The Ringer: All Posts by Grant Rindner
2024-02-13T10:38:50-05:00
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2024-02-13T10:38:50-05:00
2024-02-13T10:38:50-05:00
Wait, Is Taylor Swift Actually a ~Good~ Poet?
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<p>As a title, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ winkingly plays into the idea of Taylor as a lyrical genius. But there’s a subset of academia that thinks she does deserve to be discussed like Shakespeare or Dickinson.</p> <p id="cZXl33">Taylor Swift is notorious for the hidden clues and subtle allusions peppered throughout her work—the kind of stuff that her fans obsessively analyze. But <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1l2_zss3k">she didn’t leave any ambiguity</a> when she announced the title of her upcoming album, <em>The Tortured Poets Department</em>, while accepting an award at this month’s Grammys. With those four words, Swift is nodding toward the growing discourse around her music as poetry—and the burgeoning academic subculture of Taylor Swift studies.</p>
<p id="8DHahu">“I made the joke ‘We’re going to need a bigger syllabus,’” says Elly McCausland, a professor of English literature at Belgium’s Ghent University who incorporates Swift’s writing into her courses and also runs the <a href="https://swifterature.com"><em>Swifterature</em></a> platform, which features painstaking analysis of “the increasingly literary quality of Swift’s songwriting” from McCausland and others. “I almost wonder if she’s kind of trolling or baiting people like me.”</p>
<p id="o9faJF">At the time I was writing this piece, Taylor academics were gathering in Melbourne, Australia, for the <a href="https://swiftposium2024.com">Swiftposium</a>, a three-day conference dedicated to parsing her discography in a manner usually reserved for capital-P poets. This subsect of academia, which has grown in parallel with the increasing literary respect for her writing, and, most crucially, the title of her upcoming 11th LP raise a question: <em>Is Taylor Swift a good poet?</em></p>
<aside id="lkK86R"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NFL Has Entered Its WAG Era","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2024/2/7/24064908/taylor-swift-super-bowl-nfl-wag-era-brittany-mahomes-kristin-juszczyk"},{"title":"Taylor Swift’s Imperial Phase Is Already Unprecedented. And It May Still Get Bigger. ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2024/2/5/24061480/taylor-swift-new-album-tortured-poets-department-grammys-winner-super-bowl-imperial-phase"},{"title":"Taylor Swift Played Her Cards Better Than We Could Have Imagined","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2023/11/7/23950039/taylor-swift-1989-taylors-versions-rerecorded-albums-eras-tour"}]}'></div></aside><p id="Ccgn63">Northeastern University postdoctoral teaching associate Catherine Fairfield says she firmly views Taylor as “under the big umbrella of poetics,” meaning that she employs poetry techniques and aesthetics in her writing. “Her play with language in vocabulary, her awareness of genre, and not just the genre of the music … different things like romance, like gothic stories, biography, confessional, and all of this is really intentional language play, narrative play, and structure play,” Fairfield explains.</p>
<p id="eOFM6X">Ahead of the Swift album most likely to be put under the poetry microscope, <em>The Ringer </em>spoke with four academics, three of whom have taught Taylor-centric courses, about the quality of Swift as a poet, which writers can be most closely linked to her lyrics, and what we might see on the <em>Tortured Poets Department</em> syllabus. (Unfortunately, we do not have any insight to provide in the ongoing <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/movies/argylle-author-elly-conway-taylor-swift-explained-rcna134373">Taylor Swift <em>Argylle </em>authorship conspiracy</a>.)</p>
<h4 id="6Bexxa">What school of poetry feels most connected to Taylor?</h4>
<p id="aEuTMB">In the days following her album announcement, <a href="https://twitter.com/swiftieee97/status/1754346054533951797?s=46">a graphic</a> showing the theoretical roster of the Tortured Poets Department circulated widely in the Swiftieverse. Along with Swift and Emily Dickinson—whom the musician herself has cited as a major influence for <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jV7kMz4eWhrbXLluex553">her “Quill Pen” song catalog</a>—the “members” include William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and John Keats, <a href="https://x.com/swiftieee97/status/1754520217521442974?s=20">with Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, and William Wordsworth as late additions</a>.</p>
<p id="kOeKqc">The academics I spoke to all saw certain poets as more apt than others—most notably Dickinson and Plath, though University of Melbourne lecturer Faichney and McCausland highlighted Shakespeare and Wordsworth, respectively, in part because the level of popularity they had in their active careers was rarely enjoyed by their peers. </p>
<p id="MVmkZ9">“We have this idea of Shakespeare as being this incredibly highbrow high art, but it’s not. And if you actually look at Shakespeare, there’s crude jokes in there. He talks about sex a lot. He’s making political digs. He’s very much of the time,” says Faichney.</p>
<p id="LLbJT6">Faichney also stresses another connection between Swift and Shakespeare: They are/were their own cottage industries unto themselves. A move like rerecording her old albums is savvy from the standpoint of taking back authorship after the sale of her early masters, but it’s also preposterously lucrative for Taylor. “[Shakespeare] was also a really <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/was-shakespeare-a-businessman-4039246">strategic businessman</a>. … There’s a lot of similarities when you think about Taylor Swift and the way that she has her business machine that runs around her as well. It is sort of creating this art, and it is wildly popular.”</p>
<p id="yXa1LK">McCausland says Wordsworth is the best analogy for Swift on the list, though she acknowledges that he isn’t what you’d consider a “tortured poet” like some of the other writers. “He was very autobiographical, but he was also aware of how people saw him and his new style of poetry. And he was very keen to kind of justify himself. … We can identify some of that in this very kind of meta, self-referential way that Taylor engages with her fans.”</p>
<p id="AQLPk0">The academics see the obvious parallels with Romantic poetry of the 1800s, but they also connect her work to early 2010s Tumblr and the hugely popular “Instapoetry” scene of poems posted directly on the photo-sharing platform. A common criticism of Taylor is that she’s stuck in <a href="https://twitter.com/tenseokmin/status/1754790848456241499">2014</a>, and her connection to this side of internet culture is some of the most compelling evidence.</p>
<p id="1mzC6b">Her penchant for posting handwritten lyrics and notes as part of her promotional cycles clearly links her work to social media–based writing. This internet style—best encapsulated by <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-didnt-like-drama-and-i-was-fucking-shakespeare">a Ginnie Bale couplet</a> that has become a shorthand meme for this sort of poetry—is often derided by critics, but there’s no denying its potential as a gateway to more classically celebrated work.</p>
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<p id="fgGEZi"><br>Faichney acknowledges that Instapoetry is often considered “lowbrow,” but its success in terms of getting eyes on an esoteric medium is undeniable. (And you can look to the <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/profile-rupi-kaur-author-of-milk-and-honey.html">widely circulated fact that Rupi Kaur has outsold Homer</a> as evidence of that.) Beyond Swift’s literal forays into the world of Instapoetry, it’s easy to see the similarities between how that work is critically derided and how a perennial chart-topper like Swift is perceived, though there has been a reappraisal of many of her albums. (Even <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/taylor-swift-red/"><em>Pitchfork</em></a> <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/taylor-swift-speak-now/">came</a> <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/taylor-swift-fearless/">around</a>.) The academics also emphasized that there is more poetic value to mine from her work than simple comparisons to social media writers.</p>
<p id="XLw1xQ">“What I’ve been exploring, especially in the class that I just taught that’s a little bit more left field, is actually feminist confessional poetry,” says Fairfield, citing Plath, Adrienne Rich, and one social media sensation in the lightning rod Rupi Kaur. (Faichney added Nikita Gill and Tyler Knott Gregson as examples of more social media–centric poets.)</p>
<p id="Zw5GRV">That confessionalism comes with an added layer for a celebrity of Swift’s magnitude; her love life is, for better or worse, a perpetual subject of public fascination. (That she’s dating a football star whose <a href="https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/travis-kelce-the-warm-up/pl.ee74260ac0b74e5aacc410d793951d87">Apple Music warm-up playlist</a> contains both Travis Scott and the Chainsmokers adds a fun artsy-girl-dating-the-jock wrinkle.) For Shirley Lau Wong, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who does not teach a Taylor course, the generally high level of Taylor knowledge makes it easy for students to connect with her work, though it does add a layer of complexity to analyzing her lyrics (and, presumably, writing it).</p>
<p id="LTI2b0">“‘All Too Well’ is clearly about Jake Gyllenhaal—we all know this, we all talk about it, etc.,” says Wong. “So there’s a way in which these songs are so inextricably linked to her life. You can’t really detach her from these songs. And so this way, her songs, a lot of them are so deeply personal, but not private.” </p>
<h4 id="kQ3KBZ">Which “era” is the most poetically rich?</h4>
<p id="NbilKN">Swifties, both in academia and elsewhere, have been mining deep poetic meaning from her songs since she was a teenager, but the broader music-listening public really seemed to view her differently starting with 2020’s dual releases of <em>Folklore </em>and <em>Evermore.</em> (Projects that played into another myth of tortured artistry: <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/7/28/21344659/taylor-swift-bon-iver-exile-folklore-isolation-album">the isolation album</a>.)<em> </em></p>
<p id="wRcq6h">Wong references a quote from English philosopher John Stuart Mill on the definition of poetry as a medium: “Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself, in moments of solitude.” Save for the albums she made mid–global lockdown, Taylor hasn’t had true privacy since roughly 2008, but her best writing feels singular and diaristic, even if it’s hard to believe she was going to the New York City dive bars she sang about on “Delicate.”</p>
<p id="02Rddn">Even though <em>Folklore </em>and <em>Evermore </em>come up most frequently, Fairfield stresses the elegance of <em>Midnights</em>,<em> </em>proving that poetry is in the eyes (or ears) of the listener. Fairfield talks about the poetic depth of some of her most recent releases,<em> </em>even going on an impassioned digression about the lines “I am standing in a 1950s gymnasium / And I can still see you now” on “Suburban Legends” and “Slow motion, love potion / jumping off things in the ocean / I broke his heart / He was nice / He was sunshine / I was midnight rain” on “Midnight Rain.”</p>
<p id="oIiyZw">Fairfield highlights a particularly rich phrase from that song, when Swift says, “My boy was a montage.” Faichney says her students have been enamored of “Vigilante Shit” and its evocative opening bar: “Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man.” But she also highlights the importance of Swift’s moments of more fantastical songwriting, like the retributive murder odyssey “No Body, No Crime” on <em>Evermore</em>.</p>
<p id="V29tgL">With no disrespect to the Dickinsons and Poes of the literary world, Taylor Swift is obviously famous at a level that we’re not used to seeing from people in the poetry sphere. (Poe, presumably, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2024/2/5/24061480/taylor-swift-new-album-tortured-poets-department-grammys-winner-super-bowl-imperial-phase">never had an imperial phase</a>.) That has its upsides—teachers like Wong are able to use “All Too Well” as an entry point into poetic writing for their students—but it also means that people are bringing her real life and well-publicized dating history to the analysis of every lyric.</p>
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<p id="7Mq3B6"><br>That kind of limiting perspective is one many artists deal with—we’ve seen it deployed to damaging, possibly free-speech-violating effect in hip-hop, where rappers have their lyrics <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-rules-rap-lyrics-conditionally-evidence-young-thug/story?id=104760646">used against them</a> in legal proceedings. For someone like Taylor, the effect isn’t nearly as harmful, but it can get in the way of her more fanciful, poetic writing and use of fictitious narratives on songs like <em>Folklore</em>’s<em> </em>“Betty” or <em>Evermore</em>’s<em> </em>“Tolerate It,” which draws inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s <em>Rebecca.</em></p>
<p id="7nI5wH">“A lot of the time, her music is read [as] very literal, and of course it’s not always literal,” Faichney explains. “She needs to be able to kill herself as the author and actually just be able to write about these scenes without it being a confession or being tied to her autobiography.”</p>
<p id="5r1vaB">McCausland has published the<em> </em>English Literature (Taylor’s Version) series on Swift’s work to explore different themes, including “<a href="https://swifterature.com/2024/01/08/english-literature-taylors-version-seminar-8/">Haters Gonna Hate: The Unlikeable Protagonist”</a> and <a href="https://swifterature.com/2023/10/23/english-literature-taylors-version-seminar-3/">“Narrative, Control and Authorship.”</a> The exploration of <a href="https://swifterature.com/2023/11/30/english-literature-taylors-version-seminar-6/">Swift’s relationship to nature</a> is particularly heavy on poetic allusions, citing songs like “The Lakes,” “Willow,” and “Ivy” but also records from before the narrative shift in her music (“New Romantics” and “Out of the Woods,” specifically).</p>
<p id="6ZrB1t">Ultimately, the most conventionally poetic era of Taylor’s catalog is probably <em>Folklore </em>and <em>Evermore</em>,<em> </em>but it’s important not to assume something is “serious poetry” just because it’s about flannel-clad walks in the woods. The literary value of <em>Midnights </em>and even <em>Reputation </em>proves as much. “I also use quite a lot of songs off <em>Reputation</em>, for example, which isn’t a typical literary album, but we look at [it] a lot in my course on feminism,” says McCausland. </p>
<h4 id="CPlovH">So what will the <em>Tortured Poets Department </em>curriculum look like?</h4>
<p id="ruzaaZ">In the conventional sense, Taylor Swift doesn’t have a lot to prove to the world right now. She’s the only artist to have won Album of the Year at the Grammys four times, she’s reached pop culture omnipresence, and she’s widely respected for her song-crafting abilities. (Hell, even her <em>boyfriend</em> just got his third Super Bowl ring.) She went through her villainous arc and explored the backlash on <em>Reputation</em>. There are some folks out there anticipating negative reception purely as a response to Swift fatigue—between the Grammy wins, the Eras tour and film, the continued chart domination of songs like “Cruel Summer,” and the likelihood of another “Taylor’s Version” album coming in the near future, we’ve never had more Taylor in our lives. To quote Sarah Silverman in the movie <em>Popstar</em>,<em> </em>Taylor Swift “is everywhere, like oxygen or gravity or clinical depression.” (The latter of those, of course, is responsible for inspiring its fair share of poetry—good and bad.)</p>
<p id="dWPU9Z">The poetry academics I spoke to were hesitant to make their predictions about <em>Tortured Poets</em> <em>too </em>explicit, but the title, the nature of the early promotional material, and this broader phase of Swift’s career lead them to speculate that she will be embracing the poet angle in a more overt way than ever before.</p>
<p id="D4fitk">“With the new album, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if we don’t see perhaps a volume of poetry coming from Taylor Swift, similar to Jewel or Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine or Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen,” says Faichney.</p>
<p id="VnIR04">Fairfield, who stressed the poetic value of <em>Midnights </em>even though it sounds more conventionally poppy, is curious to see whether she continues the kind of evocative, poetic writing she had on her 2022 LP. “I’m really excited to see what happens with <em>The</em> <em>Tortured Poets Department </em>and if we’re going to go in the same kind of direction with the songwriting.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="6s14ss">However the album turns out, Taylor Swift has one thing over the Dickinsons and Wordsworths: They never had a song called “Fortnight” with Post Malone.</p>
<p id="Bf3VRI"><a href="http://grantrindner.com/"><em>Grant Rindner</em></a><em> is a culture writer who has contributed to </em>GQ, Rolling Stone, i-D<em>, and other outlets.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/music/2024/2/13/24071686/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-lyrics-poetry-studies
Grant Rindner
2022-06-30T06:30:00-04:00
2022-06-30T06:30:00-04:00
How Dance and Club Music Is Reacting to Drake and Beyoncé
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<p>‘Honestly, Nevermind’ and “Break My Soul” find two of pop’s biggest artists moving in new directions. Are the producers and DJs in those scenes viewing that as an opportunity or an appropriation of their music?</p> <p id="qjV8yn">In the wee hours of Friday, June 17, 31-year-old New Jersey producer R3LL made a track that he’s confident set a world record. Just two hours after Drake released <em>Honestly, Nevermind</em>,<em> </em>his endearingly low-key <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2022/6/20/23175004/drake-honestly-nevermind-dance-album-review-jersey-club-house">foray into crying-in-the-club music</a>,<a href="https://soundcloud.com/itsr3llofficial/sticky-r3ll-remix"> R3LL uploaded his unofficial remix</a> to one of the album’s standout songs. On his flip of “Sticky”—almost assuredly the first remix of an <em>Honestly, Nevermind</em> track—R3LL makes the Toronto superstar’s vocals ricochet like a hard serve on a squash court, while wringing out the song’s water-logged synths to make them feel more euphoric. Chatter on social media about Drake’s dance album began at 12:01 a.m. ET, with much of it centered on his decision to dabble in the distinct club sounds of Baltimore and New Jersey. But while some of his peers expressed frustration that Drake didn’t appear to have worked with anyone directly from those scenes, R3LL was focused on spinning the situation into a positive. “I’m not gonna be on the internet bashing and saying, ‘Oh, you should’ve picked me [to work with]’ or anything like that. I’m up, I only listened to these two tracks, I’ma flip it,” R3LL says. “So I flipped it, two hours after it drops.”</p>
<p id="Xq4g0i">After several years when downtempo, sullen pop music and bruising, 808-heavy trap tunes were the haute musical styles, it seems that the pendulum is beginning to swing toward the joyful; the aural equivalent of swapping your closet full of grays and blacks for primary colors. It’s not that the world is in a meaningfully better place to the point where celebration is warranted, but some of pop’s biggest trendsetters seem to have gotten tired of wallowing—or at least they want to shake something while they do it. Released three days after Drake’s album, Beyoncé’s defiant “Break My Soul” celebrated resilience and nodded to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/">the oft-discussed Great Resignation</a> with lyrics about leaving the 9-to-5 grind behind. Using a buoyant sample of Robin S.’s ’90s house classic “Show Me Love,” the single also showcases the vocals of Big Freedia, today’s best-known rapper on the New Orleans bounce scene, itself a progenitor of Jersey club.</p>
<p id="BqIUif">Following solid commercial returns but middling critical responses for 2020’s <em>Dark Lane Demo Tapes </em>and 2021’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/9/6/22659327/drake-certified-lover-boy-review-life-of-the-party">verging-on-self-parody <em>Certified Lover Boy</em></a><em>, </em>Drake sought to shake things up with his surprise seventh studio album. On “Falling Back” and “A Keeper,” he works with German electronic producers Rampa and &ME to concoct something that is character-consistent in its murkiness, but features pumping four-on-the-floor drums. It’s a change of pace from the soggy percussion that plagued his last few projects. But the tracks that have elicited the strongest responses are the ones that invoke the sounds of Baltimore and Jersey (“Currents,” “Sticky”) and house (“Massive,” “Calling My Name”). Beyoncé didn’t exactly retreat from the spotlight, but her <em>The Lion King: The Gift </em>album and the corresponding <em>Black Is King </em>film were more focused on boosting the visibility of various African artists than serving as a true solo showcase. Embracing her inner house music diva is a perfect way to step back into her superstardom while establishing that <em>Act I: Renaissance </em>will differ from the diverse, but darker palette of <em>Lemonade.</em> </p>
<p id="FDXf8J">Jersey club staple DJ Jayhood <a href="https://twitter.com/Djjayhood973/status/1537665485252214787?s=20&t=tcejtE2anKJEI6yv4uMVKQ">expressed his misgivings</a> about Drake’s production on Twitter an hour after the LP’s release. The hallmark elements of Jersey club—once known as Brick City club back when it was largely contained to Newark—include finely diced staccato samples like the squeaks of Trillville’s “Some Cut,” rapid-fire bass drum hits, and a tempo between 130 and 140 beats per minute. Baltimore club typically operates at a slightly slower pace (roughly 125-130 bpm), and traditionally uses short vocal chops and horn blasts, as well as a distinct kick drum pattern that puts the song in hyperspeed. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkabvb/you-think-you-know-but-you-have-no-idea-the-difference-between-baltimore-philly-and-jersey-club?utm_source=reddit.com">As Adam Schwarz wrote in <em>Vice</em></a>, “Jersey club smooths out Baltimore club’s rough edges. Where Baltimore club is rugged, raw, and violent, Jersey club is sexy and smooth.”</p>
<p id="rJbctC">Jayhood says he immediately noticed the blend of club styles on the Drake record because of its “soft sub bass pattern” (Jersey) and distinct hi-hats (Baltimore). The sonic redirect made him quickly recall “To the Max,” Drake’s 2017 DJ Khaled collab that featured what <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2017/06/05/dj-khaled-drakes-to-the-max-t2-sample">the Jersey producer said</a> were clearly derivative sample chops based off his own remix of T2’s “Heartbroken.” “You can tell that it was more so imitated as opposed to getting it from the actual source, because if he would’ve gotten it from someone from Baltimore or Jersey, you would hear the full-on sound the way it was supposed to sound,” Jayhood says.</p>
<p id="P5bJfx">On <em>Honestly, Nevermind</em>,<em> </em>the club and house influences are largely credited to Gordo, the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/carnage-gordo-new-project-interview-1235070659/">former trap EDM producer Carnage</a> who grew up outside Baltimore and <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/drake-honestly-nevermind-gordo-club-music-influences">was influenced by the city’s club music</a>, and South African DJ Black Coffee. “There’s always been this weird thing in the dance world where the majority of DJs are white, but we all know that house music back in the day in Chicago and Detroit comes from the Black community and gay community,” he told <em>British GQ</em> last week<em>. </em>(Drake’s album is also indebted to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/amapiano-genre-house-south-africa-1191523/">amapiano</a>, a jazzy South African scene that itself was partially inspired by New York house music.)</p>
<p id="8UQePj">Nobody expected Drake to fully drift onto the dance floor, despite his <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7y6c07pgjZvtHI9kuMVqk1">earlier</a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/05FOcj5Cygu51XbAmlJd2k">flirtations</a> with the genre, but many of the artists interviewed for this piece had a sense dance music was due for a mainstream moment following its recent groundswell of popularity on TikTok. It had also begun trickling into mainstream hip-hop and R&B some years ago through the output of artists like Ciara (“Level Up“), M.I.A. (Baltimore staple Blaqstarr worked on her breakthrough album <em>Kala</em>), and Twista (“Give It Up,” which <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2007/05/21/pharrell-eats-baltimore">producer Pharrell said</a> was inspired by Baltimore and Miami house music). Most recently, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s ubiquitous smash “WAP” flipped Baltimore club staple Frank Ski’s 1993 record “Whores in This House.” Beyond those high-wattage names, smaller artists like <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/leikeli47-shape-up/">Leikeli47</a> and <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kilo-kish-american-gurl/">Kilo Kish</a> explored club music on vivid, experimental records that critics praised, proving that the renaissance isn’t just for the top of the marquee.</p>
<p id="aLPl86">“It’s always been the comeback type of genre,” UNIIQU3, a festival favorite and progressive artist/DJ from Jersey, says of house and club music. </p>
<p id="phPvSp">Baltimore stalwarts TT the Artist and Mighty Mark are both quick to point out that this isn’t the first time Baltimore club music has been embraced by mainstream artists, citing DJ Class’s 2009 single “I’m the Shit,” which featured Kanye West and Lil Jon on official remixes, or Diddy’s 2006 track “Get Off” getting an official remix from Baltimore’s DJ Booman. But those moments didn’t spur sustained interest and investment in club music, something that artists like TT are working to change this time around. In 2020, TT directed <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81417137"><em>Dark City Beneath the Beat</em></a><em>, </em>a documentary about club music in Baltimore that received rave reviews from <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/dark-city-beneath-the-beat-film-review-1234621104/"><em>Variety</em></a><em> </em>and <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/dark-city-beneath-the-beat-review-sxsw-1202218984/"><em>IndieWire</em></a><em>, </em>in addition to a Netflix release. “The problem that we continuously have is that people use the sound, but do not bring the resources back to our cities, and that’s Jersey and Baltimore,” TT explains.</p>
<p id="mOfRfN">Channel Tres’s unique blend of house music and hip-hop has earned him widespread critical acclaim and the honor of being the first person to ever make <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/tyler-the-creator-taps-channel-tres-for-first-official-remix-of-one-of-his-songs-listen/">an official Tyler, the Creator remix</a>. He says he’s seen an uptick in interest in house based on who wants to get in the studio with him. (Recently, that’s included Tinashe, Mura Masa, Tove Lo, and many others.) “I just knew. I live in L.A., so I’m around the industry a lot and I get calls to go do sessions,” Channel says. “Music changes and morphs every few years, naturally by life in general, people are gonna want to move towards something new. Especially when we’ve been trapped out for years, and that went overboard.” </p>
<p id="iuv6h6">No doubt some music fans are already aware that house and hip-hop have been linked for decades. House music originated from prominent Black DJs such as Frankie Knuckles in Chicago, who carefully manipulated the era’s disco and R&B records into something rhythmically hypnotizing. Knuckles spun at the Warehouse, a venue in the city that was so synonymous with house music <a href="https://www.musicorigins.org/item/the-warehouse-the-place-where-house-music-got-its-name/">it’s literally where the name originated</a>. Some years later, the music spread to nearby Detroit and moved more toward techno thanks to musicians like Juan Atkins, who relied less on vocal samples and more on textured analog synths and a more futuristic aesthetic. All of this was happening throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s, with hip-hop in its infancy and seminal songs like Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” which itself samples German electronic group Kraftwerk, beginning to reach the <em>Billboard </em>charts<em>.</em> The music eventually spread southward, leading to New Orleans bounce and Miami bass, which influenced vibrant hip-hop cultures in their respective cities (think Hot Boy$ and 2 Live Crew).</p>
<p id="zy47zs">The late ’80s and ’90s proved to be a booming era for the genre, as artists like Madonna and Janet Jackson brought house music to the mainstream in their own distinct ways, often playing the diva role. (Though Madonna has been accused of <a href="http://them.us/story/ballroom-culture-rupaul-madonna-paris-is-burning#:~:text=March%201990%3A%20Madonna's%20%E2%80%9CVogue%E2%80%9D&text=Madonna%20was%20and%20has%20since,of%20queer%20people%20of%20color.">cultural appropriation for her approach</a>.) In the early 1990s, amid a pop-house boom that saw hugely popular songs from CeCe Peniston and Crystal Waters, Robin S. scored a top-five hit with “Show Me Love,” a bombastic, self-affirming ode to real romance that is sampled heavily on “Break My Soul.” Toward the turn of the millennium, European artists like Daft Punk established an international foothold by blending house, funk, and disco. In the 2000s and 2010s, electronic music became a global force via EDM culture, dominating mainstream pop radio through songs like Calvin Harris’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGghkjpNCQ8">“Feel So Close”</a> and Alesso’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7SouU3ECpU">Heroes (We Could Be),”</a> while riding the spread of streaming, too. During this period, it felt increasingly separated from its Black American roots as the likes of David Guetta and Avicii became bestselling solo artists. Though Black vocalists like Rihanna and Flo Rida featured on some of the era’s quintessential hits, the instrumentals were clearly more European in origin.</p>
<p id="RJ5Erq">To Zack Sekoff, the packaging of that brand of high-sheen, NBA TV timeout dance music created a sense of separation between electronic music and hip-hop and R&B. “I think it’s this artificial divide that was produced primarily by maybe the rebranding of club music as EDM, which is a marketing term that I don’t think really means much to practitioners,” says Sekoff, who produced much of <em>Big Fish Theory, </em>Vince Staples’s 2017 dalliance with dance music that <a href="https://twitter.com/idkucarter/status/1539979124646694918?s=20&t=HUfCJAUwrmTuZFNn1cJaQA">has been</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jazzraptwink/status/1539375478892638210?s=20&t=HUfCJAUwrmTuZFNn1cJaQA">referenced</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DragonChaseJav/status/1539679770132320256?s=20&t=HUfCJAUwrmTuZFNn1cJaQA">widely</a> since <em>Honestly, Nevermind </em>was released. </p>
<p id="KuPK8D">Several of the artists interviewed for this piece emphasized that they don’t feel a sense of pressure to maximize this moment of mainstream recognition, offering quotes about the years—in some cases decades—of legwork they’ve put in and how they needn’t overreact to this moment. But a few were more candid about striking while the iron is hot. Mighty Mark is pushing up the release date for one of his singles by a few weeks, meaning it’s now nestled between Drake’s mid-June drop and Beyoncé’s planned July 29 release of her new album. He also says he’s considering releasing something more “urban” to capitalize on the Drake audience, since he’s primarily been focused on “dropping R&B-style club music.” Mark is also eager to see whether members of Baltimore’s burgeoning street rap scene will express an interest in dabbling in the city’s other prospering subgenre. He notes that many of the younger artists likely came of age following the death of club music luminary K-Swift in 2008, which coincided with some prominent clubs closing down. R3LL, meanwhile, has been working relentlessly to create a steady stream of new tunes that will keep curious new listeners sated.</p>
<p id="4snJtw">“I’ve already got songs. We’ve gotta get ready, we’ve gotta cook up,” says R3LL. “I’ve got another single out next week or the next few weeks. That way I’m able to stay on top of what I’m currently doing and it’s just fueling me.”</p>
<p id="CQNaBI">UNIIQU3, TT the Artist, and DJ Sliink also have their own sample packs, filled with chattering hi-hat progressions and pre-chopped vocal loops that can serve as the neural tissue for new records by bedroom producers (and professionals) interested in experimenting with club music. “It’s royalty-free, so anybody could download that and get their Jersey club producing on, but I still get paid,” UNIIQU3 says. Channel Tres is currently focused on his eagerly awaited debut album, but says he potentially foresees some of the MCs he works with being more keen to try out a house beat than they had been in the past. “Maybe people will be more receptive, but I never had a problem with people being really receptive,” says Channel Tres. “Maybe before, some years back, when I would be in a session with a rapper. I know how to make the type of beats they want, but then I’d try to sneak in a little dance beat to see if they would get on it. They’d say no all the time, but maybe now people’s ears will be more receptive.”</p>
<p id="sx6wfv">UNIIQU3 noted that elements of Jersey club became hugely popular with a crop of European producers a few years ago, including Lido and Cashmere Cat, both former Ariana Grande collaborators. Cashmere Cat would go on to <a href="https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/5677">share stages</a> with UNIIQU3, but she said that some people incorrectly assumed that the subgenre had roots in Europe and blossomed in the States, instead of the other way around. (Ironic, given that the word <em>Jersey</em> is in the genre’s name.)</p>
<p id="0mdfVf">Like many dance music subgenres, much of what happens in the club space relies on remixes and samples that would be difficult (not to mention prohibitively costly) for independent artists to clear. That means that a lot of seminal club music exists in places like SoundCloud and YouTube, not on the paid streaming services where artists like Drake and Beyoncé thrive. In trying to capitalize on the dance music interest drummed up by these high-profile acts, it helps to have a significant amount of your music readily available on the same platforms where casual fans are listening to <em>Honestly, Nevermind </em>and <em>Renaissance.</em> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXajwQAxzrT4Q">Spotify’s Jersey Club Heat playlist</a> has been freshly updated in the last week and a half, featuring Drake’s “Sticky” alongside tracks by UNIIQU3, Cookiee Kawaii, and R3LL.</p>
<p id="F81McZ">Club artists like TT, Mark, and UNIIQU3 have made a pointed effort to release original songs that can reach spaces that other forms of club music cannot. TT and Mark had <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CYB_U2LgaUx/">several tracks</a> featured in Issa Rae’s hit show <em>Insecure. </em>In 2018, TT and UNIIQU3 collaborated on <em>Club Queens, </em>a 22-minute romp from the Mid-Atlantic through the Northeast Corridor. UNIIQU3 has also done several official remixes for artists like IV Jay and Baby Tate. In 2021, the prolific trio earned a gold record after their song “Off the Chain,” performed by TT and UNIIQU3, produced by Mark, was sampled for Chlöe’s hit “Have Mercy.”</p>
<p id="7kyxlI">Though the artists who were interviewed for this piece had mixed feelings about what Drake did—most are cold on “Currents,” but warmer on “Sticky”—they all stress the importance of maximizing this period of intense attention instead of dwelling on the fact that staples of the club scene weren’t cut in directly on the Drake records. (It’s distinctly possible that more regional house and club artists will appear on Beyoncé’s <em>Renaissance</em>, although “Break My Soul” was produced by the artist, Tricky Stewart, and The-Dream.) “I think the problem when these things happen is the local scene gets so frustrated to the point where they don’t see it as an opportunity. I always see these things as opportunities,” TT says.</p>
<p id="Nn2CVk">TT and UNIIQU3 note that while the voices and talents of women are often essential to the success of club music, they rarely get their due. Drake’s “Currents” features an uncredited sample of another Baltimore institution, Rye Rye, who has publicly <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bs-fe-rye-rye%E2%80%9420220622-vrjbjmvfmzhrpga6yzlu4qio6m-story.html">stated her desire to be officially cited on the song</a>. And having real leverage benefits everyone in the scene. R3LL, who has been making club music for half of his life, says that this mainstream renaissance gives him ammo to take into meetings with industry decision-makers.</p>
<p id="dCTH87">“When I’m having conversations with labels [and] I’m pitching my particular music and catalog, I can reference, ‘Yo, Drake did it,’” R3LL says. “This is the space that I’ve been pushing for over 10 years, so it was reassuring that I don’t have to bend what I’m doing and try to cater to the masses when now things are coming full circle and people are catching up.”</p>
<p id="v7vkCv">There are levels of etiquette, though. 2000s rap star Hurricane Chris is in the midst of something of a career resurgence after Jersey producer Kia Bhn’s remix of his hit “A Bay Bay,” which paired it with Toni! Tony! Toné!’s “Anniversary,” became a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzbaqxQO2s">viral TikTok hit</a>. But it has caused controversy in the club music scene because Chris neglected to include Bhn in the video for his new track “My Bay,” which was clearly meant to capitalize on Bhn’s remix. (<a href="https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/hurricane-chris-defends-himself-against-artist-who-sampled-his-hit-she-never-involved-me-news.153398.html">Chris shot back that <em>she </em>didn’t involve <em>him,</em></a><strong> </strong>though that argument sort of misses the whole point of viral remix culture, where exciting unheralded talents can make a name for themselves and gain attention by putting an imaginative spin on an already popular song.)</p>
<p id="ViUMtV">Anyone who has paid attention to pop music over the last few years will likely remember <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/12/23/22196518/dance-music-quarantine-dua-lipa-jessie-ware">2020’s mini-disco renaissance</a>, when artists like Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, and Justin Timberlake scored huge hits embracing a slick, glossy sound. But there’s a big difference between the widespread resurgence of a nostalgic sound and A-listers dabbling in prosperous regional scenes that real artists are working to build up every day. And Drake has a longstanding history of playing genre hopscotch, including dabbling in Afrobeat (and <a href="https://www.capitalxtra.com/artists/drake/news/did-drake-popularise-afrobeats-music-wizkid/">catching flak</a> for claiming he popularized the sound globally). He’s also played around with New Orleans bounce, which served as key inspiration on “Nice for What.” The breezy 2018 hit incorporated elements of The Showboys’ “Drag Rap” (essentially the starter dough of bounce music). “Nice for What” earned Drake praise for featuring Big Freedia, New Orleans producer BlaqNmilD, and the late Louisiana legend 5th Ward Weebie. That sort of representation, and acknowledgment, is exactly the kind of thing that R3LL and today’s house and club artists are hoping for at this moment.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="D9gxms">“Don’t turn a blind eye to us, because now you’ve got the biggest artist in the world on our shit. Just don’t turn that blind eye. That’s my beef. If I see that, I would truly be hurt,” R3LL says.</p>
<p id="PBzWnj"><a href="http://grantrindner.com/"><em>Grant Rindner</em></a><em> is a culture writer who has contributed to </em>GQ, Rolling Stone, i-D<em>, and other outlets.</em></p>
<aside id="LbzU1b"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/music/2022/6/30/23188882/beyonce-drake-house-jersey-baltimore-club
Grant Rindner
2021-12-16T08:35:44-05:00
2021-12-16T08:35:44-05:00
The Hidden Rise and Very Public Fall of SoundCloud Rap
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<p>One of the most popular movements in rap last decade traces its roots more to the internet than any specific region. How did a bunch of unpolished songs uploaded to a streaming platform lead to the mainstream rise of artists like Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion?</p> <p id="UMvceu"><em>Editor’s note: On Thursday, Ringer Films will debut </em>Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss<em>, its sixth and final installment of the first volume of the Music Box series. To mark the occasion, we’ve ranked the </em><a href="https://rap2010s.theringer.com/?_ga=2.201707089.1100029656.1639379380-1294488834.1591374135"><em>top 100 rap songs of the 2010s</em></a><em> and are looking back at a few of the movements that defined the genre in the decade, including the SoundCloud rap scene that birthed Juice as an artist. Check HBO’s listings or HBO Max to watch the documentary.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Jysul7">“It’s something you can find comfort in. It’s very comforting, but discomforting at the same time.”</p>
<p id="788fZj">This description, put forth by XXXTentacion about his own music on the 2018 album <em>?</em> doubles as a succinct explanation of SoundCloud rap, the movement of maverick artists that roughly begins with some Three 6 Mafia–inspired occult rap from Florida and later broke through the mainstream on the backs of artists like XXX and Juice WRLD. It’s music that became synonymous with the streaming platform it originated from, ushering in an era of face tattoos, dyed hair, and a rock star lifestyle. And perhaps most interestingly, it didn’t belong to one region—there were hubs in places as varied as South Florida, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Instead, SoundCloud rap belonged to the internet.</p>
<p id="fHECvR">“I can’t say it’s [one] certain sound, because I’ve heard so many different rappers do different things on SoundCloud,” says MadeinTYO, a multi-platinum rapper whose 2016 single “Uber Everywhere” was one of the era’s biggest hits. “There’s not a certain sound, but there’s obviously a certain Atlanta sound. There’s a certain Memphis sound, a certain Louisiana sound.”</p>
<p id="iblsvE">SoundCloud also felt different musically—unmistakably hip-hop, but more moody and nihilistic, rowdier and more unpolished. Once the genre hit, unmastered two-minute tracks bearing titles like “Fuck Boy Blood Bath,” “BUY GARETTE’S CLOTHING OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,” and “red drop shawty” suddenly became the coolest music online. And those who got it—the young and disgruntled who had little interest in mainstream music—felt seen and spoken to in the same way 2000s teens did by Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, and Paramore. </p>
<p id="2Ex8hJ">But despite all the hallmarks that tie these artists together, there isn’t a consensus definition of what “SoundCloud rap” is. Detractors use the term interchangeably with the phrase “mumble rap,” a derisive way of criticizing the materialistic lyrical content and the looser cadences that some of these young artists employed. (Some of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k1FFdzN8eA">the stodgy attempts to diss it were worse than anything the genre actually produced</a>). But mumble rap is just one head of the SoundCloud Hydra. Every raucous MC who fell under the umbrella (Lil Pump, 6ix9ine, even Rico Nasty) had a moodier foil (Lil Peep, Wifisfuneral, 6 Dogs), and there were plenty of flat-out great lyricists (Denzel Curry, Ski Mask the Slump God, Robb Bank$). The most commercially successful of the scene—XXXTentacion, Juice WRLD, even Lil Uzi Vert depending on who you ask—could move assuredly through both the worlds of raging hardcore and wounded emo. These artists <a href="https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/rapper-playboi-carti-trashed-tour-13871687">trashed tour buses</a> one night, and the next were up late bawling over an ex.</p>
<p id="h1uim4">And the figures who were part of the movement are hesitant to try to present a unified idea of the SoundCloud … sound. For someone like MadeinTYO, the beauty of the streaming site is that it fosters experimentation and allows for easy discovery through its search and social features. Those factors naturally lead to a wide variety of styles. “It’s just a gateway to get informed about the music. It’s a place to go. It’s another platform. A straightforward definition of SoundCloud rap? I don’t know,” TYO says. “You could be creative and do what you want, and I don’t think that’s just rap but SoundCloud, period.”</p>
<p id="uwtMGK">For others involved in the scene like Roger Gengo—who runs the blog <a href="http://maskedgorilla.com"><em>Masked Gorilla</em></a>, which began covering the genre in its infancy—the emphasis was on camaraderie and interconnectedness more than any stylistic similarities. Not every artist who uploaded to the platform fit into the public’s idea of the bright-haired, Margiela-clad, drug-fueled SoundCloud rapper.</p>
<p id="CKZrxt">“I look at it as more the community,” says Gengo, who also founded<a href="https://www.billboard.com/pro/warner-records-joint-venture-masked-records-roger-gengo/"> Masked Records</a>. “They were friends with each other, they followed each other. They might have lived with each other. They toured together. Even if they didn’t directly interact, they were all part of the same scene. When people talk about SoundCloud rap now maybe they’re talking about 6ix9ine. But when I look at the early days, it was like those [close-knit artists].”</p>
<p id="yfeBqP">PnB Rock, the multi-platinum singer and rapper, occupies a unique musical lane within the SoundCloud ecosystem, but his rationale for using the platform was the same as countless aspiring talents throughout the 2010s: You could put out whatever you wanted with no barrier for entry. Services like Apple Music and Spotify (<em>The Ringer</em>’s parent company) still require independent artists to work with a distributor—Spotify <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/spotify-will-no-longer-let-artists-upload-music-directly/">tested a direct upload program</a> but discontinued it. SoundCloud, meanwhile, was the Wild West—part streaming service, part intuitive social media platform. And it fits within a lineage of innovation in hip-hop that began with people selling CDs out of their trunks, burning their own mixtapes, sharing songs on blogs, and now, even using TikTok.</p>
<p id="Nwvaep">“I uploaded all my music onto SoundCloud,” Rock says. “I ain’t have no other option.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="yggxi2">With hindsight, calling it SoundCloud rap was probably the wrong move from the start. It created a series of semantic challenges that we continue to reckon with when we talk about this era in hip-hop. Naming a musical movement after a streaming service naturally leads to a question: What happens when those artists start getting most of their plays on other platforms? Did a SoundCloud artist cease to be a SoundCloud artist once they broke big on Spotify? </p>
<p id="QVXWek">On a more granular level, other existential debates still occur. Is there an easy way to describe this music that wouldn’t create the confusing dichotomy of old SoundCloud rap (from the early and mid-2010s) vs. new SoundCloud rap (post–Playboi Carti up-and-comers like SoFaygo, SSGKobe, and Slump6s)? But there’s not really a good alternative. Calling it “mumble rap” or “face tattoo rap” would’ve been reductive. “Emo rap” is the right nomenclature for a subsection of it, but there’s also plenty within the canon that doesn’t fit that mold. (Gengo tried to coin the term “grunge rap” in a<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/arts/music/soundcloud-rap-lil-pump-smokepurrp-xxxtentacion.html"> widely read 2017 <em>New York Times </em>feature</a> on the scene, but today he wryly says, “It didn’t stick. It was never uttered again.”)</p>
<p id="bswRVE">That’s not to say that there aren’t sonic consistencies. Most of the subsets share a love of booming, calamitous bass lines and distorted 808s. There’s also a roughness that runs through the seminal stuff, from SpaceGhostPurrp’s austere, gothic soundscapes for Denzel Curry and Robb Bank$, to Ronny J’s landslide of low-end for Ski Mask and XXX, to Charlie Shuffler’s work for Lil Peep, which juxtaposed elegant, picked guitar with muddy percussion. “Those beats are iconic and really good, but they’re really good because they’re raw,” Shuffler <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/lil-peep-hellboy-mixtape-making-of">told <em>GQ </em>in 2020</a>. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="WCvtGq"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Ringer’s 100 Best Rap Songs of the 2010s","url":"https://rap2010s.theringer.com/?_ga=2.213774356.1632951514.1639400468-437920616.1605149108"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="xHiWqi">Techniques that mainstream vocalists were only beginning to experiment with were now unmissable thanks to SoundCloud’s admirable lack of subtlety. The artists, heavily influenced by pop punk, made singing a main tool in their arsenal, not just something they broke out on hooks the way many of their predecessors did. Auto-Tune wasn’t a novelty, it was practically a necessity, since many of them were just beginning to develop their voices. Songs didn’t need to follow the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Sometimes they were <a href="https://genius.com/Trippie-redd-never-ever-land-lyrics">chorus-verse-chorus</a>. Hell, sometimes they were <a href="https://genius.com/Lil-peep-the-last-thing-i-wanna-do-lyrics">chorus-bridge-chorus</a> or just … <a href="https://genius.com/Ybn-nahmir-rubbin-off-the-paint-lyrics">verse</a>, singular.</p>
<p id="0pOqu8">And ad-libs weren’t just a fun side dish: They became the main course. MadeinTYO’s early hits “Uber Everywhere” and “I Want” are enlivened by his background vocals, something that he says he was encouraged to dial back a bit in more traditional industry settings.</p>
<p id="ydzErm">“My first records, I feel like they stood out when it’s, ‘Skrrt skrrt! Skrrt skrrt!’” he says. “I was just super hyped to be on music to where some of my ‘Skrrt skrrts’ got a little less obnoxious when [I] got an engineer in there and they’re like, ‘Let’s turn this down a little bit,’ or, ‘Let’s take this one out.’”</p>
<p id="TYggqG">In a sense, the definition of SoundCloud rap was a little like the old <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7665&context=ylj">Potter Stewart quote</a> about pornography: You know it when you hear it. One of the surefire tells was who was working with whom. Though a lot of the artists that fit into the genre may have met briefly only a handful of times, they recorded at a furious pace, and were constantly sending records back and forth.</p>
<p id="1V0SyH">Take PnB Rock, whose street R&B sound felt more connected to Paterson, New Jersey, trap crooner Fetty Wap than much of the music his peers were dropping. (“Trap Queen,” Fetty Wap’s 2014 hit, first hooked listeners on SoundCloud, and <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/fetty-wap-says-trap-queen-launched-soundcloud-rap">he’s been vocal</a> about his importance in the platform’s growth.) Rock’s breakout songs, like “Selfish” and “Fleek,” were in the tradition of old-school romantic rap, though he could serve as both the MC and the sensitive singer. Still, he was an active fan of the SoundCloud scene and a game collaborator who worked with nearly every relevant artist of his era. (MadeinTYO and Lil Yachty filled a similar role as important connective pieces.)</p>
<p id="l3eLKf">“I found Yachty [on SoundCloud] when he was a nobody. I found Trippie Redd when he was a nobody. I found X when he was a nobody,” Rock says, a nod to the social component of the service that helped him find these emerging talents. “I’ve got an ear for it and it’s easy for me to tap in with these people because I had a different sound at the time.”</p>
<p id="T0QfUh">That kind of discovery was made easier thanks to a handful of SoundCloud-specific features. The homepage feed functions like a Twitter timeline, except instead of tweets it shows tracks by artists you follow, while users have the ability to comment on them and easily share them to their own feeds. The platform offers a number of different charts, as well as a curated “Picks for you” playlist informed by your streaming history. It suggests related tracks based on what you’re currently listening to, and fans can see what artists like, songs they repost, who they follow, and which other acts their listeners tend to check out. The social aspects of the app and website are finely honed and streamlined, effectively making hot artists and producers into tastemakers.</p>
<p id="xX22FG">Because so much of its creation took place through DMs, text messages, and emailed song files, there’s a real lore around the IRL moments that the SoundCloud scene produced, good and bad. XXXTentacion’s Revenge Tour in 2017, which also featured Ski Mask, took the rappers across the U.S. at a time when they had a real air of mystery surrounding them. The dates are often discussed in hushed tones. <a href="https://hiphopdx.com/editorials/id.3795/title.the-ongoing-mayhem-of-xxxtentacions-revenge-tour#">It was chaos</a>: XXX jumped from balconies, fights broke out, and, when a Chicago show was canceled, hundreds of young fans <a href="https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.43839/title.fans-go-crazy-after-xxxtentacion-show-canceled-in-chicago">angrily took to the streets</a>. But there’s an electricity to the videos of the performances, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd4Eou1MC0">watching a whole crowd rap every word of “Take a Step Back”</a> is magnetizing. Eventually, <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/2017/06/xxxtentacion-postpones-tour">XXX canceled the tour</a>, citing physical and mental health problems, as well as family issues.</p>
<p id="iJ5jza">Then there’s the 2017 <em>XXL </em>Freshman shoot, which MadeinTYO and PnB Rock both have vivid memories of. The magazine’s cover has become a marker of early-career success—and a cause for debate among fans. TYO and Rock’s inclusion alongside peers like Ugly God and Playboi Carti marked the arrival of SoundCloud artists as the next big thing. But in a room full of rising stars and different energies, XXX’s wary demeanor left an impression on everyone. PnB Rock recalls it with a level of reverence.</p>
<p id="a7WX8d">“He wasn’t feeling that shit at all. He just felt like, this wasn’t his crowd,” Rock recalls. “He was an antisocial motherfucker. He felt like some of the people there were too cool for him and he wasn’t doing that shit.”</p>
<div id="tRH7Vw"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/6PKkj6Cj1VoIkyHKPLyMLw?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="gzoHOZ"><br>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO12BCNUlLU">cypher</a> from the shoot with Carti, Ugly God, MadeinTYO, and XXXTentacion has been viewed more than 50 million times on YouTube, and it says a lot about the different pockets of SoundCloud rap. Carti and MadeinTYO don’t cover much ground lyrically, but they come with sticky flows and capture the charm of their ad-libs. Houston’s Ugly God, whose bawdy persona offered some comic relief to the subgenre’s emotional heaviness, seems amused with himself, but lacks the punch of his two Atlanta counterparts. Then there’s XXX, who by that point had one of the scene’s biggest hits with the chaotic, mosh-inducing “Look at Me!” But on the cypher stage, he strikes a different tone: XXX crouches guardedly. The Sonny Digital beat disappears as if it’s frightened by what’s coming next. “And if the world ever has an apocalypse / I will kill all of you fuckers / Fear will be plentiful, death will be bountiful / I will spare none of you peasants,” he raps. His verse is dramatic and apocalyptic—the thoughts of a troubled, angry teenager. He bashes the Catholic Church and asks broad existential questions as only a 19-year-old can. It’s not exactly nuanced, but compared to the carefree party raps of the previous three MCs, it’s clear why he inspired rabid devotion in young fans.</p>
<p id="otNDjM">“When he picked up that microphone, the room stopped,” <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/kyle-remembers-meeting-xxxtentacion-2017-xxl-freshman/">fellow 2017 Freshman Kyle told <em>XXL</em></a><em> </em>in 2019. “That was my first glimpse into, ‘Oh no, he’s serious. He has a lot of passion inside of him.’ Everybody else was trying to have bars and have fun. He was on a mission.”</p>
<p id="TawhAw">But apparently, the freestyle was a moment of SoundCloud rap’s most prominent outsider chafing at being among the insiders.</p>
<p id="VkIqPQ">“There were only a few people that X talked to at <em>XXL</em>. He didn’t talk to everybody,” MadeinTYO says. “Yeah, he did his freestyle and everything, but he was really in his shell.”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Juice Wrld Perform At Elysée Montmartr" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HRt5u49Kyl8Zl3ZJDC3c5C6x23c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23101035/1037055838.jpg">
<cite>Photo by David Wolff - Patrick/Redferns</cite>
</figure>
<p id="9dmoHf"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="3Tjypr">There’s a reason DIY music venues and underground subgenres go hand-in-hand. Getting the establishment to open its doors to the Hot New Thing is always an uphill battle.</p>
<p id="CKttDW">Gengo played a key role in SoundCloud’s move from the fringes to the industry’s radar. Relocating to Los Angeles from New York, he launched the Unmasked concert series, which gave a platform to everyone from Lil Peep to Seshollowaterboyz to Denzel Curry. But, despite these artists’ impressive play counts, Gengo says traditional venues balked at playing host to this new crop of rappers due to a lack of familiarity with their music and concern over what could transpire at the shows.</p>
<p id="ShXdEv">“The whole idea was that I was going to be the one to take this music from the warehouse, put it on the Sunset Strip, give the artists proper sound systems, a proper greenroom, proper security, a proper stage, and showcase it how I thought they deserved to be showcased,” he says. “However, when I got to L.A., I quickly found out that none of the venues wanted anything to do with it.”</p>
<p id="QY9Hs4">First booking warehouses, he eventually got a well-known West Hollywood venue to host a Yung Lean show in 2014, but videos of fans stage-diving and jumping over barriers at a New York performance freaked the venue out. They made Gengo reach out to the concertgoers to get ahead of any potential incidents. For Gengo, it only cemented how baffled outsiders were by this new wave of passionate fans.</p>
<p id="00p1DQ">“I sent all the kids an email that said, ‘Hey, we’re here to have a good time. We’re trying to do something for the greater good and for the community. I need everyone to stay calm and stay based,’” he says. “I send [the venue] a version of it and they’re like, ‘What does <em>based</em> mean? Can you explain that to us? Is that a code word to do something bad?’ I was like, ‘No. It means [to] stay positive.’”</p>
<p id="fYtVcb">Eventually, SoundCloud rap caught on with the masses–first through outlets like <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2016/03/09/denzel-curry-new-mixtape-imperial"><em>The Fader</em></a><em> </em>and <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/the-break-presents-ski-mask-slump-god/"><em>XXL</em></a><em> </em>and later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/arts/music/soundcloud-rap-lil-pump-smokepurrp-xxxtentacion.html"><em>The New York Times </em>in 2017</a>. Artists were <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1EyD3qnPeAK9XWBujAEx8h">finding fans in the Kardashian-Jenner family</a>. Lil Yachty even made a song with Kylie Jenner. </p>
<p id="f0lZJn">But the music’s increasing notoriety put a spotlight on some of the genre’s biggest stars, bringing attention to their real-life actions. The most notable was XXXTentacion, who was charged with aggravated battery and false imprisonment in 2017 for incidents involving his pregnant ex-girlfriend. (<em>Pitchfork</em> published a harrowing transcript of a phone call where the <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/xxxtentacion-recording-full-transcript/">rapper discussed abuse, trauma, and suicidal ideation</a>.) There were others: Trippie Redd was arrested after a <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2018/06/12/rapper-trippie-redd-arrested-again-assault/">woman said he pistol-whipped her</a>; a tattoo artist filed a police report that said she was <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-soundcloud-rap-jokester-accused-of-sexual-assault">sexual assaulted</a> by Pouya and members of his entrourage; others like <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/famous-dex-facing-19-charges-domestic-violence-gun-possession">Famous Dex</a>, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/tekashi-6ix9ines-controversial-career-a-timeline.html">6ix9ine</a>, and <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/yung-bans-murder-charge-verdict-sentence-probation/">Yung Bans</a> have been charged with violent crimes. </p>
<p id="By8ciR">In some of these cases, legal troubles may have actually buoyed their careers. Texas rapper Tay-K spent three months eluding authorities for his role in a deadly 2016 home invasion. He bragged about it on his breakout hit “The Race,” which was released when he was 17 and on the lam. Tay-K raps with his chest puffed out: “Fuck a beat, I was tryna beat a case / But I ain’t beat that case, bitch, I did the race.” In July 2019, he was <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/tay-k-sentenced-to-55-years-in-prison-for-murder/">sentenced to 55 years for murder</a>, and though he hasn’t released music since 2018, everyone from Lil Baby to French Montana to Comethazine has shouted him out on records, making “Free Tay-K” the SoundCloud equivalent of “Free Max B” or “Free Bobby and Rowdy.” And true to his reputation as an impish troublemaker, Lil Pump has been arrested on charges of <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2018/12/13/lil-pump-kicked-off-flight-drugs-luggage-tsa/?vtest=100">disorderly behavior in an airport</a>, <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2018/02/15/lil-pump-arrested-shooting-firearm-gun/">firing a gun in his house</a>, and <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2018/08/29/lil-pump-arrested-miami-police-handcuffs/">driving without a license</a>. These encounters with the law probably didn’t do much to boost his listenership, but they jibed with his image as a trollish, larger-than-life character. (He reached the logical endpoint of that journey when he endorsed Donald Trump for reelection in 2020 and released <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EDDJoHSkl8">“LIL PIMP BIG MAGA STEPPIN,”</a> a reference to the former president <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-5MnfXxY8c">screwing up his name</a> at a rally.)</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="AdCOm9"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"How DMX’s First Tour Helped Usher in a New Era of Hip-hop","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/11/23/22797960/dmx-survival-of-the-illest-tour-history-redman-onyx"},{"title":"The Complete History of the Kings and Queens of New York Rap ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/11/22/22795285/best-rapper-new-york-kings-queens-dmx-notorious-big-nas-jay-z"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="1dLUVY">These myriad incidents caused trepidation among fans and journalists, and likely contributed to many artists with commercial prospects never moving past the underground. But the broader long-term prospects of the era were further hindered by the deaths of Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, and Juice WRLD. The latter two had already crossed over to the mainstream, while Peep was refining his sound <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/11/12/18087344/lil-peep-come-over-when-youre-sober-pt-2-review-posthumous-album">into something bigger and more accessible</a>. Each seemed capable of pleasing their fans and placating mass audiences at once.</p>
<p id="YQyg96">“I remember when Juice WRLD died in 2019, Jon Caramanica for <em>The New York Times </em>[called it] ‘<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/arts/music/juice-wrld-soundcloud-rap.html">the tragic end of SoundCloud rap,’</a>” Gengo remembers. “I tweeted something like, ‘Damn this is crazy, but it’s the truth,’ and I’ve never gotten more angry responses from kids making music on SoundCloud. And I tried to go through this tightrope semantic debate on Twitter.com, which is never a smart move, talking about, ‘Well, I don’t mean anyone making music on SoundCloud. I mean the kids with the colorful hair and the face tattoos. That’s what SoundCloud rap was.’”</p>
<p id="RoheGR">Some of the void that was created by those deaths has been filled—by their own music. Since his death, two XXXTentacion albums have been released to solid commercial success (though both <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/xxxtentacion-skins/"><em>Skins</em></a><em> </em>and <a href="https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/xxxtentacion-bad-vibes-forever-review-2584647"><em>Bad Vibes Forever</em></a> were derided by critics due to their unfinished nature). Juice WRLD now has two posthumous albums, including 2020’s chart-topping <em>Legends Never Die</em> and this month’s <em>Fighting Demons</em>, which comes as HBO and Ringer Films prep the release of <em>Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss</em> on Thursday<em>. </em>Lil Peep’s estate put out one studio album in 2018, while also getting early tapes like <em>crybaby </em>and<em> HELLBOY </em>onto major DSPs and releasing a steady stream of smaller projects.</p>
<p id="PiUZdH">Handling the release of unfinished music and public promotion is incredibly fraught, as those involved have to balance the artist’s creative intentions with the interest of fans, while still respecting the wishes of bereaved family and friends. In a <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/lil-peeps-mother-liza-womack-talks-about-her-sons-life-and-legacy/">moving <em>Pitchfork</em> interview</a>, Peep’s mother, Liza Womack, spoke about how challenging it can be both to grieve and simultaneously steer her son’s legacy. He’s a particularly important figure here, because his November 2017 death from an accidental overdose informed the way fans, loved ones, and business partners of deceased SoundCloud musicians react to things like leaked records, documentaries, and re-released music.</p>
<p id="M9Xebm">“[Peep] was really the first young artist to die of this whole wave and there have now been so many, unfortunately. There weren’t any recent examples to go by,” says Gengo. “Now, it’s such an accepted part where you know how to act online and you know how to release the music, hopefully. You know how to handle things properly. That one was like a crash course for all these other ones.”</p>
<p id="vSi3Uq">Because the artist isn’t around to dictate the direction their music takes, certain forays into the mainstream have been met with skepticism by hardcore fans. Granted, Peep, Juice, and XXX were all playing with more polished sounds by the time of their deaths, but seeing extremely down-the-middle pop names like Marshmello, Maroon 5, and Maluma alongside theirs can still feel jarring. (There’s <a href="https://www.spin.com/2018/09/lil-peep-xxxtentacion-collaboration-falling-down/">also been</a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwpdkj/xxxtentacion-lil-peep-falling-down-criticism">plenty of controversy</a> around “Falling Down,” a Peep and X collaboration released after both passed.)</p>
<p id="kMWpOV">Of the SoundCloud artists still here, there are a handful of unambiguous successes in 2021. Both Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert have emerged as superstars with passionate diehards and widespread appeal enough to headline major festivals. Trippie Redd holds court a tier below those two. Lil Yachty and Ski Mask have long, stable careers ahead, albeit probably not at the top of the charts. The $uicideboy$ have built a sustainable commercial model by creating a huge cult base; their 2021 album debuted at no. 7 and their live shows are raucous. Denzel Curry’s loyal fans ensure his solo albums debut in the Top 40, tours sell well, and his singles occasionally get RIAA certifications.</p>
<p id="roNZ0H">Plenty of others, however, find themselves in more tenuous positions. Lil Skies has one of the smoothest voices to emerge from the scene, but his quantifiable success has taken a dip since its apex in 2018 and 2019, perhaps because his sound was so radio-ready from the jump. Some rappers like Smokepurpp and Comethazine, who excelled only at turn-up music, have been <a href="https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.56651/title.smokepurpp-clowns-himself-over-tanked-florida-jit-album-sales">the butt of jokes</a> for their lackluster <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GauxrtmY8Bw">recent sales figures</a>. </p>
<p id="BVRwFj">MCs who blew up between 2018 and 2020 like Lil Tecca are doing well—and could loosely be defined as post-SoundCloud—but many of them have sanded down the jagged corners of the original music considerably. Gengo also brings up the example of Post Malone, whose 2015 breakout “White Iverson” first blew up on SoundCloud, and who shares some aesthetic markers with the artists mentioned in this piece. By a lot of standards, Malone is the most successful musician to come from SoundCloud, but he’s been fully immersed into pop culture to the point of doing Super Bowl commercials for Bud Light.</p>
<p id="FbnYRS">“Post Malone is the most successful SoundCloud rapper ever, tenfold, but when you soften those edges and you do your own thing, you leave the underground and you’re not a SoundCloud rapper anymore,” says Gengo. “No one will ever look at [Post], even with his face tattoos, and be like, ‘He’s a SoundCloud rapper.’” </p>
<p id="WrheQO"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="SOi04r">Cosmetically, the music world doesn’t look much different from when SoundCloud rap came to the fore. But there are a few reasons it seems incredibly unlikely we’ll get something similar anytime soon. First, as Gengo notes, this underground scene was able to grow organically for years away from the gaze of both major media outlets and record labels. Secondly, the nature of music coverage was changing in this window–suddenly the blogs that broke artists like Mac Miller or Big Sean had less cachet than they did five years prior, but tech mediums for music discovery like TikTok weren’t developed like they are now.</p>
<p id="ve3SEs">“It was such a unique circumstance at the intersection of the end of blogs and the start of streaming and playlists,” he says. “These kids were running wild with no one watching and the music industry will make sure that never happens again.”</p>
<p id="ZosUCD">And it’s impossible to untether the rise and fall of SoundCloud rap from the increasing omnipresence of streaming. In 2012, when Florida collective Raider Klan was establishing a real presence, <a href="https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/RIAA-2015-Year-End-shipments-memo.pdf">streaming accounted for just 15 percent</a> of total U.S. music revenue. By 2017, when the XXXTentacions and Lil Pumps were signing major deals, it was <a href="https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/RIAA-Year-End-2017-News-and-Notes.pdf">up to 65 percent of the whole pie</a>. As of 2020, that’s <a href="https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2020-Year-End-Music-Industry-Revenue-Report.pdf">at a staggering 83 percent</a>, the lion’s share of which comes from paid subscriptions to services like Apple Music and Spotify.</p>
<p id="mpk2I9">The large footprint of those two apps has always put SoundCloud in an odd position. At first, artists weren’t making any money there, save for those who had been invited to use SoundCloud Pro. In October 2018, after the SoundCloud rap wave had jumped to the mainstream, the company launched <a href="https://press.soundcloud.com/169082-soundcloud-premier-monetization-program-opening-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-original-music-creators">SoundCloud Premier</a>, a monetization program that allowed a wider range of artists to make money sharing their songs. In the announcement newsletter, the company mentioned $uicideboy$, Lil Yachty, and MadeinTYO, a clear nod to these important early figures. </p>
<p id="qB5tcp">“Music movements originate and thrive on SoundCloud because of the unique ways artists can directly connect with a community around their sound and expression. Hip-hop trailblazers like Lil Uzi Vert, Juice WRLD, Rico Nasty, and Denzel Curry shared their first-ever tracks on SoundCloud, which allowed them to reach and build a massive audience in real time, display their personalities, accept feedback and authentically grow a loyal fan base on the platform and beyond,” says Erika Montes, VP of artist relations at SoundCloud.</p>
<p id="02FkFE">In some ways the dim commercial prospect of very early SoundCloud was part of the fun. The really great artists made decisions that, well, no one would make if their main priority was getting famous or scoring a quick buck. Some of the first big Lil Peep songs sampled everything from Oasis to indie bands like the Microphones. This was in part a product of young, eager producers like Nedarb and Charlie Shuffler. </p>
<p id="vpglEK">“At that time, I didn’t even think I was really gonna have a career in music,” says Shuffler, who produced songs like “big city blues” and “gucci mane” for Peep. “I wasn’t even thinking about, ‘Oh, this song might come out on Spotify or Apple Music one day.’ I just wanted music to come out with my name on it.”</p>
<p id="IywZ3M">It’s still an underappreciated feat when some of those early Peep songs make it to major streaming services—his 2016 classic <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/lil-peep-hellboy-mixtape-making-of"><em>HELLBOY</em> finally came to streaming last year</a>—and it’s worth wondering whether those samples would be cleared if it weren’t for the tragic nature of his death. Pop-punk band Yellowcard famously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/arts/music/yellowcard-juice-wrld-lawsuit.html">dropped a lawsuit</a> they were pursuing against the estate of Juice WRLD that claimed he borrowed one of their melodies on his megahit “Lucid Dreams.” While the band filed the suit before Juice’s death, many think the bad optics of suing the grieving mother of a recently deceased 21-year-old contributed to that decision, and the band’s lawyer basically said as much in a July 2020 statement.</p>
<p id="WhUaV5">Young artists rarely focus on turning profits and clearing samples the way veterans do, but that proliferated here because of the rise of leak culture. The rap blogs of the late 2000s and early 2010s gave free music serious prestige, but, in ways both good and bad, SoundCloud arguably perfected it. Suddenly, almost every young artist found their music in unexpected places online.</p>
<p id="DT21ay">“SoundCloud, you’ll hear a lot of songs that are not mixed-mastered. They can be at any sound and you’ll hear a lot of leaks, a lot of stuff that wasn’t finished,” says MadeinTYO. “A lot of things that you would’ve never got to hear on Apple.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="nUPuFc"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="nsXfmr">Sometimes these leaks disappeared into the ether, but, occasionally, <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2019/04/02/lil-uzi-vert-eternal-atake-money-keep-coming-leak-discord-report">fans would pool money together to purchase an unreleased song</a> from a hacker or other source. MadeinTYO says that several of his collaborations with Juice WRLD were leaked, and some were even purchased through these “group buys.”</p>
<p id="dZhTFP">“Because I follow my fans, I’ll see it on my timeline. ‘Hey, we’re $10,000 down.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my god. That is so crazy,’” says MadeinTYO. “So here it is, Juice isn’t here. I’m not eating off that. His mother’s not eating off of that. But someone got the file and just came up on $20,000-$40,000 just off of selling the record.”</p>
<p id="IT7f8y">There was a silver lining to the leaking of songs. In-the-know fans would go crazy for these tracks, often building a buzz that likely wouldn’t have come from a straightforward release. They’d plead on social media for the artist to put the song out until eventually it caught the attention of more casual listeners. </p>
<p id="2P2CIG">“I used to be tripping like a motherfucker when people would leak my shit. I’m this close to damn-near trying-to-find-you-type shit,” PnNB Rock recalls. “But now, I don’t give a fuck if you leak my shit. It’s part of the culture now. Leak is the culture. Unreleased is the culture.“</p>
<p id="DVulVS">Earlier in 2021, Cochise and $NOT, two young artists who came to prominence in the latter days of the SoundCloud scene, scored an unlikely hit with their track “Tell Em.” Initially an unassuming leak, it became the first Billboard Hot 100 appearance for both of them. It also worked for Carti, who built a huge fan base off of his leaked tracks, culminating in the chart-topping success of 2020’s <em>Whole Lotta Red</em>. The previous year, an unauthorized snippet of his unreleased song “Kid Cudi” was uploaded to Spotify and quickly made its way <a href="https://genius.com/a/an-unofficial-upload-of-playboi-carti-s-kid-cudi-is-no-1-on-spotify-s-us-viral-50-chart?fbclid=IwAR22kIzkl9hVBQUmYPYEVKboMMLQwzc-6oyIyTbjcI4L1yM615T6qiEk3UU">to the top of the United States Viral Top 50 chart</a>.</p>
<p id="VGXxrm">“If you’re an artist and you’re not leaking a couple songs on SoundCloud or uploading SoundCloud exclusives, then you’re doing it wrong,” says Gengo.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Rolling Loud New York 2021" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bgq4lvJhwK-tfXscntrpdMXz_Rk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23101038/1350004868.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
<p id="umoPZs"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="wOfCdA">Perhaps the most surprising thing about the SoundCloud era for outsiders—though surely not for people involved—is the lasting influence of music once considered disposable by critics. Some of today’s biggest stars are clearly products of SoundCloud, including Juice WRLD protégé the Kid Laroi, who topped the charts this year with his Justin Bieber duet “Stay.” And, of course, there’s Billie Eilish, who has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pslzz7kTU8">unreleased music with MadeinTYO</a>, <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/billie-eilish-xxxtentacion-mourning-death-2468335">publicly mourned XXXTentacion’s death</a>, and used to wear gaudy, punk-and-rap-inspired designer outfits before an aesthetic shift ahead of her 2021 sophomore album. (It’s perhaps no surprise that her musical origins can be traced to the platform—in 2015, a 13-year-old Eilish began uploading songs to <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/billie-eilish-finneas-oconnell-songwriting-1203421768/">SoundCloud “just for fun,”</a> and within a year, one named “Ocean Eyes” <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-billie-eilishs-ocean-eyes-turned-her-into-an-overnight-sensation">would catch the attention of labels</a>.) MadeinTYO even posits that Lil Nas X could be considered a SoundCloud artist for his use of the platform early in his career; “Old Town Road” was initially a SoundCloud loosie before becoming one of the biggest songs in <em>Billboard</em> history. “You put Lil Nas and everybody into that same category of SoundCloud rap and the sky’s the limit,” he says.</p>
<p id="F7U4Xt">Beyond normalizing colorful hair and face tattoos, the SoundCloud era helped spawn plenty of important industry infrastructure that will make it easier for the next class of oddball kids to get discovered. In 2015, the first iteration of Rolling Loud took place in Miami with nascent artists like Denzel Curry, Robb Bank$, Chris Travis, and Xavier Wulf sharing the bill with Schoolboy Q, Juicy J, and Travis Scott. Now, in addition to Florida, the festival is staged in New York and Southern California, and there are plans for a show in Portugal in 2022. The headliners are huge stars including J. Cole, Lil Baby, and Post Malone, but promising young artists like bktherula, Ken Car$on, and 2KBABY are given early slots.</p>
<p id="NiHIBk">The scene also was critically important to the resurgence of music videos. Cole Bennett established himself as SoundCloud’s preeminent director with signature, effects-heavy productions for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3EJICKwITw">Juice WRLD</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dL3AygsCMc">Lil Xan</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpIlnaAmiCg">Ski Mask the Slump God</a>. His moody yet frenetic visual palette has inspired scores of video-makers since. Along the way, his company <a href="https://lyricallemonade.com">Lyrical Lemonade</a> became a brand name in the industry, releasing podcasts, publishing blog posts, and shooting behind-the-scenes content. Now, it <a href="https://www.thesummersmash.com">throws a festival</a> of its own in Chicago, while Bennett is directing for both A-listers (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_0JjYUe5jo">Eminem</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6Ma0vEW4">Lil Durk</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=311ZcJozOhI">Post Malone)</a> and hot newcomers (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2SNwtE-0Us">Nardo Wick</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et6RbSRQsps">$NOT</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lubd7UtmBtE">BabySantana</a>). </p>
<p id="optAef">The existence of institutions and entities like this will surely help artists transition to the limelight, but SoundCloud rap was also allowed a time to incubate that it’s hard to imagine future underground movements will be given. Labels are quicker on the uptake now, and with the ubiquity of apps like TikTok—which can turn 10 seconds of an unfinished demo into a bona fide social media sensation—the time from first hit to seven-figure deal is shorter than ever. Take the recent explosion of digicore, another scene of progressive young artists combining genres that began on SoundCloud, as well as other online platforms like Discord and Twitch. Artists with big potential, like Midwxst, glaive, and ericdoa, are all still actively releasing songs on SoundCloud, but they were signed to major labels within months of building notoriety. </p>
<p id="WE1q9Y">“There’s not a lot of breeding time on SoundCloud anymore,” says Gengo.</p>
<p id="iB4t6U">Though it’s been around for barely 18 months, digicore—and its parent genre, hyperpop—have already been praised by <a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/n7bw3z/digicore-music-scene-profile-hyperpop">i-D</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-brash-exuberant-sounds-of-hyperpop"><em>The New Yorker</em></a><em>, </em>and even <a href="https://soundcloud.com/soundcloud-shine/sets/digicore">SoundCloud</a> itself. There’s an official Spotify <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX7HOk71GPfSw">playlist for hyperpop</a> that has more than 250,000 likes. This music is clicking with young people, the concerts are high-energy, and the industry seems intent on not being late to the party this time.</p>
<p id="txZm0V">And maybe that’ll be the big legacy of SoundCloud rap. It could end up being the last time a scene was able to percolate and get <em>that </em>popular while remaining off the grid. When the music was at its best and most impactful, the people making it weren’t burdened by commercial pressure or a desire to hit the Hot 100. Some of them just got so good that it happened anyway.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="YdBwML">“It’s supposed to feel like you don’t need your parents to log in and give you a card,” says MadeinTYO. “It’s supposed to feel like you can just do whatever, and I think that’s how artists felt.”</p>
<p id="3Ux5Gf"><a href="http://grantrindner.com"><em>Grant Rindner</em></a><em> is a culture writer who has contributed to </em>GQ, Rolling Stone, i-D<em>, and other outlets.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2021/12/16/22838951/juice-wrld-soundcloud-rap-history-retrospective
Grant Rindner
2021-04-01T08:20:16-04:00
2021-04-01T08:20:16-04:00
Yes, You Should Take Miles Bridges Seriously As a Rapper
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/onaiIuQ6aF9xMyfbHcWCg3Bt1WQ=/400x0:2800x1800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69059606/BballRappers_Publish02.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.zpvisual.com/" target="_blank">Zeke Peña</a></figcaption>
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<p>The high-flying 23-year-old Hornets wing has been carving out a second career on the mic as RTB MB. He’s not the first NBA player to rap, but he may show off how the relationship between basketball and the genre has evolved.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="c0p8ZH">By streaming numbers, RTB MB certainly appears to be a rising rapper worth checking for. Several of his videos with Florida MC DB have racked up tens of thousands of views, and the clip for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Tz7eCPXXI">“Steph McGrady”</a> has clocked in at well over 200,000. It’s been watched even more than another collaborative project of MB’s: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p51RnseYuc">a compilation of the vicious dunks</a> he’s thrown down off feeds from LaMelo Ball.</p>
<p id="NjofHW">RTB MB is the musical alias of Charlotte Hornets wing Miles Bridges, a 23-year-old gravity-defying leaper who is part of one of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/the-bill-simmons-podcast/2021/2/26/22302224/nba-league-pass-fun-rankings-with-zach-lowe">the NBA’s most fun teams</a>. When he’s not obliterating rims, Bridges is a fairly prolific rapper, dropping his <em>Up the Score </em>mixtape in December 2020 and earning the attention (and playful ire) of some of his basketball peers, like 2020 no. 1 pick Anthony Edwards.</p>
<p id="BHBge0">“We just played [the Timberwolves] and as soon as I came in the game he said, ‘Oh, I gotta guard this <em>rapper</em>,’” Bridges says.</p>
<p id="9kzKID">He’s far from the first rapping pro basketball player, but Bridges is emblematic of the present double-helix relationship between the NBA and hip-hop that has spurred athletes like Damian Lillard, Marvin Bagley III, Lonzo Ball, and Andre Drummond to make music (with varying results).</p>
<p id="B3e3Il">Basketball players have been rapping for decades, most notably figures like Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, and Kobe Bryant in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Epic Records even tried to get in on the trend with <em>B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret, </em>a compilation project featuring tracks from Shaq as well as Gary Payton, Dennis Scott, and Brian Shaw. (The Cedric Ceballos–Warren G <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ36TNHqNAE">collab “Flow On”</a> is surprisingly smooth.)</p>
<p id="lCG5ne">But hip-hop has never been bigger than it is today, and the league’s cultural cachet is quite visibly tied to music—from <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/03/lebron-james-2-chainz-rap-or-go-to-the-league-interview">LeBron James A&Ring a 2 Chainz album</a> to the high-profile, at-times-controversial <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/watches-of-the-week-12-12-20#:~:text=NBA%20superstar%20James%20Harden%20made,that%20costs%20upwards%20of%20%24150%2C000.">friendship between James Harden and Lil Baby.</a> Those relationships are not only more plentiful, but also more visible thanks to the advent of social media. </p>
<p id="P5sDbA">“I feel like a lot of ballplayers, before, probably wanted to rap, but they weren’t willing to put themselves out there. But today, almost anybody is a rapper nowadays,” says Wayne “Wayno” Clark, a music industry veteran and VP of A&R at Asylum Records. “I’m surprised the Gorilla Glue girl isn’t a rapper. Everybody raps.”</p>
<p id="NyOX17">As the sheer number of rappers (and part-time rappers) has risen, so too have regional sounds proliferated and earned fans nationwide. Basketball players who made music used to aim for a sound that was down the middle and radio viable, leading to records like Kobe’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl_WkTiH6-Q">“K.O.B.E.”</a> and Shaq’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL6kQ0v1PQ8">“(I Know I Got) Skillz”</a> that are competently made but lacking in flavor.</p>
<p id="T7W0Of">Today’s rapping athletes might not be the most preternaturally gifted, but they are rarely duplicative of one another or concerned only with watered-down commercial trends. Lillard employs the sparse, bouncy sound of Bay Area street rap on his best songs (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfqL-uv80Y">“Check,”</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVBTEIu8F4c">“Run It Up”</a>). Iman Shumpert, who is from Illinois but starred at Georgia Tech, recently put out a solid <em>Gangsta Grillz </em>mixtape in which he unleashes his baritone flow over Southern trap beats, including Lil Baby’s “Sum 2 Prove,” Future’s “Life Is Good,” and Polo G’s “Go Stupid.” Drummond’s music clearly has a sugary bent, but occasionally it veers into gloriously odd territory, like the ’80s dance-style <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW1o0MFDKMg">“Goin’ Down.”</a> Bagley’s music is more traditionally in line with what NBA players have made—it’s inspirational and generally appropriate for a younger audience, but he can do a credible impression of early Dreamville.</p>
<div id="I4QmvW"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2oODG0sy2Gc?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; clipboard-write; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="bJ4tCq">Miles Bridges offers a take on the singular sound of Flint, with booming bass, tight snares, and tumbling flows that prize witty punch lines above all else (including, occasionally, staying on beat). He’s been making music for years, but says that it was only when he got into the sound of nearby Detroit—a slightly less ribald sonic cousin of Flint—that he really began to hone a distinct style of his own.</p>
<p id="Q58S8m">“When I was 16, I was tryna make music like Drake,” Bridges says with a laugh. “My flows changed tremendously. I started listening to Detroit music when I was 13 or 14. Doughboyz Cashout, Team Eastside, all those guys.”</p>
<p id="luSoBp">Bridges’s bars aren’t as zany and surreal as those of fellow Flint rappers Bfb da Packman and YN Jay—the latter of whom he showed chemistry with on 2020’s “1st Quarter.” He occasionally falls back on filler lines about jewelry, women, and fast cars, but he’s really practiced in the specific flows of this subgenre, as shown on the silky <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBg2KVdMLAQ">“Run It Up”</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7oadm9PmpM">“JLo.”</a> Not quite as fluid as he is running a fast break with LaMelo, but impressive nonetheless.</p>
<p id="zbLXOY">“The whole thing about rap is making somebody think with your bars,” he says. “I really just started doing that. It can be hard to do. You’ve gotta actually think when you’re making your music. But that’s the beauty in rap—some people are talented enough to actually spit bars, and then other people make music that you just vibe with. I’m trying to be in between.”</p>
<p id="jJbPv4">Bridges says he really discovered himself as an artist on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFweDW5zHwU">“10 of Me,”</a> the lead song from his <em>Flint to Lakeland </em>mixtape with close friend and former Hornets teammate Dwayne Bacon. “[That] was the first time when my flow changed to what I’ve been using lately.”</p>
<p id="mU4t3a">The pair were prolific in their time together, releasing three projects and shooting several videos before Bacon departed for the Orlando Magic. Bridges met Bacon back in 2014, and they bonded quickly over their musical ambitions.</p>
<p id="fK8idR">“I knew Bac’ since my junior year. Ever since I met him, Corey Sanders, and those guys, they were all rapping. That’s around the time that I was just messing around with the music,” Bridges recalls. “When I got drafted here, I was like, ‘Shit, I’m tryna get on a song.’ After our first song, we started making music all the time. He would just come to my house.”</p>
<p id="nwfHZC">Bridges says he records mostly during the summer, and has a studio set up in his home, where he gets down ideas. Most players seem to understandably follow this model of making music an offseason priority, although Damian Lillard got pretty creative <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/damian-lillard-dame-dolla-live-from-the-bubble-1045181/">during his time in the 2020 NBA bubble</a>, recording music with teammates Gary Trent Jr. and Nassir Little from their hotel.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="vfG3ZO"><q>“That’s the beauty in rap—some people are talented enough to actually spit bars, and then other people make music that you just vibe with. I’m trying to be in between.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="mFk7Xw">Rapping NBA players, particularly Lillard, have garnered more respect in recent years. Lil Wayne has specifically shouted out the Trail Blazers guard, praising his work ethic and how his skills have developed. “He don’t talk about nothing fake. That’s what’s awesome,” <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/lil-wayne-supports-damian-lillard-on-the-court-and-in-the-studio/">he told <em>The Undefeated</em></a> in 2019. Wayne—a well-known <a href="https://www.foxsports.com/college-basketball/gallery/lil-wayne-miami-heat-super-sports-fan-031613">NBA superfan</a> who has dropped numerous sports references in his tracks—perhaps summed up the relationship between players and musicians best in 2014, when he <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/10995706/kobe-bryant-promotes-lil-wayne-new-album-tha-carter-v-espn-magazine">told ESPN</a> “Athletes wanna be rappers, rappers wanna be athletes.” To that point, basketball is more than just entertainment for a number of rappers. For artists like J. Cole, <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2704529-the-oral-history-of-j-coles-basketball-career">who came close to walking on at St. John’s</a>, and Master P, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iWpgUa6Lbo">who appeared in an exhibition game for the Toronto Raptors</a>, it’s always been linked to their public personas. They’ve played in celebrity all-star games and long had proximity to the league and its stars.</p>
<p id="4dmhZz">Wayno, who grew up around athletes like Kemba Walker in Harlem, cites one of hip-hop’s most hallowed bars as proof of the intertwined nature of the two jobs. “Biggie said it a long time ago, ‘You sling crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.’ The options for a lot of kids growing up were to play ball or rap,” Wayno says. “Those were the only ways we knew we could be successful coming from the hood in New York.”</p>
<p id="nIw1KN">As Wayno explains, many of the young Black men in both professions come from underserved communities where long-shot goals are often glamorized and disproportionately emphasized. Only a select number of people reach the highest level of each industry, but bonds between ascendant figures are often established well before anyone has reached the national spotlight.</p>
<p id="AzBMnx">Bridges, a top-20 high school recruit who starred at Michigan State, says that he became close with Detroit’s Sada Baby and Flint’s best-known rappers while he was in college, and that they’ve been supportive of him as he’s made his own foray into the rap world.</p>
<p id="drOBuX">“YN Jay, [Louie Ray], and all these guys, they knew me before. I feel like I’m familiar with all those guys,” Bridges says. “I’ve seen them in the city before. Flint is so small that you know everybody. I’m happy for those guys.”</p>
<p id="MYyImK">A recent video series from Revolt drove home just how connected young basketball stars are with rappers today, and how those relationships are no longer solely determined by geographic proximity, but status. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEAVUHAxmnQ"><em>The Crew League</em></a><em>, </em>artists competed in a pickup basketball tournament to win $100,000, and many of them took advantage of the lax recruiting rules to bring in big-time athletes to illustrate their clout. Perhaps most tellingly, 17-year-old Australian MC the Kid Laroi had Amari Bailey (<a href="https://247sports.com/player/amari-bailey-46078935/">no. 4 player in the class of 2022</a>), Tre White (<a href="https://247sports.com/player/tre-white-46059200/">no. 76 in the class of ’22</a>), and Shy Odom (<a href="https://247sports.com/Player/Shy-Odom-46086231/">no. 190 in ’22</a>) on his roster. It’s like if the cool table at your high school had millions of combined Instagram followers.</p>
<p id="8XYPkX">Though it’s entirely possible that these guys have met young artists organically, growing up in L.A., the connection to someone like Laroi is telling of what their nascent stardom brings. Odom and Bailey play at the high-profile Sierra Canyon in Los Angeles alongside Bronny James, while White is at L.A.’s Ribet Academy. They’re building names for themselves in the hub of celebrity, and forging relationships with rappers before they’ve even made a dollar off of basketball.</p>
<p id="fs4ISc">Them playing in a pickup game with Kid Laroi is proof that the rising stars of the pop rap world are keeping close tabs on the next generation of potential NBA players, and forging relationships early. They’re young kids who like hip-hop and can parlay their notoriety into profile-raising opportunities with major artists. It would hardly be surprising to hear one of them try their hand at music in the future. And maybe in three years, Bailey and Laroi will be the next Harden and Lil Baby—or the next Jim Jones and Kevin Garnett.</p>
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<p id="n8GvMP">While these sorts of relationships have existed for decades, they weren’t always emphasized by the league itself. In the mid-2000s, many in the media seemed hell-bent on <a href="https://www.espn.com/espnmag/story?id=3775807">demonizing the connection between rap and the NBA</a>, drawing on harmful racial stereotypes and not affording rap the same creative license given to other art forms. At the start of the 2005-06 season, then-commissioner David Stern put into place what he dubbed a “liberal and easygoing” dress code, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/how-david-sterns-nba-dress-code-changed-mens-fashion-104719/">according to <em>Rolling Stone</em></a>, that forbade “chains, pendants, or medallions” along with things like hats and do-rags. Fans and players deduced that these rules were aimed largely at how some Black players were dressing at the time, and players like Paul Pierce, Jason Richardson, and Iverson all voiced issues with it.</p>
<p id="vu5JUH">“It’s an honor for me to be considered the guy who made hip-hop style OK in the NBA because at one time having a hip-hop image was a bad thing,” Allen Iverson told ESPN in 2005. “Guys with cornrows, baggy jeans, and tattoos were always known as suspects.”</p>
<p id="pvScYC">Hip-hop specifically became a contentious point in 2000, when controversy arose over the lyrics to a song Iverson recorded as Jewelz. The track, “40 Bars,” featured references to guns, as well as homophobic slurs, and eventually <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1430378/hoopster-iverson-agrees-to-change-rap-lyrics/">Iverson agreed to change the lyrics</a> after meeting with Stern and civil rights advocates. His planned debut album, <em>Non-Fiction</em>,<em> </em>was never released, and the former MVP has since <a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/allen-iverson-documenary-rap-documentary-complex-philadelphia-76ers-the-answer-reebok/mpchkuqi20651pm5b5r6bhgbk">called it “embarrassing”</a> and questioned the impact it would have had on younger fans. “I thought it was an art form just like you see Bruce Willis killing people in movies,” he said in 2015. “Well, he don’t do that in real life.”</p>
<p id="NrFRN9">There’s no place for homophobic language anywhere, and Iverson’s awareness of his impact on young people is commendable, but it also highlights the way rap and hip-hop culture always have been policed. The onus was placed on the young men and how they behave off the court, which holds them to a standard faced by very few people in the world, and less on parents or guardians monitoring the content their children take in.</p>
<p id="c1B09I">“What you’re really doing [with a dress code] is denying a person their experience and their existence by telling them ‘You can’t do this. You can’t do that,’” says <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/11/20/21579270/rexx-life-raj-new-rap-music-november">Bay Area rapper Rexx Life Raj</a>. “They’re just expressing themselves and where they came from and the culture of where they come from.”</p>
<p id="bVZItP">Harlem’s Jim Jones is proof of the evolution of how major sports leagues view hip-hop. When he hit it big with the 2006 track “We Fly High,” he says the NBA had little interest in working with him, despite the song’s fadeaway dance being perfect for sports celebrations (it was even picked up by <a href="https://giantswire.usatoday.com/2021/01/22/rapper-jim-jones-credits-new-york-giants-for-success-we-fly-high/">players on the New York Giants</a>). Now, Jones, Cam’Ron, and Juelz Santana <a href="https://www.complex.com/style/2020/12/kith-nike-partner-with-dipset-help-unveil-new-knicks-collab">have partnered</a> with Kith and Nike for a Knicks-centric clothing capsule, and even <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/kith-new-york-knicks-city-edition-jerseys-1234679784/">helped unveil</a> one of the team’s official jerseys.</p>
<p id="QzWtha">“I think it’s just time and the way the culture became so powerful, it was inevitable for the NBA to use hip-hop music,” Jones says. “It’s the tempo of basketball.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="exr6ZG"><q>“There’s a stigma that comes with going from being an athlete to being a rapper. I didn’t know too many people who were able to fully shake that.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="YNWqRi">Rapping athletes are not unique to the NBA, but it certainly is the most favorable ecosystem of any major American sport for players to build the kind of personal brand that supports a successful side hustle. Raj, who played football at Boise State before embarking on his music career, stresses that between the shared importance of shoe culture, the greater opportunities for individual recognition, and the more progressive culture around the sport, basketball is just a more natural conduit for success in the entertainment world.</p>
<p id="FTEcuN">“It’s just a smaller amount of people [in the league], and you can see their faces all the time. That goes a long way, because it allows you to have more swag and be seen more. It’s a whole different culture in basketball that’s closer to hip-hop culture,” Raj says. “Football is a lot more traditional and conservative. I think basketball is a more Black sport in general. When it’s more Black, you’ll have more culture and more sauce and more resilience.”</p>
<p id="Tin3O0">Jones says that he’s a little wary when he hears an athlete is making music, though he makes sure to shout out Lillard, Shumpert, and Gerald Green, whose music career is a bit more under wraps. Raj explains that he’s empathetic for what athletes go through when they try to prove to the world that they have other passions.</p>
<p id="ann0lc">“There’s a stigma that comes with going from being an athlete to being a rapper. I didn’t know too many people who were able to fully shake that,” he says. “I feel like I spent two or three years trying to shake that stigma when it comes to rebranding and making people believe I was serious about it. I know the effort that truly goes into it.”</p>
<p id="KSXyVc">Part of what separates the new crop of rapping NBA players from the old is that many in the younger generation use even more of the language and themes that regular rappers do in their songs. Fortunately, Bridges says that the league has not raised any objections to the content of his songs, and he stresses that he wants to talk not just like his favorite artists, but in a way that people who grew up in similar circumstances can feel represented by.</p>
<p id="cIBoRl">“My mindset is this: If I’m gonna rap, I might as well rap how I regularly rap. I know what comes with all this stuff, but if I’m gonna rap, I’ma have fun with it and make music that people can relate to and music that I can relate to, too,” Bridges says. “I’m not scared of getting in trouble, I haven’t gotten any warnings or anything.”</p>
<p id="gVfhWE">It’ll take a long time and a lot of high-quality releases before some people are fully ready to trust rapping basketball players, but they aren’t going away anytime soon. If anything, expect more Bridges types—young artists drawing on the nascent sound of their hometowns—coming into the league already with a network of local and national rap stars ready to champion them.</p>
<p id="KZzyVV">Bridges plans to continue working on music in the offseason and says he hopes to develop other artists in his RTB crew. After all, someone has to hold things down while he’s busy flying above the rim.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="FnMZ0F">“The people in my circle, they want to rap and get out there,” he says. “They know I can’t rap all year around.”</p>
<p id="Pv11Xy"><a href="http://@grantrindner"><em>Grant Rindner</em></a><em> is a culture writer who has contributed to </em>GQ, Rolling Stone, i-D<em>, and other outlets.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2021/4/1/22360788/miles-bridges-rapper-charlotte-hornets-rtb-mb
Grant Rindner