By Surreal Dusk 12/12/2022 (OP-ED)
The other day I was listening to the recent Danger Mouse & Black Thought collaboration album “Cheat Codes”. I imagine most of you have already heard it, given that it’s one of the most discussed albums to release this year. For any of those reading this who haven’t, it’s definitely worth your time. If you're a fan of 90’s hip hop, this album is practically a reimagining of some of the genre's biggest highlights updated for a new setting. It’s an album full of some of Danger Mouse's best production to date; Black Thought’s usual layered, socially conscious lyricism and some really passionate vocal performances.
Duncan Reviews described the album as being, “The perfect pair of young hearts and old souls” which I think is a really poignant way to phrase its sound. It’s clearly very heavily influenced by the styles and sounds of the past especially albums in which Danger Mouse & Black Thought previously worked on such as “things fall apart” and “The Mouse and the Mask” with its intentionally dusty sound while evolving past the styles of those previous eras by making some unusual decisions here and there that all work out for the better such as featuring A$AP Rocky and even Russ who both come through will quality performances. There's even a posthumous verse from the late supervillain legend MF DOOM on the track “Belize” which stands as a serious highlight on a project seemingly full of highlights.
But this post isn’t about Cheat Codes specifically, it’s more about what it potentially represents. When looking through some of the best hip-hop albums this year there starts to be a noticeable trend. Boom bap seems to be making a comeback.
Let’s go through some of the biggest examples of this in 2022 to see the trend. The biggest example I would start with would be Conway the Machine (who was even one of the featured guests on Cheat Codes) and his group Griselda Records. This year has arguably been the best year for the trio as it not only saw one of their best and most critically beloved albums yet with Conway’s excellent album “God Don't Make Mistakes” but it also saw the trio receiving a large audience for Benny the Butcher’s “Tana Talk 4”. Even by just looking at the stacked credits list on Westside Gunn’s 10 it’s clear to see the hip-hop audiences have the spotlight on the group with their lavish yet cold take on the iconic boom-bap style.
This Boom bap trend doesn’t just end with Griselda, there are plenty of other examples of popular boom-bap music within hip hops underground.
In 2021 alone there was “2000” by Joey Bada$$, “$oul $old $eparately” by Freddie Gibbs, “King's Disease III” by Nas, “Vinyl Days” by logic, “Killing Nothing” by Boldy James & Real Bad Man and “Drill Music in Zion” by Lupe Fiasco. All of these albums were either boom-bap or boom-bap inspired and while they vary in quality, most of the albums mentioned above are from fairly widely recognisable names in the hip-hop world.
Boom bap starting to hit the mainstream makes sense if you look at the trends for other genres. Most specifically if you look at current pop music, you see this exact trend of nostalgia all over the billboard charts with both synthpop by people like The Weeknd, Carley Rae Jephson, Dua Lipa, and Mitski all taking clear inspiration from the pop music of the ’80s while making the sound very trendy for the current day. These artists not only saw commercial success from using a nostalgic sound but they also became extremely influential with a number of good and bad albums releasing after it to varying success.
With this trend of nostalgic genres making an impact on the charts I see no reason as to why in theory the same can’t happen for rap music. So the question is who will release a boom bap equivalent to “After Hours”. By that i mean who will be the one to make a boom-bap album that seemingly instantly becomes majorly influential? In my personal opinion, the people I could see releasing an album like that would be Freddie Gibbs or Westside Gunn but I could also see a boom-bap-inspired producer such as The Alchemist working on an album with someone like J.I.D, J.Cole or Denzel Curry who haven’t previously realist music in the genre to bring it to the masses.
The biggest obstacle I see at the moment with Boom Bap taking over hip hop is in order to do that it will need to take over the place of both Trap and Rage music which are currently all over the charts and playlists. This just isn’t something I see happening yet but in a few years, who knows!
While all this sounds like sunshine and rainbows it’s important to remember that there will always be some drawbacks to any major change even if their only small. Firstly it’s not like if boom bap hits the mainstream we're going to be getting albums as great as cheat codes every week. Top-tier lyricism such as Black Thoughts often goes over the heads of people of the masses and rarely sees commercial success. And while people are quick to point to albums like “Illmatic” and “ready to die” not all of the best 90’s rap albums sold well and some of the best-selling albums from that decade were some of its worst. This isn’t to say it wasn’t a great decade overall it’s just simply trying to acknowledge the full truth.
So to conclude I genuinely believe that boom bap could make a comeback in the near future. I'm not saying I guarantee that it will I’m just saying that I’m noticing there's a trend and it has all the makings of a potential mainstream movement. It has a noticeable underground movement with even some of Rap's bigger artists releasing albums inspired by the genre, it has rising stars. It belongs to a similar pattern that goes along with other genre's trends and despite some potential drawbacks, I believe its journey back to the charts could be a positive thing for the genre. I guess only time will tell for its future.
TL:DR: listen to Cheat Codes by Danger Mouse & Black Thought :3
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