Music
Are gentle guitar samples shaping the future of rap? We take a look at the two genre's collaborative history and explore how the sounds might blend in the near future.
In 1981, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five opened for The Clash in New York City. The crowd that gathered to see the British punk rockers found the choice offensive and literally booed, spat and threw beers in protest. This wasn't the first time rock and hip-hop came together but by all accounts of that day, the fascination and wonder that would eventually tie the two genres was largely unforeseeable.
Rock and hip-hop continued a mutual flirtation throughout the decades. In 2009, Jay Z released Blueprint 3, featuring work with the electro-leaning Empire Of The Sun. The relationship between rap and indie rock began to bloom and step to the forefront of rap. There was an outpouring of indie rock sampled music— from Kid Cudi who collaborated with MGMT and Ratatat on Pursuit Of Happiness, BlakRoc a bizarre record that materialised after a jam session between Dame Dash and The Black Keys, featuring Ludacris, Mos Def, Pharaohe Monch and Raekwon to Kanye West teaming up with Bon Iver to actualise his Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Artists like Childish Gambino, whose 2010 seven-track mixtape I AM JUST A RAPPER featuring bars purely over instrumentals by Sleigh Bells, Neon Indian, Yeasayer and Grizzly Bear. Hip-hop’s obsession with indie rock was never built out of necessity but a generational fascination with a genre of music that was paramount to their formative listening years but also revolutionary in its vulnerability. It opened up hip-hop to explore emotions that went beyond breakups and anger, spilling into mourning, melancholy, and mental health.
2010 saw an enchantment with Vampire Weekend and guitar riffs spur into a sound that would not only characterise a moment in time for music but revolutionise sampling and genre bending in hip-hop for years to come. Old habits die hard and the prevalence of indie guitar samples have not waned. Most recently, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Peep and Trippe Redd refashioned this into emo rap, hyper emotive bars over beats that lend themselves to bands such as Explosions In The Sky, Avenged Sevenfold and Death Cab For Cutie.
While hip-hop continues to evolve, we take a look at at some of the best uses of indie guitar samples.
Kids See Ghosts - Cudi Montage (2018)
Sample: Kurt Cobain - Burn The Rain
Kanye West and Kid Cudi’s first collaborative album is an unhinged symphony of Western movie soundscapes and humming with a heavy hand of sampling. There's no mistaking the Kurt Cobain sample that takes centre stage in the opening seconds of Cudi Montage. Both West and Cudi have experimented with indie guitar riffs throughout their work. Cudi’s entire discography has been both criticised and praised for its ability to sit somewhere between hip-hop and spaced-out indie rock. While Kanye’s incomparable ability to reimagine and repurpose the strangest samples into his work has pushed his career into its second decade. Burn The Rain, which is likely about Cobain’s drug addiction, provides a haunting backdrop to Cudi’s pleas for emotional respite: “God, shine your love on me, save me, please.”
A$AP Rocky - Kids Turned Out Fine (2018)
Sample: Good Morning - Don't Come Home Today
A$AP Rocky’s fascination with unexpected sampling and indie rock has a long history, dating back to his 2013 mixtape, Long. Live. A$AP on which he sampled Imogen Heap, Kissing The Pink and Adiemus. Rocky found fame through Tumblr and this proximity to indie rock has been a recurring theme in his music since. His latest record, Testing, is a culmination of his love of art and sampling that, not unlike early Kanye, reads as a plea to take him seriously. Kids Turned Out Fine borrows the woozy jangle of Melbourne act Good Morning’s Don’t Come Home Today and blends seamlessly into that same hazy feeling Rocky often brings to his music.
Young Thug - Me Or Us (2017)
Interpolates: Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life
Young Thug’s Beautiful Thugger Girls saw the Atlanta rapper yodel his way into fans' hearts. Me Or Us, unmistakably co-produced by Post Malone is a stripped-back, acoustic rap ballad far from any pop hit usually delivered by Malone. Thugger croons, hums and gently takes the listener to task in one his most intimate songs to date. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Thugger is gentle with his treatment of Bright Eyes’ First Day of My Life (the chords re-recorded by producer Charlie Handsome). He purrs what would otherwise be an ultimatum, if not for the gentle twanging of the guitars and the gentle melody of his voice: “Who you loyal to? Me or us?/Who you trust the most? Me or us?”
Lil Peep feat. Lil Tracy - Cobain (2016)
Sample: Owen - Bad News
The late Lil Peep was at the forefront of the emo rap movement. His emotionally raw lyrics sat on beats that were formidable in towing the line between trap and indie rock. Often sampling bands that tugged on the nostalgic heartstrings of listeners, he managed to develop a sound that was just as poignant for new listeners too. Cobain, which features guitar riffs from Owen’s Bad News is lyrically as far from the original as possible yet both ruminate in an undeniable sadness that sometimes veers into depressed indifference. “I wouldn’t call [my music] the new emo necessarily...It’s just another wave of it,” he said in an interview with Pitchfork. “It’s just adapting to the new sounds that people want to listen to when they hop in the car and shit. We’re just giving it that emo spin.”
Pimp Flaco - Sintigo (2016)
Sample: Empire Of The Sun - We Are The People
One half of the Spanish trap duo Flaco and Malo, Pimp Flaco brings together influences from both American hip-hop and flamenco on Sintigo. Boasting a high profile in their homeland, Flaco and Malo look to command the attention of fans around the world with their bubblegum pink aesthetics and left-of-centre antics. Sampling Empire Of The Sun’s We Are The People is a strange choice, but when saddled on to the harshly auto tuned vocals of Flaco, it’s repurposed into something fresh and new. It may not sound as polished as a Kanye West production but the sheer fact that indie guitar continues to weave in and out of hip-hop more seamlessly than a 1981 Grandmaster Flash support slot signals more exciting times for the genre ahead.
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