Category: Music

The Sound is a column on all things music written by Charles Park (’20) and Mark Park (’20). -Ed.

It’s 2019. Computers and phones are more accessible and affordable than ever. A Spotify or Apple Music subscription is at our fingertips. Youtube and Soundcloud are bottomless pits of great music that’s waiting to be heard.

As a result, it’s never been easier to make music.

You may not have noticed, but just in the past few years, a significant chunk of popular music has shifted from being produced in the biggest studios to the smallest bedrooms. An entire generation of underground producers is sending their beats to rappers and singers on Soundcloud, hoping to make it big. Take the example of Ronnyj, a Miami native who was a virtually unknown Soundcloud producer until he sent the beat for “ULTIMATE” to Denzel Curry.

The fruits of this trend extend beyond pop music. How many times has Youtube recommended you a live stream or playlist like this? It’s true: the rising popularity of “lo-fi hip hop” can be attributed to the numerous bedroom producers that make compilations and EPs full of simple, jazz and 90s boom-bap inspired songs that make it onto these playlists.

You might be disappointed to find out, though, that more producers do not necessarily mean more talent. The idea that “anyone can make music” has brought greater diversity and new ideas to the scene, but it’s also created a market for babysitting beginning producers. Here are just some of the reasons why music production has gotten so accessible and popular.

Sample Packs / Melody Packs / Loop Packs / MIDI Packs

My apologies if this breaks the mystery around the music producing process, but most of what music producers come up with, and a lot of what makes it onto the top charts, isn’t even made from scratch. In reality, most of the drum sounds and some of the instrumental melodies you hear are from “sample packs” that can be downloaded or bought from the internet, created by other producers. Sometimes, pulling three to four samples from a sample pack can end up sounding like something that’s ready for Drake or Kanye to rap over. There’s definitely a stigma around using these premade loops and melodies–and rightfully so–but the sample pack industry has become extremely lucrative.

To give you an idea of just how widespread this new business is, take the example of Internet Money. It’s a collective of producers (most notably Nick Mira, the producer of pretty much all Juice WRLD songs) that live together in a giant mansion and make music. A huge portion of their income reportedly comes from the samples they sell on their website. That’s right: samples are lucrative enough to afford a mansion.

Splice

Splice is arguably the best thing that has come from the bedroom producer trend: it’s an app and website that allows you to buy music software and plug-ins on payment plans, share your project files with other users like Dropbox or Google Drive, and browse through a near-endless bank of samples. It’s a great way for beginning producers to dip their toes in the game and see if the temperature right for them. Just from browsing through Splice’s samples, it’s clear where lo-fi hip hop producers get virtually all of their sounds from.

Type Beats

This is the main reason why producing is so appealing to hobbyists: the prospect of making a little pocket money from it. Gone are the days of having to lawyer up to sell a song: today, you can easily “lease” mp3s of your track to vocalists for a flat fee, through middlemen services like Traktrain and Beatstars. Producers post these instrumentals on Youtube with titles like “Drake Type Beat” or “Lil Baby / Gunna Type Beat” as a marketing tactic. Most famously, Desiigner’s song “Panda” was a type beat he bought for $200 from Youtube in 2014. For producers, type beats are a further affirmation that producing can be profitable as much as it is enjoyable.

There’s no doubt that as of today, it doesn’t take the same amount of studying music theory, learning the ins and outs of software, and taking classes on audio engineering to make a beat worthy of the Billboard 100. And at this point, it’s clear that no amount of complaining about loop packs or mediocre type beats will reverse the way the music industry has shifted in the last few years. What we can only hope for is that through the bloated market of Frank Ocean type beats on Youtube will come new genres and new sounds, reflective of the unpredictable ebb and flow of the music world.

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The Sound is a column on all things music written by Charles Park (’20) and Mark Park (’20). -Ed.

Whether or not if you’ve been following the news or music, most people know that Kanye West is one of the most controversial entertainment figures today. The past years have been a rough road for his fans, shocking them from his advocacy for Trump, from problematic tweets, and from the defense of problematic artists. Despite his sincere and apologetic reflection addressed in his latest album, “ye,” and the address of his unstable mental health, all is not forgiven. He still faces criticism from the majority, finding himself as the most polarizing artist last year.

From the absurd comments such as “Slavery is a choice,” and “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” Kanye lost everything: he jeopardized his marriage with Kim Kardashian,  lost one of his closest friend, Don C, and, most importantly, disheartened all of his fans. In an interview with 107.5 WGCI Chicago, Kanye West breaks down into tears on his so-called “downfall” and struggles with his mental health issues. He wholeheartedly apologizes to everyone for his comments, insinuating that his struggles with mental illness drove him to this problematic state. This became a tearful moment for many, prompting people to assume that this was the turning point: a redemption for Kanye West.

West started his redemption in the later half of 2018. His latest album, “ye,” truly reveals his raw emotions and insecurities in this whole tumult. Unveiling the rationales of his questionable beliefs-his unstable mental health-Kanye tries his best to reach out to those who were damaged from his comments. Kim Kardashian also tried to control the damage by referring his tweets as a form of “therapy” for his mental illness-schizophrenia. As an ultimate apology, he tweets, “My eyes are now wide open and now realize I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!” The sole belief of Kanye distancing himself from Trump and political opinion sounds ridiculous; however, it did sound plausible as he was working on his new album. This promise still satisfied what everyone wanted: enjoying his music without any hatred against his words. So, fans started to hope that the “old Kanye” would return in 2019, redeeming himself as one of the legendary rap-stars in the 2000s.

Unfortunately, his promise broke this year, unable to contain that “dragon energy” he kept during his album workshop. In January, West posted his first tweet: “One of my favorite of many things about what the Trump hat represents to me is that people can’t tell me what to do because I’m black.” This, again, devastated his fans, failing all anticipation that everyone has hoped from his real self. Kanye, blind to the world that Trump envisions, continued to ignore the voices from the community that he once supported.

The only thing that we could really hope for is West to redeem himself in 2019 as there are plenty of opportunities. For instance, the new album, “Yandhi” is a sequel to his past albums, suggesting he maybe could go back to his past self. Furthermore, he plans to have “Sunday Services,” wherein he hosts religiously themed concerts by adding gospel vibes to his songs. Although this news shines no definite light on his comeback efforts, these suggest positive things that we could hope for.

Throughout his whole career, Kanye always was put in the spotlight with either quality music or unexpected behaviors. So, the ultimate question is whether we separate the artist from his or her work. Personally, I do enjoy listening to some songs produced by controversial artists as my playlist are filled with them such as XXXTentacion, Kanye West, Famous Dex, Chris Brown, and more; however, it is a guilty pleasure. I do acknowledge the wrong in supporting these controversial artists. Others outright dismiss their music, condemn them in social media, and more. It’s a difficult question to be had.

Almost everyone has a song or two by Kanye West, Chris Brown, Dr.Dre, or even David Bowie in their playlist. So here is a slightly different perspective. Perhaps, actions that we take for our ethical concerns are not the best for us. Rather, the incomplete rectitude and guilty enjoyment to their music help us better understand the complicated world we live in and lets us become more self-aware. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, these artists will always pop up in the “recommended” lists for our playlists, and it is up to us on how we take responsibility. A song or two from these artists in our playlists would not change their whole career, but we should still condemn these artists for their outrageous behaviors but while giving them a second chance at the same time. 

– Mark Park ‘20

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The Sound is a column on all things music written by Charles Park (’20) and Mark Park (’20). -Ed.

If you’ve been following news on politics or music this year, you know about the tumult Chicago rapper Kanye West has created for himself: for calling for the abolishing of the 13th Amendment, for claiming that slavery was a choice, and for flaunting a MAGA hat all over social media.

Less than a month before his album ye dropped this June, Kanye famously said at TMZ: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years… For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.” TMZ employee Van Lathan was one of the first to confront him, telling him that his luxurious life as an artist has alienated him from the problems that “common black folk” go through in their lives: the residual discrimination that has manifested as an after effect of the aforementioned 400 years of slavery. Kanye has often been cited as the symbol for “blackness” (as Vox put it) in American pop culture.

His first three albums, nicknamed the Higher Education trilogy: The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation, are reflective of his self-awareness and reverence for his roots – with his mother, with Chicago, and with his career as a producer and rapper. He admittedly didn’t have the in-the-pocket flow and gruff voice of many rappers at the time, which is why it took so long for him to convince Jay-Z to give him at a shot at rapping, a stray from his usual gig as a producer. His real draw was, therefore, not his voice, but his introspective and humble lyrics.

So what makes people accuse him now of losing that humility? Did the fame truly get to him? Did marrying into the Kardashian family compromise his values?

I don’t think that Kanye’s remarks on Trump and on slavery are anything new. To me, Kanye saying anything controversial means “oh… he’s probably dropping an album soon”. Even in the past few years, he had a feud with Taylor Swift and opened up about his $53 million debt just before releasing his 2016 album The Life of Pablo; most iconically, he said on national television “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” a week after dropping the second album to the education trilogy, Late Registration.

As far as most can tell, these recent controversies simply started as another attempt to promote his work that ended up becoming blown out of proportion because of the topical nature of the subject matter he chose to delve into: Trump and racism. His appearances on shows like Jimmy Kimmel are embarrassingly revealing of his lack of fleshed-out, logical contentions about the people – and ideas – he’s promoting, and Trump’s open endorsement of West just seems like a PR move to pretend like the president is actually caught up on American and African American pop culture – “thank you Kanye, very cool!”

What’s equally upsetting is the number of people that are getting worked up about Kanye’s recent moves. Even if they can’t see through the fact that it’s just a promotional campaign for an album that went too far, it’s plain to see that he has good intentions. For the record, Kanye has never stated that he agrees with everything Trump says: he said that he doesn’t fully agree with anyone, which is what makes everyone unique. Instead, he stands behind what the MAGA slogan represents: literally speaking, a great America.

As a fan of his music and art, I hope that Kanye would actually take the time to learn more about how his own country functions, and to use that knowledge to inspire his fans to take action for themselves. So many rappers have made efforts to improve their hometown and do actual good for the community, a recent example being rapper 21 Savage making a back to school drive for underprivileged children in Atlanta. Kanye’s bars on ye showed that a large part of him is still the soft, insecure Kanye he was during his formative years as a rapper in the early 2000s: he just has to harness that energy for actually politically informed discourse, rather than his usual sensationalized tirade.

– Charles Park (’20)

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The Sound is a column on all things music written by Charles Park (’20) and Mark Park (’20). -Ed.

Once again, the Grammys turned a deaf-ear, ending the night with a disappointment. Despite these rising trends of alternative genres such as Hip-hop and Indie rock, Grammys never recognized their presence in their awards. It had its highlighting moments, but it just couldn’t amend the hole of Hip-hop. 

So, let’s face it, nowadays, the Grammys are simply irrelevant.

From the guest appearance of Hillary Clinton to the Time’s up and #MeToo political movements (sexual harassment awareness), Grammy’s desperate attempts to follow the trend could be seen in the Red Carpet. Yet the Grammys’ nominations and performance line ups do not reflect the message . In the last six years of Grammys, out of 899 nominees, only nine percent were women. This year, Lorde’s Melodrama was the only female album nominee for Album of the Year. The Grammys failed to focus on the message, finishing the night with no recollection of the speeches and white pins. Furthermore, none of the winners of the Grammy officially recognized the Time’s up pins from the movement nor gave a shout out.

Moving away from the movements, let’s talk about the awards…

Again, all the big awards went to the wrong person (sorry, Bruno). Take a look at the Record of the Year category, “24K Magic” beat Kendrick’s “Humble” and JAY-Z’s “Story of O.J.” Unlike Bruno’s light-hearted fun, Kendrick and JAY-Z have produced a , creating meaningful impacts to the whole society. We can solely see Grammy’s utter contempt for Hip-hop as a whole. Furthermore, in the Best Album category,  it was down to Kendrick and Tyler the Creator. But, just like last year, Kendrick lost to a pop album, Bruno’s 24K Magic.  Now, Kendrick’s album is on the third losing streak, losing to Macklemore, Taylor Swift, and now, Bruno Mars. Hip-hop has been relevant and on the trend for several years, and still only one hip-hop album (OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below) has won album of the year. Yet, what raged the internet most was the Best New Artists category. SZA, a newly rising R&B soul singer, lost to Alessia Cara, who did not post any new albums this year. SZA was able to put out one of the best albums in 2017, ranking in top 10 for the Billboard’s top album list. On the other hand, Alessia only featured in couple hit songs and never produced an album. This put JAY-Z and SZA in a complete loss with no Grammy awards even though they were the most nominated artists this year.

Performances were great, but not the best…

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Source:Grammys.com

There were performances that were powerful and meaningful as Kendrick’s such as Kesha’s performance, ‘Praying’. She was able to convey a deep performance, acknowledging to the #MeToo movement. There was also Logic’s 1-800-273-8255, doing an amazing speech, tackling suicide and depression issues. But the stars of the performance were Kendrick and Dave Chappelle. Along with Dave Chappelle short joke, “I just want to remind the audience that the only thing more frightening than watching a black man be honest in America is being an honest black man in America,” Kendrick opened a fiery performance with U2. However, the performances were smooth until U2 took the stage by themselves later on. Sure, we do love U2 and their old albums. But, it’s time to let go. They are irrelevant.

Grammys was once the most prestigious music award in the world. Now, it’s a complete embarrassment. Their desperate efforts to keep up with the trends were disorganized, ending the show with no memory of the movements. Their awards were all rigid and against Hip-hop. Some of their performance lineups were completely irrelevant to the awards and this year’s theme.

Let’s really face it, Grammys are out of trend.