By Emmanuel Louis-Charles
Today’s Music Would Not Exist Without It
Torey Lanez just finished his press run for Chixtape 5 and one of the major themes in this interview run was him talking about Young Thug’s influence and how most of the rap game sounds like him. While I agree with this point I feel like and even bigger influence on today’s music is Chicago and the drill scene that exploded in 2012. The minimalist flows, viciously knocking beats, and endlessly violent content are all things that have become staples in music today. Lets not forget the physical imprint drill left on the rap game. True Religion, Moncler and Hermes all owe Chief Keef a lot of money for making their clothes popular to an audience that was not thinking about them at all.
Now lets turn to the invasion of melody in hip hop. While I won’t discredit those like Drake, Cudi, and Kanye for bringing other melody driven genres and blending them with rap. For this current generation and the way they use auto tune, their inspiration was not Kanye or T-Pain, it was Lil Durk and Chief Keef. More Durk who has stuck to using auto tune since his first big singles “I’m Still A Hitta” and “L’s Anthem”. To me A Boogie, Lil Uzi , Smooky Margielaa, Lil TJay, Lil Tecca, and a plethora of other young auto tuned spitters all sound just like Durk and Keefs iconic records like “Right Here”, “Love No Thotties”, and “Macaroni Time”.
I remember the first time I heard “Top” by Uzi and I said to my “This kid listens to macaroni time all day everyday”. My thoughts were confirmed as Uzi said in his Sway interview that Sosa was one of his biggest inspirations. Drill was characterized by the violence and it disappointed me that some of my favorite radio personalities refrained from shedding light on the movement due to that and ignored a lot of the phenomenal music that came out of there and continues to leek out of every pore of the city. The impact of drill will never go away, from slang, to fashion, to sonics, drill is the catalyst behind the explosion of hip hop becoming the biggest genre and should be treated as a legendary and historic time in hip hop.
ifudontkno 