The music and melodies that producers add to the game, and the things like melodies from Future and other rap artists is what we need for today’s trap music.” It’s quite a claim to state that trap is superseding the dominant pop genre of this century, modern R&B, but what’s been happening in the charts the last few years bears this out. That is the game right now, and why I think R&B is not quite as popular anymore. So, as I said, because people like Future and Quavo are it approaching from a rapper’s standpoint, they are going to feel things differently and will sing them differently. Zaytoven acknowledges the debt owed by the Atlanta music scene to artists like T-Pain and Kanye West in using Auto-Tune and getting rappers to sing, but adds, “T-Pain was definitely one of the guys who started it, but he came from a singer’s standpoint. It’s edgy, and creative, and that’s what attracts people to it.”
The Atlanta sound has become the more popular sound. They are singing from a rap standpoint, not as singers, so they’re not doing harmonies and so on, but the melodies they come up with are so catchy that the listeners can sing along with them, and they almost like it more than R&B. “I am definitely amazed by what Atlanta has done! The beat and the music mean a lot, and then the rappers, like Future and Migos, also started singing melodies.
It’s an outcome that has surprised and delighted the man himself. Many of the trappings of trap, and of Zaytoven’s approach in particular, have been seeping into R&B/pop and other music genres as well, for example giving rise to Latin trap. The latter’s sound has gone on to become particularly influential both in the Atlanta rap scene, and in the music world at large. Tracing the exact roots of Atlanta rap and trap would require an article of its own, but in a nutshell, the genre was in the first instance pioneered by producers Lil John, Mannie Fresh and DJ Paul, and was then further developed by the likes of Fatboi, Drumma Boy, Shawty Redd, D. Hand in hand with this goes the distinctive Atlanta vocal sound: simultaneous rapping and singing, aided and abetted by obvious use of Auto-Tune. This is music stripped to its bare bones, dominated by heavy 808s and double- or triple-time hi-hats, with a fairly light-sounding snare, sparse but cinematic use of synths and other instruments, and overall very little mid-range content. The main innovation of the Atlanta hip-hop scene, and in fact of Southern hip-hop as a whole (also incorporating cities like New Orleans, Houston, Memphis and Miami), is trap. In short, Atlanta’s impact on the international music scene is totally disproportionate to the size of its population.
Not only was it the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr it is now the “hip-hop capital of the world”, having spawned current stars such as Future, Gucci Mane, 21 Savage, Young Thug and Migos - and, before that, the likes of Andree 3000, Usher, Jermaine Dupri, Jeezy, Ludacris, OJ da Juiceman, OutKast, B.o.B., 2 Chainz, The-Dream, CeeLo Green, Lil Jon, and many others.
Located more or less in the middle of nowhere in the South-Eastern USA, and containing just under half a million inhabitants, the city of Atlanta, Georgia punches above its weight. Central to Atlanta’s white-hot rap scene is producer Zaytoven, who brings a West Coast flavour to trap.
0 kommentar(er)
