early 2000s. Freddie Gibbs and Big Krit both operate primarily outside the scope of Trap, are very talented, and respected. I don't like J Cole, but he's another one who is liked and respected.
> It's samey as hell and stagnant
I don't follow rap, but these two claims seem contradictory. Is the first not evidence of evolution in the genre, if in a direction you don't like?
I have no idea about Spotify or mumble rap but that's how they might not contradict.
It is samey, because everybody does the same thing. You can’t really differentiate music by different performers anymore. Each song is the same.
There used to be a cost to producing music; you needed a studio, producer, physical copies of the samples you wanted to use (in case of most rap), etc. Now you can just boot your computer and use one of the many digital studios.
It is a blessing in some ways, but a curse in most I think. Quality is by no means the element by which (popular) music is judged. It is all about presentation, which somehow means the most deplorable people get the most praise.
Note: I am talking about what is mainstream and played on still high quality radio. I don’t listen to rap stations and luckily there are stations that have a good selection of older music and only play some of the new stuff. The new stuff there is already worse than music from the past though.
If you look at the rap and hip-hop scene however, the quality has plummeted even more. It is just one homogeneous soup of crappy, lazy music. In no way like the music of 2Pac, Notorious B.I.G and Outkast but still all the same as the other new crap.
We don't have a thousand years of portraiture of the elite because artists were just absolutely convinced that was the ultimate expression of the medium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OdmRtuQew
Admittedly they are now "older" :)
Older gens hated rap when I was a kid and I was thirsty to defend it with supported reasons
Kids today just say OK boomer and move on. Bc they have no defense .
Even Mozart and Bach made crap music on a bad day.
I think in our time we are very fortunate to have the ability to discover music so easily. Personally I never listen to mainstream music but there is a lot more to discover.