Atlanta Rap 2014-2016

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
your next assignment is to explain the big shift in production that kicked off around 2015. due next sunday.

i'm hoping if i say something about cloud rap in this context that it'll either be vaguely right or so incredibly ignorant that it'll force crowley to teach me. i don't have an opinion on this one so you don't have to worry about that.
 

luka

Well-known member
i'm hoping if i say something about cloud rap in this context that it'll either be vaguely right or so incredibly ignorant that it'll force crowley to teach me. i don't have an opinion on this one so you don't have to worry about that.

what is the big shift?
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
1017 thug, migos 'no label 2' and future's 'honest' have lots of midi strings and bells. a few tacky synth arpegios.

the stuff coming out after that is totally different.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i think the older stuff is faster as well. i'll have a listen to the drums and bore everyone to tears if i hear a difference.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Actually yeah to clarify are we talking over the years indicated in the thread title or...

I think there's a little bit of a lag between when the vocals start to change and when the instrumentals do (maybe the beats changed in part as a response to the vocals). either tonight or tomorrow morning i'll explain in more detail what i'm on about and then you can get back to filling your lunch breaks with whatever nonsense me and luka happen to be pestering with you on that particular day.
 

luka

Well-known member
I think there's a little bit of a lag between when the vocals start to change and when the instrumentals do (maybe the beats changed in part as a response to the vocals). either tonight or tomorrow morning i'll explain in more detail what i'm on about and then you can get back to filling your lunch breaks with whatever nonsense me and luka happen to be pestering with you on that particular day.

3 hours still till bartys bedtime. might as well get it done tonight.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
This is comparing things, on the one hand, like 1017 thug, Honest, no label 2 and ‘feels good to be rich’ with later albums by the same artists; barter 6, 56 nights, culture, keep flexin.

The types of instrumentals used on the early projects and the later ones fit into two different camps. You can hear the gradual evolution of the sound over time, 2014 in particular seems to be the transition year.

The early stuff is largely centered around a sort of ‘midi-orchestra’ sound; the kind of preset, inbuilt midi strings, brass, choirs, church bells, etc. you get with DAW’s. similarly there are also a lot of preset-sounding synth sounds. Even when it doesn’t fit into that mould you’re still getting the instrumentation being idiomatic; it’s derivative of pre-established genres. In terms of arrangement a lot of it’s more maximalist and dense.

On the other hand, the later stuff is more minimal and is not particularly derivative of anything. You couldn’t point to instrumentals and say ‘it sounds like x genre’. I think the timbres are warmer as well.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I was trying to pinpoint this for barty and I don't have the longform in my brain yet but... It's gotta be DJ Spinz.

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He's a sort of vital figure scene wise but as a producer, I think he kind of indicated the 'deflation' of trap coinciding with the toughening and crystalizing of futuristic strains into one generalized movement.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Cramming this in b4 I gotta get on a bus in an hour.

So the crystalization in the early part of the 2010s occurs as a result of DJ Spinz. Spinz & DJ Pretty Boy Tank were brought in under DJ Scream into the Hoodrich Entertainment brand (Scream was an affiliate DJ in the Gangsta Grillz along w/ DJ Holiday). Their Space Invaders series was a lot of the futuristic swag atlanta rap loosies and general overviews of the scene (Barty; if you've grabbed any of Hoodrich Keem's compilations, think that but for the period I insist on) (also Pretty Boy Tank is responsible personally for one of my favorite of the tapes that transitioned these phases)

<script src='https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/m/104986/script/' type='text/javascript'></script><noscript><a href='https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/dj-victoriouz-lobby-runners-mixtape.104986.html' target='_blank'>DJ Victoriouz - Lobby Runners</a></noscript>

Spinz as the Space Invaders series grew in popularity became a big radio DJ and helped streamline both the futuristic and the trap threads together into a solid Atlanta product (the same way Esco is credited for doing at Magic City and other strip club DJs. As a result a lot of the monotonous trap records got phased out in favor of ones that had impact sonically for a set, and the more whimsical and immature futuristic records were also parsed in favor of clubby records. This lead to the melodic experimental thread and the aggressive thread being forcibly bound together. You can see how it even shifted Thug sonically from say...

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to

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This nexus was also the benificiary of Spinz knowing how to court the more blogger center of the music press; your Fader/Vice types, which of course attracted more left-field camps whom prior were making less trap-influenced music and more say... Odd Future influenced music like Key!

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to

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See what I mean?
 
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