There’s nothing wrong with pursuing your dream as a rock star. With today’s technology, anyone can do it. Well, let me reword that. With today’s technology anyone can do it if they do it right. With websites like Soundcloud, Datpiff and even Bandcamp, artists are free to upload their music for others to listen and/or download. I’m not trying to say that it’s easy to make it big; the issue that arises with the disposal of millions of free mixtapes is that people lose sense of differentiation.
I wish I had a dime for every time I met a “rapper” who hopped into the “studio” after listening to so-and-so’s mixtape, wrote one or two songs, thought they were great, uploaded them to their Soundcloud page and then ranted about something along the lines of “people must not know what good hip-hop is anymore” and how they can’t believe they only received 12 listens or downloads.
It’s great to follow your dreams, but people aren’t getting it. An inspiration can influence your music, that’s cool, nothing’s wrong with that, but when you recycle your influence’s flow and sound exactly like him or her, it becomes extremely dull and uninteresting. Why would someone listen to you if they could listen to your influence instead?
Take 2 Chainz for example. Hate him or love him, he’s successful. Why though? Hailing from Atlanta, a city which has spawned rappers like André 3000, this guy famously drops lines like “keeping it low, mane” then follows it up by rhyming it with “all we eat is lo mein.” The answer to his success may or may not be that he’s original but the fact that he’s simply different. Whether he intentionally creates humor or not, 2 Chainz has built up a character from the ground up. Claiming his influences range from Tupac Shakur to Outkast, 2 Chainz has somehow integrated these people into his own work and it’s safe to say that his sound is nothing near the two.
Okay, maybe 2 Chainz is not the absolute prime example to get my overall point across, but he does manage to create a distinguishable image that separates him from all the other high profile rappers.
Maybe a better and more serious example would be the likes of J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar. Both individuals emerge from opposite coasts and have not only inherited their coast’s legacies but have also revamped them and shaped them into an updated version of the familiar sounds. Instead of just merely adopting the styles of their individual coasts, the two also explored and integrated other influences into their work as well.
Lamar has stated before that he looks up to rappers such as Eminem while J.Cole has always shared a deep admiration for Kanye West’s work. Individually they have been able to integrate their influences into their own work and create a new feel for east/west coast hip-hop as they reinvent it.
With a rise of the mixtape scene, people are becoming extremely overzealous. After all, it’s not hard to upload a track onto the Internet for all to hear. The issue is that the scene is becoming saturated with cookie-cutter artists, where only the innovative rappers rise to the top. With such high exposure to underground hip-hop, people find a solid influence in those top rappers, then mimic them in hopes of high impact and make absolutely no progress.
Have your influences, take notes on what others are doing, but instead of trying to cheat and copy that, reshape it so that it’s distinguishable and different than what’s been done. There’s no such thing as originality in music anymore but that doesn’t give you an excuse to recycle someone’s work and expect fame.
Did your best friend’s cousin’s ex-roommate make it big via the Internet? Tell Jorge your thoughts at jestrada@wisc.edu.
