#but can i build a relationship with a person whose favorite genre is edm?????

[terrainofheartfelt]

so i've been on a few dates this week with varying results and varying goals of engagement. and i have plans to see this one person again which is nice and we got on well, but one thing that did not click was that he didn't have a favorite musical artist??????? like he said that he doesn't listen that way/think that way????? hello?????? i am concern?????

[thats-what-they-say]

Blurred Lines: Drunk In Love

This is a blog post from my college project Hipnotized. The exact date it was written has been lost to time. I would imagine some time in February or March of 2014.

“Musical genres are as groundless as racial categories. Genres don’t describe music, they describe sales categories, marketing ploys, demographic studies, etc. And, like racial categories, they attempt to simplify the human spirit. But spirit is a hard thing to market.”

— Stew

The above quote is by a musician named Stew from his review of Earl Sweatshirt's newest album, Doris. As a black man who plays rock music, Stew must be intimately familiar with the music industry's limiting conception and conflation of race and musical genre. Rock, after all, was originally a Black musical tradition but today Black musicians are largely excluded from the rock canon (which is why Gary Clarke Jr. can win a Grammy for best traditional R&B but not best rock song). 

But the troubled relationship between race and genre is not limited to Rock music. Consider the misleading and casually offensive new Grammy category "Urban Contemporary." The Barbadian singer Rihanna works with the exact same songwriters and producers as Katy Perry, Kesha, or P!nk, all pop artists. But this year her album was nominated in the Urban Contemporary category rather than Pop.  Perhaps that is because "Urban" is really just a euphemism for Black.

And then there is hip-hop. What do we talk about when we talk about hip-hop?

#BlurredLines is a recurring feature here on the Hipnotized blog devoted to the blurry boundaries between rap, R&B, electronic, and pop under the umbrella of hip-hop. Hip-hop has always been an umbrella term. Historically it has referred to a broad range of cultural expressive practices which originated in mostly black and hispanic ghettos. With regards to music, hip-hop referred almost exclusively to the turntable arts (as pioneered by DJs like Kool Herc in the 1970s) which then morphed into rap. It was rooted in certain urban communities, cultures, and experiences. It was almost exclusively Black.

But hip-hop as a musical genre has grown ever more nebulous, de-localized, and decentralized. In the last year, Juicy J spit a rap verse on a Katy Perry song. Rihanna sang the hook on an Eminem song, which peaked at #1 on both the pop and rap charts. Miley Cyrus twerked. Drake's biggest hit didn't actually feature any rapping at all. Rappers and R&B artists crossover to the pop charts all the time while pop artists appropriate hip-hop aesthetics to give their music edge. The distinctions between pop and hip-hop grow more porous with every day.  

But what about electronic music? The pop music machine is nothing if not ravenous for new sounds to absorb. Now that artists like Skrillex and Avicii are pop chart regulars it is clear that electronic has been fully subsumed into Pop music. But it also interplays with hip-hop in fascinating ways. In 2013 Kanye West released an album whose production often feels more rooted in electronic music than rap. But then again--what really is the difference? Timbaland is a black producer who builds tracks for rap artists. Hudson Mowhawke is a white producer who performs his music at EDM festivals for mostly white audiences. But they both use the same tools to make beats.  And (whether they know it or not) they both extend from the same musical tradition. In the 1970s early hip-hop and early electronic music were nothing more than two divergent extensions of Disco.

WIth #BlurredLines I will attempt to highlight particular artists and musical phenomena that complicate our conceptions of musical genre. This week, I can't think of a better example than the recent outpouring of "Drunk In Love" remixes and covers.  Of course, the original song is by Beyonce featuring a rap verse from her husband Jay Z. Their union, on wax and in life, is a perfect embodiment of pop and hip-hop's current embrace.  But does Beyonce really belong under the hip-hop umbrella? Does "Drunk in Love?" There is no definitive answer to these questions, and policing genre boundaries is a useless activity. Beyonce is a global pop star, with a melismatic vocal style derived from the R&B/Gospel traditions. And she is certainly associated with hip-hop for many reasons, including the incorporation of hip-hop beats and aesthetics into her work.

What is more interesting is the ways that "Drunk in Love" actually defies genre altogether. It doesn't sound like anything else on the pop charts. But, notwithstanding Jay Z's verse, it also doesn't sound like hip-hop. Perhaps it is this ambiguity which compelled so many different artists to make the song their own. Kanye West and Future pushed "Drunk in Love" further into hip-hop territory with their remixes. Diplo, already a genre traversing (and/or appropriating) producer, gave the song his dance-hall makeover. Most curiously, the rapper T.I. spit a verse for an unofficial trap remix. And my personal favorite: The Weeknd completely commandeered the song with his moody remix, transforming it from an expression of marital bliss to a dark rehashing of the singer's many drug habits and dispensable women.

"Drunk In Love" is so universally resonant that it can serve as a catalyst for this collision of sounds, styles, and stories. What's more exciting is that this collision is happening on the internet where a kind of free-for-all mentality reigns. Everything is fair game for reuse, remixing, and transformation. Nothing is for sale so it doesn't need to be packaged and marketed. In other words, nothing needs to be divided into genre. On the internet, "Drunk In Love" can be pop and rap and EDM and PBR&B (ugh). But it also transcends all of these things, rendering genres meaningless and useless. With every subsequent remix, the lines just keep getting blurrier!