The state of beat making in 2023

[Armani]

I'd like to know what everyone thinks of the current state of beat making in 2023. For the past while, the beats I hear both here at ILL and just in general tend to be stagnant.

In what direction do you see it going?

I find the beats are leaning more towards Electronic music, to the point where it's like a new genre. Obviously it's the current technology that we have to make beats that is pushing us in a certain direction, but I think it's also the lack of creativity to a point. I don't hear a lot of variety in the Hip Hop world (obviously there is if you look hard enough), but it's not so prominent as it once was.

When I saw the 50th anniversary performance recently at the Grammys, it was just so evident how much things have changed. It started with guys like LL and Run DMC, then onto Public Enemy, Scarface, Method Man, etc., then onto Busta and all that. But then it ended with today's artists and it was so evident how drastically it has changed. The transition from the 80s artists to the 90s artists just seem so natural. Then from the 90s to the 2000s, again, it just seem to be a natural progression. But then it seems the sound from the mid/late 2000s to now - the sound changed a lot.

I know some of the reasons for the drastic change is for example, there's A LOT of beat makers and artists now. There's a lot of money to be made now, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and just making what's currently popular. Things like that are a huge driving force, but I think it's an interesting discussion about where beat making is headed.

So I'm just wondering what everyone thinks is going to happen moving forward; if the beats are going to sound more Electronic or will some other style come in and dominate?

As I've been suspecting for years now, it has been and it is going to be nostalgia-based for a while. Slowly but surely the artists are to realize that the path they've been all taking is the path of the damned and leads to the netherworld, and they're gonna revert to 10's, 80's, 50's n... (almost like when ur going on a trip and u take the wrong exit, so u reverse gear back into the highway), and after that we'll just be waiting for a savior to mix the new nostalgia stuff up and make something new so we can all be like "oh, how couldn't I have thought about that sooner" or "Fuck, I also had that idea", and then we'll all copy him and have an original 20's style. pretty sure it will eventually happen as long as the industry allows it.

Musically speaking, Kendrick will start doing classic west coast shit, Drake will try to revert to his 2015 self, Tyga will still be underrated and Kanye will be either dead or in jail.

On another note, I see the future of music to be bright. rap maybe not but music in general (including the "beatmaking" part of rap), probably. there will always be new miseries to come soon enough. hard times make great art.

 

[Armani]

Some other thing will dominate.

This generation is ruined. They literally listen to the same one type of beat/song. The artists all have the same flow and vocal fx. They all use the same sound pack, plugin, and VSTs, and follow the same tutorials. Often their autotune is out of tune, and they barely rap/rhyme anyway.

This is worsened by the fact today everyone today is allowed to think they are a rapper/artist/producer. I think it's great that everyone has the accessibility to create, however the outcome has not been improved creativity.

Little Brad can download FL and buy some cheap mic and within a week be uploading music to YouTube Spotify BandCamp etc and claiming to be 'an artist' ... in previous eras, to be able to do that would probably take a lot more money effort and time, and if you sucked you would quickly find out and either a) realise to quit right there, as the money and effort is too much to not be good or b) actually strive to become good. In today's era, you don't lose any real money or time to be shit. And because there is so much shit out there you can probably get a few likes and think you're good.

I think the only real hope is that the next generation who emerge hopefully rebel against what is current and come with a dedication to quality, creativity and something that is actually decent.

Your rappers today are wearing nail polish and all 'Lil' 'Baby's and all that goes with it. Even some of the older heads have turned into washed up gossips on certain media platforms.

Out of "modern*" rappers, I find the females generally are more listenable (even tho they are very samey etc)

*not including rappers today who do older styles.

This is irrelevant. Little brad can make noise all he wants and his mom sure will comment and like on every single post, it doesn't make him the factor to judge the entirety of a generation by. if anything, music consumption has been extremely focused on the top 1% whereas 99% of the music streams/sales have been taken by the top 10% of the most viewed/sold tracks, ever since the rise of Spotify.

+ if anything, the possibilities created by everyone being able to make music should benefit the music world if anything. it allows for random phenomenon like billie eilish to end up happening, and then that opens the doors to a thousand new ways to be creative by following her path. this wouldn't've been so easily possible in the era where u had to be signed first.

Sure, Rappers today wear nail polish and have "lil" in their name, rappers back then wore goofy ass pants with the capacity to hold 9 or 10 kilos of possible shit and were named Fat fuck n papoose n shit. it doesn't matter what year it is. young mfs are goofy, musicians are worse, and the combination is unbearable. one would normally realize that after talking to me for 2 or 3 minutes, which is always more than enough.

I agree, as I've mentioned numerous times about how if 1000 beat makers are all using FL and its stock sounds, then what do you think will happen? As opposed to the older way of making beats where everyone had the same drum machines and samplers, yet even though the styles were similar, there was a lot of variety in the sounds used.

I'm not gonna say the new producers don't sound the same, but also if u look from afar old beats aren't that different, generally speaking. except for the top 1% shit, almost every east coast beat is the same beat. then again, tbh I don't know that many decent producers in the current generation either. there's Tyler the Creator, Mike dean, Jeff Bhasker, etc, but idk... the biggest issue is probably the lack of character, cuz I think the focus is more on the rappers nowadays and producers are more like tools/occasional hitmakers if anything. that's why there's 4 or 5 whole new producers per every new hit.

I will always say that I blame the southern artists for creating the route of mumble rap taking over the airwaves. I hated most of the artists back when the south took over the mainstream, and I feel this is just a natural progression of things. There's some weirdness about Trap in the sense that there are two genres of music with the same name in it. The south made it first, but then the EDM community also created a genre that took hip hop elements and called it that. I think this is a big thing in what's going on here.

I agree with most of the points u made, but on this one, I wouldn't really blame the southern artists for that. I'd blame the people for wanting more of that music. cuz it doesn't make sense like, if u remove the south then 6 years 7 years later someone else is gonna mumble accidentally and another guy will go "shit, that was aight", and subconsciously copy, and then we'd have the same thing again. if something is meant to happen, it'll happen.


I'll read the rest later, me tired.

 

[iDeaLoGiK]

I agree with most of the points u made, but on this one, I wouldn't really blame the southern artists for that. I'd blame the people for wanting more of that music. cuz it doesn't make sense like, if u remove the south then 6 years 7 years later someone else is gonna mumble accidentally and another guy will go "shit, that was aight", and subconsciously copy, and then we'd have the same thing again. if something is meant to happen, it'll happen.

Honestly I don't know if it would. Lean wouldn't be as prevalent if not for the south blowing up the way it did. Also it's not like mumble rap came out of nowhere, there was a multi-generational transition that lead towards it. Like I said previously though, I was only stating my opinion on it to bring in the point that there's the EDM genre trap that uses hip hop elements which really brought the electronic side towards hip hop.

 

[Iron Keys]

I was just mainly talking about the tech side of beat making

Okay

So tech, especially with people new to Hip Hop or not understanding the origins can cause the style to drift dramatically.

To understand it coming from looped drum breaks and samples. It forms the structural basis for it as a music style. As tech and accessibility improved people could add more sounds and more instruments etc.

The issue could be if people deviate from the "looped" nature, the structural basis, aaand the sounds, does it become an evolution or has it become something else entirely.

If it gets too progressive and electronic, isn't it then becoming a bastardised EDM sub genre? (Not gutting into style talks, just how tech changes something to something else.)

 

[OGBama]

Main @Fade thing I despise is the rise of AI in music as it’s gonna make music even more formulaic as it has been and is.

 

[iDeaLoGiK]

Okay

So tech, especially with people new to Hip Hop or not understanding the origins can cause the style to drift dramatically.

To understand it coming from looped drum breaks and samples. It forms the structural basis for it as a music style. As tech and accessibility improved people could add more sounds and more instruments etc.

The issue could be if people deviate from the "looped" nature, the structural basis, aaand the sounds, does it become an evolution or has it become something else entirely.

If it gets too progressive and electronic, isn't it then becoming a bastardised EDM sub genre? (Not gutting into style talks, just how tech changes something to something else.)

Honestly I think it has more to do with the sounds than the structure. Look at The Jokerr. His beats tend to be fairly structurally complex as far as most hip hop goes, but his sound is undeniably hip hop (when he's not making his singsongey shit). Sampled loops do tend to bring a hip hop vibe to things for sure, but I think its a drop in the bucket compared to the tonal nature of the song. No two samples are created equal. Look at Rhythm Roulette. 90% of them get records that they can't find anything they want off of them. More often than not its because tonally it doesn't fit the genre. Part of why buying instrument plugins that have a bajillion sounds like Massive can be a crapshoot too, because out of all those sounds only a handful of them are useable to make a hip hop beat imo. A lot of weird arpeggiated, or gated stuff that only really suits electronic music. Of course, generally these plugins are more than just their stock sounds, but I, for one, am lazy as shit and don't want to spend hours on just one sound if I even get there in the end trying to make something worthwhile.

I do think you're on the right track there though. You add all of that together and you do tend to lose the hip hop nature in the weeds. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it does seem like it would get increasingly hard to decipher what point specifically hip hop ends, and EDM begins.

 

[Fade]

do think you're on the right track there though. You add all of that together and you do tend to lose the hip hop nature in the weeds. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it does seem like it would get increasingly hard to decipher what point specifically hip hop ends, and EDM begins.

Well said. I was just thinking the other day about how when there's a demo video for a plug-in or new controller, it's pretty much always an EDM-style they create, which says a lot. So it's a fine line that technology has pushed beat makers onto and because of the sounds being used, we end up with more of a synthy sound. There's nothing wrong with that but then we end up losing some of the traditional sound that a lot of us are used to.

 

[Iron Keys]

Honestly I think it has more to do with the sounds than the structure. Look at The Jokerr. His beats tend to be fairly structurally complex as far as most hip hop goes, but his sound is undeniably hip hop (when he's not making his singsongey shit). Sampled loops do tend to bring a hip hop vibe to things for sure, but I think its a drop in the bucket compared to the tonal nature of the song. No two samples are created equal. Look at Rhythm Roulette. 90% of them get records that they can't find anything they want off of them. More often than not its because tonally it doesn't fit the genre. Part of why buying instrument plugins that have a bajillion sounds like Massive can be a crapshoot too, because out of all those sounds only a handful of them are useable to make a hip hop beat imo. A lot of weird arpeggiated, or gated stuff that only really suits electronic music. Of course, generally these plugins are more than just their stock sounds, but I, for one, am lazy as shit and don't want to spend hours on just one sound if I even get there in the end trying to make something worthwhile.

I do think you're on the right track there though. You add all of that together and you do tend to lose the hip hop nature in the weeds. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it does seem like it would get increasingly hard to decipher what point specifically hip hop ends, and EDM begins.

I think for sounds it usually only really applies to the drums. As thin rock drums just don't work.

Of course if you go overboard with iconic edm sounds like Reese and hoover basses, you could pull a hiphop Beat too far into edm territory.

But it's also the style of musicality and choice of melody and rhythm. Hence why Trap is trap... but you can clearly distinguish between edm trap and hip hop trap.

 

[iDeaLoGiK]

I can agree with that. Hip hop is very drum centric, so having the right drum tone is a huge portion. I was more talking about synths themselves though. Perhaps arpeggios and gated synths isn't the right way to explain it also. That would fit more along the lines of structure. But theres some "instruments" I hear when I'm trying to find sounds immediately brings electronic music to mind. Particularly if it sounds like its coming straight out of the 80s (granted I love cheesy 80s music, but there's a time and a place). I suppose its a matter of oscillators being the primary source of tones in plugins a lot of the time. This compounds especially having FL studio being a free way to dabble in beat making and it having a stock plugin list like it has. Granted everyone's gotta start somewhere.

 

[Armani]

Main @Fade thing I despise is the rise of AI in music as it’s gonna make music even more formulaic as it has been and is.

I used to be scared but now I'm excited about it. can't wait to be the first to use it, then after people are tired of it I can't wait to make music So original that people actually feel the distinction between AI music and my music.

 

[Fade]

I used to be scared but now I'm excited about it. can't wait to be the first to use it, then after people are tired of it I can't wait to make music So original that people actually feel the distinction between AI music and my music.

That's actually a really good point. Just imagine a few years from now we're trying to prevent AI-generated beats from battling.

Damn, I'll have to create some new rules!

 

[Iron Keys]

Surely AI generated beats would start becoming self-perpetuating, feeding back into itself off of the music it creates. So fed a similar set of instructions it will likely repeat very similar patterns.

I don't think it'll be much different from the 'type beat' situation we face. Ironically, it'll probably be more unique on average then whatever's being made today.

 

[Fade]

And you KNOW people are going to do AI beats on a massive scale and sell them on Beatstars.

 

[OGBama]

Please @Armani don’t try AI, you have soul to you and your shit, coding language (what AI is made of unless I’m wrong) doesn’t until someone programs it but it’ll never be a match for a living breathing human.

 

[iDeaLoGiK]

I, for one, welcome our AI overlords.

 

[V.J. Retro]

Please @Armani don’t try AI, you have soul to you and your shit, coding language (what AI is made of unless I’m wrong) doesn’t until someone programs it but it’ll never be a match for a living breathing human.

 

[DR.O]

well...when u look at how the rave culture has influenced the concert scene with the rise of EDM festivals a few years back u can see how the influence of a generation "seeing GOD" on Molly, acid and Techno has affected the counter culture...and hip hop even main stream hip hop is firmly rooted in counter culture... i mean shit when I listened to Limp Bizkits first album on Acid I saw GOD too lol but these experiences have pushed artists into the electronic thing and it doesnt appear to be slowing down anytime soon.... however i find that as a BEAT maker having your own library of sounds and shit u found, recorded or whatever, is way better than using stock FL stuff... I dnt even use FL... I decided to make a choice creatively to go with platforms like Audacity... I learned what i know on PRO tools...and I take that knowledge and apply it to platforms like Audacity that dont have alot of plug-ins.... i keep my own libraries that i have built over the years and my collection grows everyday... I feel like the electronic trend wont die but I know that Hip-Hop Heads will always favor solid old school techniques... because as an art form hip-hop will always go back to its roots to draw inspiration.... we started rockin parties with records that were laying around because we had too.... and if u really think about it Disco style production became the trend then the norm...two turntables and a mic became multitrack productions .... parties became raves.. and making ur own sounds became cooler than stealing them....cheap electronic instruments have a massive appeal on a tech savvy generation... but in my heart i know that if u cant a rock a show with a parliament funkadelic record a dj and a random ass shure mic...u aint shit in the world of hip hop

 

[DR.O]

One theory that I've always thought of is in a sense - maybe Hip Hop was never meant to be electronic-sounding. Maybe it was only ever meant to be sample-based. In a way, sort of like House music that's never really changed and gone into something new.

As for the future of beat making, I can't really see anything progressing into something groundbreaking. When it went from mostly drum machine tracks in the 80s to heavy samples in the 90s, that was a great transition. Right now though since so many are using virtual instruments and DAWs that make it incredibly easy, I don't see much changing except that maybe more beat makers will want to try an older approach, like making some old school stuff. Who knows.

For the DJs out there: One of the biggest differences I've noticed in styles is when I look at early DMC battles versus today. Back then it was two turntables and an analog mixer with some vinyl. Now it's all computer-based and it's changed in a huge way. It used to be more about using two popular songs and doing something with them, now it's a lot of synth sounds and the sets are insanely fast.

For example in the 90s:




The sets today are so busy with so much going on:

i agree

 

[DR.O]

I see beatmaking mostly going the way of electronic music especially with AI but maybe something new would come out of it. Although with vinyl records making a comeback in popularity, I think that there would be also be a comeback with hardware tools like the Emu SP1200 or something like it. I'm sure they're will always be a counter-response to whatever is popular in music. Hip-Hop from it's inception was an alternative to Disco. During the bling era, underground artist like Mos Def have become an alternative to the pop/shinny suits acts like P. Diddy/Jay-Z. Southern music was a response to the East Coast scene, etc... With today's Hip-Hop music being over saturated with similar styles, people are eager to hear something new and fresh.

sp 1200s are dope

 

[Armani]

kinky