REAL TRAP (/ TRVP) SHIT (SHITE?) 2013

jackjambie

Voodoo Priest
i think trap really is the elephant in the room (/club) right now - especially with harlem shake suddenly going all gangnam style.

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i remember liking this track about a year ago, but it seems to have gained a whole new lease of life recently as a big viral internet thing where ppl go crazy to it.

i went to a grime night in brixton with teddy and kutz and ppl DJing, and apart from the really old grime instrumentals like rhythm and gash and SX and stuff, the tunes that were really going off were all trap. harlem shake definitely got played and the kids were loving it. kutz played pretty much 100% real trap shit - "damn son where'd you find this" vocals and all.

a mate of mine also puts on a "DJ soc" in a London uni that i went to recently. pretty amazing thing to watch but freshers pay like a few quid and then queue for literally a mile around the bar to jump on to a pair of CDJs and mix 3-4 tracks. there's no dancing, just waiting for their turn to DJ. most of the people there were playing trap.

there seem to be 2 types of trap -
1) the dark bassy snarey trap rap beat that's now established as a more hardcore beat for rappers like chief keef, rick ross, A$AP etc to spit over
2) the really internetty stuff that is a lot more in your face and seems to have come off the back of moombahton and US dubstep and is massive on soundcloud, involves m€$$|€tt€®$, dodgy remixes, samples, tumblr goths seemed to have been early supporters of, mad decent love, students love etc.

obviously, i love the first but am not so sure about the second, though that seems to be the style that's really taken off. personally i find the internetty stuff a bit goofy and too close to american frat boy type music (as demonstrated in the harlem shake vids).

it's obviously not even close to being in the same sort of boat as EDM / US dubstep though, which i think is obviously all tripe.

kode9 played a bit of both at DMZ the other night (instrumental to Usher's 'Lemme See' which is a long time persy 4 me, TNGHT's 'burial ground' & Baauer's 'Rollup' rmx) and it all sounded really good.

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most importantly UK DJs are playing it, and a lot of it, and i think that that's probably a better thing than people just endlessly playing more UK bass, house music etc but i wonder what happens next.

a lot of the up north (and london) ex-/ current grime producers are making it too, and obviously it's made a massive impression on grime if you listen to the new vocal tracks / mixtapes from big nars etc (i'm sure this topic also has been covered on the grime thread on here...). that's never going to be a bad thing, but i just can't help but feel like maybe it's a bit of a dead ender if you're literally just imitating an american style. plus it's not really very underground...is it...even if it might sound like it. not that that's necessarily a bad thing, obviously, but it does make it VERY easy for DJs to play / hard for them not to play if that's honestly what literally everyone wants to hear.

more and more these days it seems like the UK hardcore dance producers are looking Stateside for inspiration (trap, footwork, house). i know that this is not the first example of this happening (grime, gangster jungle) but it is still noticeable, and i wonder what its repurcussions will be (less of a jamaican influence, more commercially minded lyrics / productions, hardcore diva vocals lost in favour of garagey RnB type ones etc?)

P.S. not sure if anyone's mentioned him on dissensus b4, but this guy's been keeping me VERY happy recently, and certainly isn't shy of poking a little bit of fun at the UK and its clubbing heritage in light of the massive success of the present wave of US dance musics (dubstep, edm, trap etc) - https://www.facebook.com/m8pls
 
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daddek

Well-known member
there seem to be 2 types of trap -
2) the really internetty stuff that is a lot more in your face...
it's obviously not even close to being in the same sort of boat as EDM / US dubstep though

who u kiddin
it's audience, musical intentions & devices (maximalist club hype), aesthetic, and marketing infrastructure correlate entirely with EDM's. almost all of its proponents got there from another strain of maximalist edm.

im talking about brotrap obviously. actual, original trap hiphop would once have been defined almost antithetically to pretty much all of the above. in theory at least. therein lies the bitter, almost mocking irony.

i wouldnt feel like this if i didnt love actual trap as much as i did
 

Roshman

Well-known member
I'm really enjoying some of the UK stuff that fits into the first category. Grime producers take on it seems a lot less offensive to the ears than the internet hype stuff ,which is interesting considering the sort of sounds that those producers are normally using in their grime productions. Perhaps they find that Trap style is a good conduit for the more laid back beats than the grime template.

For example.
Rude Kid.
vs

Darq E Freaker
vs

I find the trap that you hear on the Hyperdub show like a curated window into the category 2 stuff.

a mate of mine also puts on a "DJ soc" in a London uni that i went to recently. pretty amazing thing to watch but freshers pay like a few quid and then queue for literally a mile around the bar to jump on to a pair of CDJs and mix 3-4 tracks. there's no dancing, just waiting for their turn to DJ. most of the people there were playing trap.

That sounds awful.

As for "m8 do u even compress?" He's the best thing on my news feed at the moment. hmu if u agree yh.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
some of the trap-edm crossover stuff is really really good, this is the thing. it's just a bit embarrassing to talk about because of all the bellends going on about popping mollies and people like flosstradamus trying to re-brand a culture that has nothing to do with em.

that above post re: uk stuff should mention spookfest, really:

 
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Sectionfive

bandwagon house
the influence is so much...

no really, a bit too pervasive for me at the minute. Death by hi-hat. Some good stuff but I find a lot it crowbarred in and sucking the life out of sets.
DJ's fault rather then the music in particular admittedly but lots of it is just shit.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
yeah whole sets of it is too much. same tempo as grime and a lot of US rap tho, so it's nice to mix a vocal over (see 12:30 or so below):

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jackjambie

Voodoo Priest
That sounds awful.

Yup. Pretty mental. Made me think of when people come up to you and ask for tunes when you're DJing. Like, now that everyone's a DJ there's always a metaphorical queue of people a mile long with a CD full of trap just waiting for you to get the hell off the decks lol.
 

jackjambie

Voodoo Priest
Like - obviously it's all waaaaay too much, but it is very much already here all the same.

Jackin's obviously got it completely right remixing the good US stuff to make UK anthems. Massive amounts of respect for that. I heard Kode9 dropped this bad boy early on at DMZ too (GUTTED i missed this in London, as I've seen it go off in Brum now a bunch of times...) -

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Roshman

Well-known member
that above post re: uk stuff should mention spookfest, really:

I was going to, but couldn't find an aggressive enough footsie grime instrumental to contrast it to. I know for a fact that J Beatz has made some brilliant trap stuff but hasn't released any of it or put it on his soundcloud.

Also does every thread in the dissensus music section have to mention Jacking?
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Also does every thread in the dissensus music section have to mention Jacking?

'fraid so...


New Jersey club appears to be pretty dominated by this sound right now too, lots of tracks like this:

Somehow I've still managed to avoid hearing Harlem Shake and I want to keep it that way.
 

Gess

Member
Ah, finally a thread I feel I can post in haha.

I do find it pretty amusing how this stuff repulses people so much, even more so than brostep on dubstepforum which is ironic and hilarious.

I was at DMZ on Saturday and I heard both styles in Kode9's set, some Lex Luger and that Usher istrumental, and some Rustie, S-Type, TNGHT and Baauer. But also the grime trap of Faze Miyake and that new Dexplicit.

Frankly I love it all, and I was into the original rap stuff before I heard any of this new ravey stuff :cool:.
 

daddek

Well-known member
True a bunch of it is good. It's never been a qualitative objection for me, so much as.. text-ual? I'm stretching my faux-academic vocab here.

The vaguely luger-ist rhythmic dynamics aside, the actual spirit of the brotrap stuff is more reminiscent of jerkin to me - maximalist, jubilantly silly, hip hop party hype. Far more so than anything that could properly be called trap, considering everything that term was meant to denote. It's diplo as fuck thats for sure.
If I could put the genre/culture jacking aside, I could enjoy the music more.

The grime trap-esque stuff makes sense, seeing as road rap was to some extent a uk adoption of trap aesthetics, and was itself a sibling to grime. Grime has had relationship with it for years in that sense. That stuff I enjoy without reservations, that which manifests both grime and actual hood trap. Partly because it's not parading itself in a stolen name, but also because I simply prefer both those streams of music, infinitely to the US/student/bro/edm mess. Unfortunately, the later is such an unavoidable, titanic, remorseless energy vampire
 

Gess

Member
yes, its true that I have to erase the word 'diplo' from my mind first

but after that, i do musically enjoy most of it, authentic or not.
 

trilliam

Well-known member
The grime trap-esque stuff makes sense, seeing as road rap was to some extent a uk adoption of trap aesthetics, and was itself a sibling to grime. Grime has had relationship with it for years in that sense.

this for one is nonsense literally re-writing history
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
personally rather hear it sparingly at most. grime's uniqueness has always been one of its greatest strengths. influences, of course, but combined syncretically ($5 word alert) into something that didn't sound like nothing else. obv no sound can say static and stilll be FWD but people don't obsess over 10 yr old pirate sets (pretty sure people ain't gonna be flipping about 2009 pirate sets in 2019) cos Wiley etc were aping whatever was going in rap ca 2002. plus I just ain't feeling any of the trap grime I've heard. plus it's responsible for Jammer rapping over a shitty remix of I Don't Like, which is some shit I don't like.

also whatever happened to: "why are you like d-block, you're from England"
just saying

+ as far as EDM trap I couldn't say but I do know sooner or later the brostep massive, or next gen thereof, which is the engine for this shit, will switch back to guitars. it happened w/disco, it happened w/The Prodigy etc. dance music ain't ingrained in the culture here like it is in England, it always backlashes to guitars sooner or later.
 
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daddek

Well-known member
this for one is nonsense literally re-writing history

ok well i dont mean to take an authoritative tone over it. if it's as blatantly fictional as you say it is, i'd like to know how. thats just how it appeared to play it from my perspective, which is admittedly distant.

but late 00s uk/road rap did have so much overt trap production, blatantly taking southside/legur rhythms and co-opting a lot of trap house slang. Not wholly, but partially. US similar rap production was creeping into grime sets around the same time, fast southern-y hats etcs. grime & road rap may not be wholly twinned but there's clear communication between the two right.
so which part are you disagreeing with.
 
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