Lo-Fi
Since the early 2000s, lo-fi has all been tied to genres like vaporwave, chillwave and chillhop, which all have strong ties to earlier music like jazz and hip-hop. When these genres are combined with lo-fi, it creates this whole new subgenre that is essentially relaxing, chilled out music that sounds perfectly unfinished. The tempo of these would usually be a lot slower than normal which adds to this chill feel. However, you can also get fast lo-fi which is another subgenre of lo-fi, and this sounds much more upbeat. You’ll now find lo-fi chillwave, chillhop and vaporware on almost any streaming platforms. A great example of lo-fi today would be a popular live stream on YouTube, which plays lo-fi music 24/7 for anyone to listen to, and thousands of people are listening to it at a time, which shows how popular the genre is now. The playlist is called ‘beats to relax/study to’ because of its relaxing nature, and you will often find strangers talking to each other through YouTube’s live chat function; when I’ve been on there, I’ve even seen people helping each other with homework!
Lo-fi as a genre now has a solid sound that can be identified easily., compared to the 50s to 90s, where lo-fi could mean any type of music that is low-quality sounding. Some common aspects of modern lo-fi would be deliberately detuned piano or guitar and vinyl dust and tape noise to get the authentic sound. Also, instruments can be edited and effects added using a DAW to make them sound cheap-like and old. Some rhythms and drum patterns can often be sluggish or dragging slightly in and out of time, creating this lazy feel that is standard for lo-fi. Lo-fi also uses a lot of repetition, but the musicians counter this by adding drum breaks or different ideas that come from nowhere like adding a crazy-sounding effect or doing an impromptu chord change, for example, to keep listeners interested. I think the repetition here is great because it pushes the fact that lo-fi is meant to be relaxing.
I think lo-fi has impacted the music industry a lot, as it has solidified the fact that you don’t need really expensive equipment or plush recording studios to produce a great song. Lo-fi has helped push the idea of bedroom pop (where musicians produce music from their own bedroom using the equipment they have there, instead of a recording studio). I also think that, compared to other music, this genre is easier to make because of the repetition involved and the fact that the songs don’t usually have a set structure. Lo-fi has helped popularise instrumental music as most of the songs don’t have vocals, and if they do, it might just be one line or even just some hums and this makes the writing side easier as no lyrics are involved and you won’t need to find a singer if you can’t sing yourself. Another huge area for lo-fi is the use of sampling. Often, artists in this genre will sample jazz music because of its interesting use of melodies and chords. They also sample hip-hop songs, which is quite ironic because when hip-hop was popular during the 90s, they also used to sample jazz for the same reasons. Because of this, I think that lofi- and hip-hop are similar, but hip-hop sounds a lot more polished and uses lyrics.
Hip-Hop
At the turn of the century, hip-hop has moved from its original area of West and East Coast US and is now having artists emerge from all over America and the world. It may have a long history, but its culture and style has most definitely not died and is still one of the biggest genres of music today. It is still hugely tied to its roots of things like fashion and dance from popular artists like Beyonce also being an amazing dancer and Kanye West having his own clothing line. Hip-hop was becoming an inspiration for other genres like pop and boyband music as well, which shows just how bit its influence was on the music industry in the early 2000s. However, hip-hop struggled as well here because of the introduction to digital download and the decline of physical copy sales, as this is what many artists relied on at the time. After surviving this, new artists came around that still are making music to this day. Eminem, Kanye West and Jay-Z ruled the charts in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and still do today because of their massive impact on the industry and their ability to keep up with modern sounds and genres.
After its invention in the 70s, the sound still hasn’t gone through a drastic change and has stuck to its original roots well. You will hear common sounds like tape or turntable manipulation in both old school and new hip-hop, which originated from when people used to mix songs on turntables and use DJ decks, and these are still used today. The lyrics in hip-hop didn’t all have to use a certain theme, but a lot of them had themes of romance or politics, which is the same now. Also, the use of breakbeats and sampling is still popular today and has been made easier because of the creation of DAWs. The most popular breakbeat of all time would be the ‘Amen Break’ and this has been used in countless hip-hop songs from the 70s to now. This video gives a great insight into the breakbeat, and more importantly, the ‘Amen Break’.
Overall, hip-hop has impacted the music industry in more ways than one. It has popularized the idea of sampling and being able to use other genres of music, and manipulate that sample to make it sound new and modernised. It has introduced new music forms like rapping, beatboxing and DJing into the modern music industry. Also, especially during the 80s and 90s, hip-hop was one of the only popular music genres in which creators used their platform to speak up on social and political issues like racism, police brutality and inequality in America and even around the world.