Evolution of Media - Hip-Hop Narrative Entry #9

For my final (official) entry for my hip-hop intersession class, I'll be commenting on a handful of tracks that have been making their rounds around the web in the last week.

Arguably the highest profile track that has been circulating the blogs is Britney Spears' highly-anticipated first single off of her upcoming album, "Hold It Against Me." For me personally, Britney Spears hits her best strides when producers allow her to become a vehicle for trend-setting. The reason Britney was once widely considered to be the Madonna of our (my?) generation is not because she was as edgy or envelope-pushing (she's neither), but because she set the standards for everyone else to desperately keep pace with in her chart-topping singles.

With "Hold It Against Me," the dialogue surrounding the track mostly deals with the heavy dubstep influence being represented. Dubstep is a subgenre of electronic music best characterized by its proclivity for propulsive percussion, sample clipping, and - perhaps most famously - wobbly, droning, and heavily syncopated bass lines. The production on dubstep tracks is generally very tight and is thrust along with urgency every time the instrumental breakdown hits.

Dubstep takes a lot of cues from preexisting forms of electronic music, including techno, jungle, acid, drum ‘n bass, and – of course – hip-hop (especially with sample clipping and the emphasis on percussive elements). Vocals may be interspersed throughout a track, but tend to be a great deal more on the sparser side compared to vocal trance or trip-hop. Unlike much of music which includes vocals, they are usually not the centerpieces to the actual dubstep tracks themselves.

It’s is hardly a new subgenre, but dubstep is poised for its biggest push into American mainstream when Britney Spears finally introduces dubstep to the rest of the world, even if it is considered a somewhat diluted version. There have been a handful of artists (specifically hip-hop artists) in the last year or so who have bolstered the visibility of certain elements from European style dance and electronic music, including Akon, Taio Cruz, Ludacris, Usher, and Far East Movement with Dev (“Like a G6”). “Hold It Against Me” will be the first time I’ve heard anything as explicitly dubstep as this out in the open, and it features enough of a hip-hop feel for it to be embraced by the club crowd.

It also seems that Britney has Rusko in her corner for this upcoming album (an electronic producer who specializes in radio-friendly dubstep), which actually keeps her vocals as close to the front and center as possible. A lot of elitist dubstep connoisseurs clown on Rusko for that very reason, but as we have learned in the music world time and time again, ease of accessibility always leads to increased visibility, and I think Rusko will end up having the last laugh as far as that goes.

Unsurprisingly, the lyrics are nothing special, and Britney’s voice is heavily sifted through an autotune filter. Her level of artistic input on her records seems to be diminishing as she has gotten older, and little things like that will go a long way toward eroding her longevity as well if she’s not careful. For now, however, it looks like Britney’s got another pending mega-hit on her hands.

Yelawolf is another cat I’ve been listening to more frequently since I heard his eccentric delivery on Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty this past summer. He’s an Alabaman white rapper with American Indian roots, and while he boasts a lot of similarities with Eminem (he’s focused on precision and quality of lyricism, and wisely showcases his impeccable sense of rhythm and metric timing), he definitely doesn’t sound much like him. Yelawolf’s output up to this point has been unabashedly Southern, and he seems to enjoy switching up his flow in various ways in order to fit the feel and tempo of a track.

I didn’t like him very much at all on the first few listens of the track he shared with Big Boi (“You Ain’t No DJ”), but it was hard to ignore that his verses, while delivered wildly and erratically at a spitfire pace, were well-written. Then I heard his mixtape Trunk Musik 0-60 shortly afterward, and I got to sample a far greater palette of styles that Wolf was capable of. A leaked song featuring an older standby Houston rapper named Trae called “Shit I’ve Seen” is, so far, my favorite thing I’ve heard from Yelawolf, and demonstrates that he has a really good ear for beats as well. I’m not sure if he’ll change the world, but it’s been awhile since I have been genuinely excited about an up-and-comer with actual talent.

Finally, Kanye West and Jay-Z’s first collaborative single “H.A.M.” dropped last week, and I think it’s complete shit. West is definitely using the tide of critical acclaim from the last two months to his advantage by masking his more familiar terrible flow and rhymes beneath the somewhat interesting and sometimes cool production.

I’ve always had a problem with Kanye’s actual rapping for years, and I think a lot of his issues stem from the fact that he doesn’t have an intuitive approach when it comes to interpreting tracks. Since figuring out how to ride a track doesn’t come naturally for him, it makes sense that his best rhymes are usually borne out of months of painstaking writing and brainstorming (the majority of the songwriting on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was tolerable and even good at times). His verses on “H.A.M.,” on the other hand, find Kanye drifting back towards mediocrity, as demonstrated by the following wack-ass lines:

Like a nigga ever left up out this bitch, huh?
And if life a bitch suck my dick, huh?
And I bet she fucked the whole clique, huh
By the way nigga, you should fuckin’ quit, nigga
Just forget it, you talk it, I live it
Like Eli I did it, jokes on you muthafucka and I get it
No paper hoe, but you can have some more of me
Or-gy, or are we speaking metaphorically

People have championed Kanye West for being “not your average mainstream rap artist” for the better part of the last decade, but his output from at least the last two years have preoccupied the very lyrical space that people slag hip-hop for in the first place.

[Reserved for Jay Electronica]

(I’m in Jamaica and in a hurry at the moment, so I’ll have to finish the rest of my thoughts later)