Where are rap and rock headed?

October 5, 2006 8:09 AM

Has rap and hip hop essentially replaced rock?

Pardon the broad brush here, but the other day I came to the realization that most of the kids (demographics, background, etc) who would have been listening to Talking Heads or Led Zep in the early 80s are the ones listening to rap and hip hop now.

Though I know a lot of net-savvy folks are listening to modern rock (from Radiohead to struggling garage bands putting out mp3s for all), it's not by any stretch of the imagination what I hear on the streets and sidewalks of my town.... nor on TV. Some of what I hear from time to time is country music, but the rest is by far rap/hip-hop.

What are your observations? What's the trend? Is it hip-hop from here out? Do the high school kids who listen to alternative rock or other genres feel marginalized, or does it indeed thrive there?

posted by shannymara to media & arts (27 comments total)

What is your town? My siblings (12, 14, and 16) live in a rural Michigan town. The oldest likes rock and indie (Keane), the middle likes rap (Eminem) and the youngest likes pop (Simpson).

It may just be that alternative/indie rock isn't really the kind of music you blare and "rock out" to anymore. I do think the location is very important to the music choices.

What I find odd is that the high-schoolers I have met, the real audiophile ones, who would have been listening to the Doors or Cream are in fact listening to The Doors and Cream. It seems to me that the younger generation is either very eccletic with modern tastes or is looking to the past to find heroes and rock gods.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 8:27 AM on October 5, 2006

Well I don't watch TV much, but I catch Grey's Anatomy and that's certainly not rap or hip hop and as I understand it, GA is very popular. I think rap and hip hop are very popular and have become more mainstream, but I hardly think other genres have been marginalized.

Maybe you're just attracted to the shows/places that play that type of music.
posted by FlamingBore at 8:29 AM on October 5, 2006

I'd argue that R'n'B is a lot more popular than rap / hip-hop in modern Western culture. Some people might classify a lot of R'n'B to be rap or hip-hop, but it's not. R'n'B is the pop music of this decade, so it's not surprising it makes up the majority of music that the media presses onto us.

Your question feels like asking whether disco was the foreseeable future in 1976. Rock and its derivatives are still extremely popular (look at the thousands of emo and punk bands for evidence of this), as it was in 1976, but the media are pushing rap, R'n'B and hip-hop heavily, much as they did with disco in the 1970s.
posted by wackybrit at 8:31 AM on October 5, 2006

I tend to think even the question of "what the kids are into nowadays" is an anachronism of the pre-internet. Stuff is simply too available for that. I recently compared tracklists with a bunch of 15 year olds: no two were alike, and we all seemed to be drinking from the same well, which is to say we had the same vague grasp of "what's out there" but had our own pan-cultural, pan-temporal mixes going.
posted by dong_resin at 8:31 AM on October 5, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

You're asking the wrong question...rap/hip-hop has been replaced by pop. What you get is the same pop music it's always been, but it's got that rap facade going on these days. Pop music is always pop music.
posted by morallybass at 8:37 AM on October 5, 2006

In album sales, rap/hip-hop is more viable than rock.

I think the market is really about niches, though, for people really into music. So the rock crowd has splintered into punk/emo/indie/folkish subgenres and the hip-hoppers are breaking it down into regional movements (hyphy, crunk, even world).

If you wanted to look at specifically teenagers' music (which is either trendy or anti-trend), rap offers both personality cults and a moral alternative vision of the world. Rock/alternative hasn't done that since the mid 90s, in my opinion.
posted by cowbellemoo at 8:41 AM on October 5, 2006

It seems like the kids who would have been listening to Led Zep and Pink Floyd are, in fact, listening to Led Zep and Pink Floyd, 20 years later.
posted by smackfu at 8:42 AM on October 5, 2006

I'd agree with morallybass. Hip hop has heavily influenced current pop music to such an extent that it can be indistinguishable at times.

Things haven't changed that much. Most top 40 type of songs sound pretty much like the rest of the top 40. It is just the current trend in pop music. More recently, indie pop rock mixed with a heavy dose of electronic influence is starting to be heavily represented in the mainstream. It will move from the fringe to the core, nestled in snugly beside hip-pop(sic).

Incidentally, the truly great hip-hop / rap that is being produced today is NOT what you'll hear on a top 40 radio station or MTV, for the most part. I think this is probably true for any genre and is part of the natural cycle of culture.
posted by utsutsu at 8:47 AM on October 5, 2006

I think that geography has a lot to do it. New trends always start in the cities, and then make it to the more rural areas only once people in the cities have moved into something new. Rap was the last type of music to become super-super-huge, and I think it's still a relatively recent arrival to much of America.

For some perspective, most of the people I know in NYC listen to garage rock and 80's music. LedZep and the Talking Heads are still very much in circulation.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:48 AM on October 5, 2006

I think everyone's wayyy overthinking this.

I'm 22 years-old. I spent my formative high school years listening to pop and rap. Looking back on it, I think this is why:

This is what the radio really pushes. You'll never see a radio station that really pushes the doors. Ok, well mainstream radio station. Teenagers may have different music tastes, but if you ask most teenagers what radio station they listen to, there's usually only 1 or 2 stations that they listen to, so that homogenizes things.

While there are radio stations that play different musical styles, they aren't culturally relevant to our era in terms of their deejays, promotions, etc. Example: pop stations often promote "teen clubs" and parties for the 13-18 set. Listening to the radio is basically our parent's version of watching the evening news- we want to sort of blend our experiences and make them relevant to our peer group.

The lack of tunes you can dance to. We're teenagers. We're horny. Tell me how we're going to get into each others pants by dancing to the doors.

The lack of quality rock artists. I think music is very cyclical (in terms of poppiness) The years around 2000-2001 were a golden year for rap and R & B. Alot of it was soooo good.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way: MeFi does seem to have a bit of music snobbery about, so take my scale of "really bad to really good" relatively.

In 2000, 2001, rap had people like Jay-Z, Puff Daddy, Timbaland, R. Kelly, Ludacris, Usher, etc. at their peaks. It was like a golden era.

Rock had no one....I feel like all the people that would have gravitated towards rock (well, mainly the girls) we're listening to the backstreet boys and 'N Sync. The guys were stuck listening to When I come Around for all those years...
The only good rock artists I can think of from this period are Blink-182 and Third Eye Blind.

It's getting better now though. Fall Out Boy. Death Cab. Yellowcard. All-American-Rejects. Sure they're not the doors, but they're showing that rock can make a come back! Rap, though it's had a mini revival with Kanye and John Legend is getting stuck in a big morass of Lil' John and Young Doc, and E-40, and a whole other bunch of terrible-ness.
posted by unexpected at 8:57 AM on October 5, 2006

i'd say both rock and hip hop have been taking a back seat to pop lately, but the real replacement hasn't evolved yet and won't for a couple of years

it could be that the music scene continues to fragment and there won't be a replacement at all
posted by pyramid termite at 9:04 AM on October 5, 2006

The Doors? What the fuck are you talking about? There's some confusion in this thread. Anyway, what I think the question might be getting at was nicely summed up in pitchfork's review of the new Killers album today:

Rock music in the 21st century has been subject to an unprecedented emotional arms race of Cold War proportions. Displaced from its traditional role of party music by dance and hip-hop, rock has focused more than ever on introspection, aiming for resonant feelings rather than escapist fun. Hence, pop-punk has given way to emo, hard rock acts dust off the power ballad to get airplay, and groups like Coldplay and Green Day fill stadiums with soul-searching anthems. It's only natural that the emotional ante would be rapidly rising, until it reaches the climax of triggering arena-rock's nuclear option: The Boss.

posted by ludwig_van at 9:12 AM on October 5, 2006

New trends always start in the cities, and then make it to the more rural areas only once people in the cities have moved into something new.

When, the 50s? There's some truth in your statement, but not much and getting less so every day (and if you think rural areas have no effect on urban you need to get out of the big city more often).

With the internet fads/trends go cross country in an instant. What you hear walking the streets in nyc can be heard anywhere in the U.S. As soon as it has a grip on a city of 10 million, it's already everywhere. (I know, hurts the ego a bit)
posted by justgary at 9:22 AM on October 5, 2006

I've noticed in the last year that a local station that plays lots of REM, Cure, Talking Heads etc is now playing more and more crap like Gnarls Barkley. Whereas you'd never have heard something like this five years ago, it's pretty common now.
posted by DieHipsterDie at 9:57 AM on October 5, 2006

This is what the radio really pushes. You'll never see a radio station that really pushes the doors. Ok, well mainstream radio station. Teenagers may have different music tastes, but if you ask most teenagers what radio station they listen to, there's usually only 1 or 2 stations that they listen to, so that homogenizes things.

Radio? People still listen to that?

The only good rock artists I can think of from this period are Blink-182 and Third Eye Blind.
It's getting better now though. Fall Out Boy. Death Cab. Yellowcard. All-American-Rejects.

I guess someone does... (Seriously, I listened to the radio once a couple months ago. Someone's sound gear had a tuner and they put it on as a novelty.)

The trend I've noticed is that some people think they like crappy mainstream hip hop and put it on, but grab their MP3 player from them and put on some great 80s music and everyone will have much more fun, including the people who put on the hip hop.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:58 AM on October 5, 2006

The only good rock artists I can think of from this period are Blink-182 and Third Eye Blind.

This is going to get ugly...
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:00 AM on October 5, 2006

You're used to the old days, when there was just the radio, and everyone listened to the same thing. The teens collectively decided to listen to whatever was coolest, but their choice was limited to their local radio stations, whatever they happened to run into at the record store, and whatever their friends thought of as cool.

Nowadays, no matter how weird your musical tastes are, you can find it, often instantly. There's a huge amount of music available now, via many, many different delivery mechanisms.

There is no music anymore that everyone listens to. There are just too many other choices.
posted by Malor at 11:33 AM on October 5, 2006

Have to chime in, lots of good stuff is happening in rock: Wolf Parade, My Morning Jacket, Interpol, folky stuff like M.Ward, Iron and Wine. It is just not on mainstream radio. Maybe college radio. But you have to seek it out. It won't go away as long as there are high schoolers and college students that want good music without all the sugary pop crap.
posted by distrakted at 11:41 AM on October 5, 2006

My question is this: where did all the metals head go?
No more head-banging, no more moshing, nothing. Blah. All the kids that look like they could be into metal are emo, like wtf!? Where is the music that caters to the angry youth?
posted by Vindaloo at 11:51 AM on October 5, 2006

Post above should say "metal heads", sigh.
posted by Vindaloo at 11:53 AM on October 5, 2006

Gah. Iron and Wine is not rock. There are still metal bands. This isn't rocket science, folks. If you're using metafilter, you ought to be able to find new music that you'll like.
posted by ludwig_van at 1:30 PM on October 5, 2006

And to help you out a bit, John Darnielle writes about new metal bands with some frequency at Last Plane to Jakarta. Two metal bands that have recently received wide critical praise are Mastodon and Sunn0)))).
posted by ludwig_van at 1:50 PM on October 5, 2006

Where did all the metals head go ... Where is the music that caters to the angry youth?

Some of the darker, angrier jungle seems to remain perennially popular in certain areas, and provokes a lot of gesturally similar head shaking.
posted by meehawl at 1:59 PM on October 5, 2006

The guys were stuck listening to When I come Around for all those years...
The only good rock artists I can think of from this period are Blink-182 and Third Eye Blind.

It's getting better now though. Fall Out Boy. Death Cab. Yellowcard. All-American-Rejects. Sure they're not the doors, but they're showing that rock can make a come back!

Well, to put this politely, death cab certainly were around in 2000 :-)
posted by advil at 2:03 PM on October 5, 2006

...also Death Cab ain't really rock.

Well, I'm a teenager and I can only speak for myself and my friends but I'm going to say no, hip-hop has not replaced rock. They're both flourishing in their own right. These days there doesn't have to be one dominant genre as we all have access to a variety of music on the internet.

I only listen to radio stations when I'm in someone else's car and even then it's rare. I find out most of my music online or through what my friends suggest.

There are enough clubs that cater for the indie or rock groups around here and if you go to them you can see that they dance to their music just fine.

Also, have you seen the amount of emos out there? They fall under the large umbrella of rock and I don't think they're going away any time soon, either. It's the perfect niche for angsty lovesick teens.

If you look at the mainstream charts you'll see a variety of genres meshed together. Yes, they're all popular music but they incorporate elements from all across the board.

In the top 20 singles chart for this week in Australia about 8 of them would fall under RnB, 6 are rock (not good rock, but still), and the rest are an assorted mix.

So while it may feel that Rap is taking over, my impression is that it's really not.
posted by liquorice at 4:21 PM on October 5, 2006

Radio might be obsolete (I certainly feel that way) but nightclubs aren't - yet clubs are just like radio in the sense that the audience has no direct control over the playlist, and the playlist is ostensibly based on what is popular (annoying hubristic DJs aside).

So what is being played in the mainstream/pop nightclubs these days? To me, a kid of the 80's, it definitely sounds like pop is now very rap/hip-hoppy, if not actually rap/hip-hop. (But I tend not to go to the mainstream clubs, so I'm generalising a little)

So - clubgoers - what gets played at the clubs you go too?
posted by -harlequin- at 5:17 PM on October 5, 2006

Metal? Pah! Check out some of the following hardcore bands if you're looking to get your rocks off:

Terror, Down To Nothing, Throwdown, Outbreak, Blacklisted, Dead Stop, Rise & Fall, The Hope Conspiracy, Converge, Floorpunch, Ringworm, Integrity, Righteous Jams, Iron Age, The Break In, No Warning (the early stuff, before they ended up like Linkin Park), Modern Life Is War.

All easy to find with Google, on MySpace and their own websites.
posted by xpermanentx at 8:45 AM on October 6, 2006