Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
I have always felt that there is a reason beat-based music (dance music, techno/edm, much of hip hop) does not hold up as well as riff-based music (blues, rock, folk) over the years of repeated listens.
To me it is that dance music ( and I am being very general here) is meant to be felt immediately, to make your body move. It takes very exceptional songcraft to make a dance song into something that gets better and better with each listen. Of course you can dance to anything, but I am referring to the quick way in which dance music seems dated and old as compared to riff-based musics.
I love listening to Young Thug, Future, Rich Homie Quan, Chedda, etc. but I also am not avoiding the fact that after 10-15 listens the magic that initially got me into it is gone. I feel that dance music (and hip hop, for the most part, iks dance music) is intended for a visceral experience, and must be simplified to suit it.
What do you guys think?
When I listen to many 10+ year old hip hop tracks it feels very inert and dead, no matter how amazing I found it upon first listen.
Do you think this is why so many young people have no interest in digging into the musical history of hip hop? Like, even the rappers now seem to have no connection emotionally to anything older than 6 years old.
just curious as to what you guys think about this.
|
This is a super good question, man, and one that I would love to talk about at length. Unfortunately duty calls and I've gotta jet, but I'll return to this later because I think a
lot of people feel the way you do about hip-hop.
Honestly, I don't feel that way. I still get chills from Illmatic, Wu-Tang Forever, Ready to Die, Midnight Marauders, Dr. Octagon, The Cold Vein, pretty much everything involving MF DOOM or Madlib, and all early Wu solo projects. I listen to Kanye more than any other artist and that's been the case for years now so I don't lose my feeling for a song after 10-15 listens. But I can understand how someone might with Future or Thug, because even when they're making decent music, it's not super interesting.
And I love dance/IDM/techno/house, and I actually think it holds up better than most guitar based music (not that I don't love riffs) if only because there are usually so many layers to it and new things to hear and feel, a it's appropriate for so many different times and moods. Hip-hop (the kind you're talking about) really doesn't have much universality to it. It's very of the moment. It's party music, or driving music, and not much else. But a lot of hip hop is just as layered and textured and beautiful as he electronic music (speaking broadly here) that holds my interest so well.
More later. Good talking points, Rob!