Head in the SoundClouds

By: Carlos Aguilar

Hip-hop has forever been a polarizing genre among the masses. Whenever people think of the hip-hop, they might instantly think of megastars such as Eminem, Drake and Jay-Z. With the genre sometimes comes to the stereotypical notion that hip-hop can only be comprised of lyrical content about money, women and the glamorization of the partying lifestyle. However, the past couple of years have seen a major shift in the genre that puts hip-hop music into a state antithetical to what it’s primarily known to be. 

Putting it best was perhaps Denzel Curry, a Florida-based artist who said to Pitchfork.com after ending his hip-hop show with “Wall of Death,” something normally seen at punk and hardcore concerts. 

“I never wanted to perform like a rapper. Rap shows are boring to me, and I always had fun going to rock shows and moshing and shit,” Curry said.

Curry’s mindset isn’t one that’s foreign nowadays in hip-hop music. It’s actually quite a normal approach. If you take one look at the top charts over the past year, you’ll see music from artists who have been open about finding inspiration through unexplored genres. What is being referenced here is not a blending of the hip-hop and rock genres; we’ve already seen that wave come and go with nu-metal in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rather, there is something happening with the implementation of punk rock and emo culture into hip-hop music. The fans who 10 years ago would have been frequenting your local malls wearing Bring Me the Horizon shirts and going to Asking Alexandria shows have found their opening to change the landscape of hip-hop music. These artists are continuously redefining what being in hip-hop entails, turning it into the new “emo” scene in music through the nature of their distribution strategies, stage shows and lyrical content.

Much like punk rock, hardcore and other offsets of the “emo” umbrella, hip-hop artists currently are embracing the D.I.Y approach to their careers. D.I.Y is the acronym for “Do It Yourself,” which is the mantra that early punk rock bands lived by. Names like Henry Rollins and Billie Joe Armstrong embodied this movement and its message that if you want to succeed in music, you have to put in the work yourself and not expect anything to be handed to you. The meaning can range from the will to play in front of smaller audiences, to driving yourself to every show, to producing and distributing your own music without a record label aiding. The platform that has made it possible for the D.I.Y. approach to be at the forefront of hip-hop is SoundCloud. This website allows people to upload their own music – or any audio file for that matter – and share it with a global audience. What separates SoundCloud from something like YouTube is that it’s entirely audio-based without any visuals aside from cover artwork. The website celebrated 10 years this past October, but it was only in 2015 when the music industry saw exactly what it was capable of achieving. That year, artists Post Malone, Lil Yachty and Desiigner uploaded songs to SoundCloud that would later on make it onto the Billboard Hot 100. In Desiigner’s case, his song “Panda” peaked at No. 1 for the first two weeks of May 2016. Even if for just briefly, this means that it was the most popular song in the United States. These instances of success all occurred before any of the artists were signed to or even known by record labels. SoundCloud continued to prove its worth to the underground hip-hop scene who were quite literally  “doing it themselves” when it came to reaching out to the masses.

Continuing the cycle of hip-hop’s departure from the norm, an increasing number of elements from the cultures of emo, punk rock and hardcore music have been integrated into the genre in ways that expand beyond just distribution. One of SoundCloud’s most prominent names, Lil Peep, had songs that sampled well-known rock bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Underoath and Pierce the Veil, all of whom are about as far-removed from hip-hop as possible. Ghostemane and Scarlxrd used to be in death metal and nu-metal bands respectively before breaking off to embark on solo careers in hip-hop. Both of them have incorporated elements from metal such as screaming into their performances. Take one glance at the music video for “No More” by DeathbyRomy, and you’ll see the standard elements of a hip-hop video be replaced with gothic imagery. All the way down to the physical appearances of hip-hop artists, the genre is something completely different from what it used to be. Face tattoos have become a trend the same way that ear gauges and snake bite piercings used to be in the “emo” scene a decade ago. To go off of the main point in the Curry quote from earlier, audiences at live shows are reacting to the music in ways traditionally found in punk rock as opposed to hip-hop. They’re moshing, stage-diving, headbanging and just overall doing their part in helping give the genre a new identity just as much as the artists themselves are.

As it was previously stated, hip-hop has spent the better part of its mainstream tenure being stereotyped for its traditionally one-dimensional lyrics about money and women. That isn’t to say that there have never been heartfelt lyrics in hip-hop; that’s not true. It’s just that hip-hop artists have never been perceived to be “emo.” Those who rise to prominence aren’t expressing those feelings in their music but the shift in lyrical content has been noticeable. An early major signal that something in the genre was changing was when Lil Uzi Vert’s song “X0 TOUR Llif3” became a mainstream hit in early 2017, peaking at No. 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The lyrics to the song detail a legitimate breakup that Lil Uzi Vert went through and the behavior that followed with drug abuse, frivolous spending and thoughts of suicide. This type of content in a popular hip-hop song felt out of place, but it was proven to not be a one-time thing for the genre. Since then, a plethora of artists has entered the Billboard Hot 100 with songs also containing lyrics with similar, heavy messages. In the case of now-deceased musician XXXTentacion, his song “Jocelyn Flores” managed to peak at No. 19 despite its nature. It’s untraditionally short in length for a major hit, just shy of two minutes, and for a hip-hop song, the instrumentation is heavily supported by acoustic guitars and drums. However, in that span, the song details the feelings of the artist about the friend whom the song is named after and how she committed suicide while on vacation in Florida visiting him. A line in the song like, “I’m in pain, wanna put 10 shots in my brain. I’ve been trippin’ ‘bout some things, can’t change,” highlights XXXTentacion’s feelings about the incident in anything but a subtle manner. 

What these types of lyrics accomplish – aside from being a personal release for the artists – is tell listeners who may be experiencing similar bouts of depression that they’re not alone in what they’re going through. Lil Peep, Juice WRLD and Lil Xan are among other names who have used their lyrics to share their own experiences with mental illness, and fans of theirs have expressed on social media how their songs had a part in saving their lives. An artist named Wifisfuneral turned what he intended to be a suicide note into a mixtape that ended up getting him his first record deal. Unintentionally, he told his fanbase that there is the real possibility to prosper in life, even when you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom. For those whose perception of hip-hop music is that it all sounds like “Hot in Herre” by Nelly or “In Da Club” by 50 Cent, it might be beneficial for them to explore what’s been going on in the genre as of late.

Right now, everything has fallen into place to make “emo” hip-hop music the most popular variation of the genre, though it isn’t like something of this nature has never been attempted before. Two particular artists that need to be mentioned when trying to locate the roots of the genre are Kid Cudi and Tyler, the Creator. 

Cudi, who was coming off of helping with Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreaks album released “Man on the Moon: The End of Day,” in September 2009. About a year-and-a-half later, Tyler put out “Goblin.” These two albums shared similar themes lyrically about mental health, and sonically, they both possessed darker, more brooding tones than what was normally released at the time for hip-hop. The biggest hit from Cudi’s album, “Day ‘n’ Nite,” told the story of how Cudi regretted not making peace with his uncle before he passed away. The song reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 among other accolades. Tyler’s biggest hit, “Yonkers,” deals with an inner-turmoil between himself and his alter ego about which person he wants to be. The song won him the award for Best New Artist at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Beyond just their songs, Cudi and Tyler exemplified very early on the stage show mentality that prominent SoundCloud artists eventually would. Their concerts resembled rock shows more than anything else, and in Tyler’s case, the Odd Future artist would even crowd surf. However, what separates them from the later artists of SoundCloud who was that in the early 2010s, it didn’t feel like the genre was ready to be centered around “emo” culture just yet. This was at the time where West and Lil Wayne were at the peak of their careers, and Drake was just starting to gain serious notoriety. Instead of being able to become the biggest names in hip-hop, Cudi and Tyler helped pioneer the movement that would later take over the genre, and the two have been given their due credit by contemporary hip-hop musicians who openly take inspiration from their artistry.

Everything in music has a shelf life attached to it. Nothing lasts forever, and just like every other “emo” scene prior, hip-hop being the trend will eventually fade away. However, the impact that artists are having on audiences across the world puts into question if the legacy of current hip-hop will also fade once the genre does. There isn’t really a precedent to go off of and measure the likelihood of that. What’s happening in hip-hop is something that never has before, and it may never again. The platform that helped bring all of this to fruition, SoundCloud, isn’t going anywhere, so as long as fans can continue to be inspired to the point where they choose to turn their passion into a career, the next evolution of the genre can very easily retain all of the elements from the current state. Besides, the future wave of artists will have the blueprints that they need to make hip-hop music sound like everything but hip-hop music.