The First Half of Hip Hop's 2018: Dissected

In January, it was revealed that (for the first time), Hip Hop was the most streamed genre in the country. Now, it seems an important time as ever for the genre to establish itself at the top. For someone who doesn’t like Drake or anything he stands for, it feels important that the year is full of good music from potentially chart-topping hip hop artists. Just past the halfway mark of 2018, it’s probably about time we take a look at the quality and popularity of the genre before answering a few other questions about the year in hip hop so far.

Is Hip Hop still popular?

It seems so. In answering this, I consulted the Billboard 200 albums chart. I know that albums are not the way that many consume music these days, but this helps track the popularity of an artist slightly easier and individual song streams do factor in, so singles are not all together ignored. Out of the 28 weeks before this article was written, 16 of those weeks had a hip hop or hip hop adjacent (The Weeknd and Post Malone) project at the top spot of the album chart. At just over 50%, the grip on listener’s ears seems to have continued.

Out of those 28 weeks, four projects have held the top spot for multiple weeks. Three of those projects were hip hop, Drake’s Scorpion (two weeks, but will probably continue), Post Malone’s Beerbongs & Bentleys (three weeks) and the Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther Soundtrack (three weeks). This is a dominant control of the industry. None of these albums are nearing the records of Adele (over 20 weeks), but that seems almost impossible in the unlimited access age we live in.

Read the rest of the article here

Other questions answered in this article:

• Is Hip Hop still good?

• So has 2018 been a good year for Hip Hop?

• What have we learned this year?

• So what’s left this year?

How Did We Get to Astroworld?

After a two year wait, Travis Scott finally released ASTROWORLD on August 3rd. The album’s delays had become a joke in themselves. However, upon release, the album brought Travis acclaim he had never before received. Up until this release, Scott’s album discography consisted of Rodeo and Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, albums that earned more profit than critical praise. He also had become a staple feature artists, adding his vocals to hit after hit. So how did Scott reach his own peak of critical and commercial success on ASTROWORLD? It was just a matter of him taking his time.

It would be easy to describe Scott’s career arc as linear, but that would be a bit unfair. When he released his first mixtape, Owl Pharaoh, he was already signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music. Because of his long time connection to West, many listeners think of him as a GOOD Music artists and attribute his rise in popularity to that claim. This claim is true, partially. Scott is actually only signed to GOOD as a producer, under the “Very GOOD beats” imprint. This gets a bit confusing as Scott rarely ever has solo production credits on others’ songs, and only a few on his own. This means that his albums are not released through GOOD Music and never have been, they have always been released by Grand Hustle records.

Read the rest of the article here

In Mulieribus performance

Above is a video I shot from a choir group that I’m working with. In Mulieribus has been performing and recording in the Portland area for over a decade.

The video above is from their most recent performance at Gardener’s Choice in Tigard. The group, a women’s vocal ensemble that specializes in medieval choir music, just finished a run of performances and is preparing for performances in May. During this time, the group and myself will be promoting their new CD, Cycles of Eternity.

The Gardener’s Choice performance was one of the more unique musical displays I’ve seen. The group performed in a nursery that matched the Ecco la Primavera! theme, springtime. The power of the women’s voices echoed throughout the different rooms and created an atmosphere new to me and the nursery (it was Gardener’s Choice’s first concert).

For more information on the group, go to their Facebook page.

Artist Interviews: Maiah Wynne

Maiah Wynne is an up and coming artist who just moved to the Portland area to jump start her career. In the past year she starred in and performed in a movie, and is currently in the process of releasing a single every month for a year.

On this episode, I talk to Wynne about her career thus far as well as breaking into the music industry as a young talent. She shared the genres and people who influenced her music, and the combinations she makes with them. We also talked about her recent performances at Seattle’s Sound Off competition and South by Southwest. Wynne was fresh off a performance at Linfield college before her interview.

Wynne has shows this spring around the northwest in Washington, Idaho and Oregon. She also just released her submission to the NPR Tiny Desk Contest,

One of the big shifts in the music industry in the past few years has been hip hop’s emergence as the most popular genre. 2017 data showed this fact for the first time, and the genre’s dominance continued in 2018. These pieces of data are pulled from all album consumption, not just streaming. The streaming numbers are even more hip hop heavy.

The albums listed on the bottom are almost all hip hop. Streaming seems to have taken over as well as the main source of people’s listening. That idea is harder to determine as its near impossible to average how many times people listen to an album or a song download once they own it. Billboard is having a hard time with this in tallying weekly album and song sales by deciding how much one stream counts for.

A few other details from Buzz Angle’s yearly report were that most forms of individual song and album sales are dropping in favor of streaming, except for vinyl. I’ll get into that in another graphic. Also, the genre listed as EDM seems to encompass all of electronic music, not just the sub genre of EDM.

As I said in the above post, vinyl sales are up the past few years, growing by 12 percent in 2018. Each physical sale is worth significantly more than a stream, so these numbers are what help keep genres like rock and pop so much closer to hip hop in the total album consumption charts.

Even though both charts focus on albums, the vinyl sales give a better representation of people buying the album for the full track list instead of just one song. When streamed, the repeated listening of one song can add up to a full album sale. In metrics like this, the consumer must purchase the full album first. With vinyl specifically, it’s a real pain to try to listen to just one song.

When looking at the individual albums, one will notice that many of the albums are much older than those we normally see topping any kind of album charts. This could be based on a couple of factors. One, the consumer base could be noticeably older than those influencing the total sales charts. Two, there’s more of a commitment to buying a record than there is to stream an album. This could lead to a longer vetting process by the purchaser and make them less likely to buy a new release, and instead push them toward a record that they have known they like for years.

Concert Photo Series: Seattle/LA Venues

Many concert tours and festivals happen during the summer, when I’m not in Oregon to see them. This has led me to get my fix by seeing shows by artists and in venues that are completely new to me. Sometimes, these include festivals, Camp Flog Gnaw is pictured above, a yearly festival in L.A. hosted by Tyler, the Creator. Traveling for concerts is a fun reason to go explore somewhere new. I went to Pemberton, Canada for a music festival in 2016, and went on a road trip down to Los Angeles from Seattle this past summer to see Father John Misty at the Hollywood Bowl.

Seattle, like Portland, is full of small concert venues. Pictured above is the Neptune theater, a smaller theater in an old building full of history. Neumos (also pictured) is one of the smaller venues in Seattle and is located in the capitol hill neighborhood, attracting a young, diverse audience. When I saw Chief Keef, the crowd was almost perfectly even between UW frat boys and those from the rougher edges of the Seattle area.

Concert Photo Series: Portland Venues

As I’ve gone through my college career, I’ve learned about so many different venues in Portland. Each of them is unique and has its own distinct flavor (and smell). These photos are mostly from the Crystal Ballroom and Hawthorne Theater.

The Crystal Ballroom is probably my favorite venue in Portland. A beautiful room with a dangerously large chandelier hanging over the crowd, the ballroom has combines gorgeousness with an innate fear for your safety. The venue is on the third floor and has a “bouncy” floor. Multiple shows have been cancelled due to the floor giving a bit more than audiences expected. It also has hosted some of my favorite ever performances, Anderson Paak’s Malibu Tour stop, Brockhampton’s Love Your Parents stop, and an unreasonably intimate Tyler, the Creator performance.

Hawthorne Theater has slowly creeped up in my concert hall rankings, mostly for its small crowd size. While Roseland and the ballroom can hold up to 1500 people, Hawthorne thirds that with only about 500 spots. Denzel Curry, Isaiah Rashad, and Jay Rock were some of the artists I’ve seen in this venue.

Not pictured here are bigger venues, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and Theater of the Clouds at Moda Center. While less intimate, these venues all have their own unique feels, Arlene Schnitzer being my personal favorite of the three.

Concert Photo Series: Roseland Theater

Roseland Theater is a very special place to me. It’s probably where I’ve seen the most shows in Portland, and most importantly, it’s where I saw my first. My freshman year of college, I dreamed of going to all the shows that came through the Oregon area. That dream didn’t come true until the second semester during the Soul’d Out Music Festival.

That first show had three main performers; Dave B, BJ the Chicago Kid and Anderson Paak. I had been to a few shows before this, when I was in high school, but most of them were sets in much larger festivals, but I had only seen a lot of rappers performing with DJs, this was something else entirely.

This show was probably the most religious experience I had ever had up to that moment (and I’ve been to church at least twice). Paak was a strongly recommended artist, but not one I had truly connected with yet. Seeing him perform with a full band was so important to me that I went to two more shows of his in the next six months.

This led to many more Roseland runs, including shows by the Flatbush Zombies (a near-death experience) and Vince Staples.

Artists to Watch 2019: Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy is the most popular of the three artists, and the most likely to make a splash in 2019. Member of soul band, The Internet, Lacy has already started to make his solo work relevant over the past few years. He released a demo in 2017, won a Grammy in 2018 and finished his solo album this month.

He’s only 20, but Lacy has superstar potential. He can write songs and hooks that are bound to top charts and hearts. He was featured in a Louis Vuitton editorial at the end of last year. I saw The Internet in November, and the Lacy-focused energy was immense. The only thing I can compare it to is old Beatles performance tapes, where the only thing that drowns out girls (and dudes) yelling was the beginning of a new song. All this energy was focused at the guitarist of a band, a heartthrob who sings in less than half of the songs.

The excitement around Lacy should lead to success as soon as he drops his debut solo album, which is due later this year.

SONGS TO CHECK OUT

• Some

• C U Girl

• Dark Red

Artists to Watch 2019: Rico Nasty

The past few years have been filled with young male rappers yelling very loudly into a microphone until someone payed attention to them. Many of these careers have not lasted more than twelve months, because no one want to hear rap the sticky, uh.

Rico Nasty is aggressive too, but in a way that we haven’t heard before, her confidence more metal than Nicki or Cardi’s swagger. She also has one of the best producers of 2018, Kenny Beats, making her albums. She’s infectious where Nicki can seem annoying.

In fact, she shouldn’t be compared to other female rappers because she is something so unique. Other rappers have meddled with metal rap in the past few years but haven’t been working with the songs to properly make it. Her studio sessions with Kenny lead to perfectly matched beats and lyrics, not the mass-produced trap beats we’ve heard try to match wannabe rap metalheads.

2019 is shaping up to be another big year, as she is already rolling out her new album. She’s already released two singles and is finished the album in a week.

Beware to live your life with one word constantly ringing in your head… KEENNNNNYYYYYY

SONGS TO CHECK OUT

• Countin’ Up

• Rage

• Smack a Bitch

Artists to Watch 2019: Moses Sumney

About a year ago, I began to explore a genre that soon became one of my favorites. At the time, I didn’t have a name for it, I just knew I liked James Blake. Since then, more and more artists have emerged into what I now know as “electrosoul.” Perhaps the name is just a lazy re-figuring of electropop, but the music certainly is not.

Moses Sumney, a musical acquaintance of Blake’s (he toured with him a few years ago and featured on Assume Form), is starting to gain the recognition he deserves. A Jagjagwaur signee, Sumney has made his share of connections in the years since his debut album, shown on his Make Out in My Car: Chameleon Suite EP. Remixes of his Aromanticism single show many sides of a song that deserves to have at least an aggressive cult following.

The only thing missing from Sumney’s career at this point seems to be the attention. Something, that to be fair, many artists are missing. Crowds at 2016’s The Colour In Anything tour would often give Sumney a standing ovation after his opening act, Pitchfork gave Sumney their “Best New Music” award for his 2017 debut, Aromanticism.

Approaching two years after his debut album, Sumney is all lined up to make the waves that his music seemed poised to last time around.

SONGS TO CHECK OUT

• Make Out in My Car

• Don’t Bother Calling

• Plastic