More Bad News from the Hip-Hop Frontier

My TV happened to end up on BET for a while this afternoon and I was struck by the further distillation of "hop hop" music into a ubiquitous murmur of rhythmic noise.

Exhibit A: Lil' Wayne's Lollipop - yet another sex-as-candy innuendo love-grind features Lil' Wayne and bevy of hoochie girls rolling around a light cityscape in a stretch limousine. I honestly thought I'd tuned in during the song's bridge - the mood seemed so transitional and ambiguous. After listening for a few more bars, however, I realized this was the song.
I believe myself to have very broad limits in defining music, and my tastes are eclectic and varied. That being said, calling Lollipop a hip-hop song is like calling a doorbell a symphony.

(Let's not get theoretical here - I know there are those who would argue for the virtues of doorbells.)

This particular track demonstrated some disturbing trends which I feel should be brought to light for conscientious listeners everywhere.
The track Lollipop was produced using the now-familiar thick, heavy "southern-style" beats that have come out of cities like Atlanta and Nashville. While they may be great fun to blast out your neighbors while at stop lights, their complexity and originality is only a glimmering shadow of the pioneering hip-hop music.

Still, like radio-friendly top-40 hits, these artists mix and produce their music to sell - featuring hooks and catchy rhythms galore. This is good business.

However, unlike all music up until this point, this was the first time when I was unable to hear a discernible solo artist. Quite astonishingly, Lil' Wayne's vocals were multi-tracked and mixed down into the surrounding music so that I honestly expected the real artist to come on and start rapping on top of Lil' Wayne's ostinato.
Still, after listening for another minute, I realized that this was the song, and this was the artist and this was the music. And this was one sorrily disappointed music fan.

This is a sign of our music culture: as iPods have become a universal accessory for all ages and all demographics, musicians and producers have responded by crafting their tunes to play well to America's suddenly all-mobile listening habits. Gone are 80% of dynamic contrasts. Aside from a fade-in or -out, ipod listeners can not be inconvenienced by the trouble of having to adjust volume constantly to accomodate the roar of life around them. However, when you play this music at home, on your stereo for your private enjoyment, suddenly you realize how much this music sounds like a background soundtrack to a bad television program. It is merely a murmur, built for you to keep step with it, and help "groove" along, but not complicated or interesting enough to force your ear to have to listen and distract you from your otherwise already complicated life.

This may seem a luxurious compliant to most, and for the most part, they would be right. It is a small irritation on the zit-covered existence of daily troubles, but the further we slip away from appreciating true art in any form, the worse we are as a culture.

I can't get inflamed about this, however, because I have to believe that real art and real music will survive as it always has. In ten years we will have forgotten about Lil' Wayne's Lollipop (thankfully) and will only remember this decade in sweeping generalities, the way we regard the 90's as 'Grunge' and think of Classic Hip-Hop as Run DMC, despite the hundreds of other influential musicians who worked during that pioneering time.

I await music's next revolution with baited breath, and can't wait for this drought of musical sterility to pass.