Well, I understand why your opinion may be so strongly against hip hop then. I agree that the vast majority is absolutely devoid of any artistic merit, and I can only imagine how, in a small country, talent would be even less diverse.

To be honest, I can't listen to 99% of the stuff I hear people playing on their bluetooth speakers, or at the supermarket, or bullshit is trending on youtube and I make the mistake of giving it a listen lol. It's derivative, commercial crap, and I know this sentence has been said at least a quadrillion times just this week.

But there are producers really pushing the envelope, even in the mainstream.

I don't like Weeknd and ASAP's music lol.
However Aesop Rock, which people always confuse with ASAP, is my favorite rapper of all time, and I was gonna recommend one of his albums lol. He did a collab with TOBACCO (from the psychedelic electronic group Black Moth Super Rainbow). Analog synths combined with the vocals of one of the, if not THE most talented rappers = really unique album. Give this one a try :

I almost always HATE autotune, but every once in a while I find it works perfectly in a given song or album, as part of a solid artistic vision.
JPEGMAFIA's production is just insane. Some of the stuff he does, I've never heard anyone do anything remotely similar.

You might not like it yourself, but can you honestly say there isn't some high level production going on there?

I have to disagree, firstly because some of the names I cited consider themselves hip hop artists, not electronic producers influenced by it.
Secondly hip hop itself has been infused with electronic and jazz from its early days. Listen to Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, it has Ron Carter playing the bass ffs lol, and no-one in their right mind would consider it anything other than one of the biggest classics of the genre, not jazz with hip hop influences.

And today the line is blurred more than ever. Tons of jazz musicians have incorporated hip hop elements in their music, and they gave birth to new, fresh sub-genres (different from WARP and Ninja Tune stuff). Conversely, there are more and more world class jazz musicians guest starring on, or even producing hip hop albums : check out the roster on TPAB, and that's one of the biggest mainstream albums of all time.

Again, I disagree. Alternative hip hop isn't limited to WARP style electro-jazz producers. But even more important than that, alternative and experimental hip hop has found its way into the mainstream somehow : either alternative rappers becoming more or less mainstream (Atmosphere, Earl Sweatshirt) or mainstream rappers incorporating alternative and experimental sounds.

Danny Brown's Atrocity Exhibition is an amazing album, and he's one of the biggest names in the hip hop world. Yet the album sounds NOTHING like anything you would hear on mainstream records.

Listen to these two songs, and tell me honestly : whether you personally like them or not, don't you find any artistic merit in these productions?
Again, this is one of the most mainstream rappers of the past 10-15 years. His early stuff is nothing but club bangers for twerkers lol. But his sound evolved profoundly and now everything he does is more or less experimental.
So that brings the question, if such big names are incorporating those sounds, is it still alternative? Is it a separate music from just hip hop?

And he recently made an album with JPEGMAFIA. It's absolutely INSANE lol.

Again, I understand where you come from. MOST hip hop is garbage to me too.
But at some point I started digging in and discovered an incredibly variety of sounds that completely changed my view of the genre.
There's some serious talent in there. SERIOUS talent.

You take any decade where rock was king, a good portion of mainstream acts sound derivative, boring, similar etc. Any time mainstream rock was getting stale, some underground or alternative sound would give it new life. And most mainstream acts who tried to incorporate those new sounds would, most of the time, sound like absolute shit, except a few that managed to evolve gracefully.

But even in the 80s when mainstream rock was the most corporate shit imaginable, there were underground acts breaking barriers, and they either became successes later on, or influenced successful bands to come.

Remember, the trap sound that has been dominating hip hop (and even dethroned dubstep in the EDM scene) for at least a decade was originally underground as can be.

And some say it has run its course, and hip hop will either go through a new paradigm shift, or lose its status as the major genre of the day.

(oh and let's not even delve into hip hop becoming pop music lol)

This totally baffles me lol. While Portnoy is as far as you can get from jazz (although he did play improvised music with LTE) Mangini is just a metronome with four limbs. He makes Buddy Rich sound like Ed Blackwell lol.

 

Is also an Alt Hip-Hop artist and thus isn't a part of Hip-Hop culture. (Mine too actually)

Sounds like a serious praise to me.
Alright, let's agree to disagree and round up the off-topic, shall we?

P.S. Both of your songs are unavailable to me. Since they're an example of good modern production, can you post their names so I can find them on my own? Doubt he's really a mainstream artist tho. My peers and clients are (were? it's actually kinda quiet lately) consistently giving me a good vertical slice of what's mainstream today, and judging by their tastes he isn't in that slice.

 

Last edited: Jul 1, 2023

A metronome can't swing or groove
Yeah, that works for me. It was a good exchange either way lol.

Danny Brown - Tell me that I don't know
Danny Brown - Get hi

He's taken a serious experimental turn, but at some point you couldn't go to a club or party and not hear a Danny Brown song. He has been very close to the top, without reaching that final Drake/Kanye level of mainstream.

 

On the stage:

 

Or you can be like Caroline Polachek and use your natural voice for autotune!

 

This entire ST Germain album (of the same name) is sonically phenomenal, a blend of various genres, very tastefully mixed and produced.

 

Some great picks there, it's funny how people (especially boomers) love to cry about the "dark ages" we're living in and yet they don't know much about what's going on and refuse to get in touch with music being made right now.

 

fuckin love this record,

and Brendan o Brians work on in

 

This guy never ceases to amaze me...

 

Going on with pop music.

Kimbra.
I think she's insanely talented, her production is top notch, and I believe she mixes her own tracks too (at least to some extent, search "Kimbra iZotope").

This one is like Michael Jackson's Remember The Time but with the psychedelia cranked to 11 lol :

Nicolas Godin's (one half of the french duo AIR) 2020 album Concrete and Glass is a masterpiece :

Magdalena Bay

Charlotte Adigery & Boris Pupul

Roisin Murphy

Mild High Club

MGMT's little foray into psych rock infused pop in 2010 makes me wish they did more of that stuff

Next chapter I'll be delving into electronic music, so start stockpiling some canned food and water cause it will take three decades to get through it all

 

:

 

@SpyFx
Very nice!

 

Devin is a living god. Ocean Machine is probably the best produced metal album of all time.

 

i know its kind of obvius but this production feels so alive maybe its the (foley style percussions... idk)