Production Breakdown: K-Beta’s “Paperbag Writer”

Way back in September of '09, when Nathan S.' review of Kid CuDi's Man on the Moon: The End of Day hit the Booth, site commenters raised a question that's had me stroking my (imaginary, then for a few weeks increasingly actual, until I realized it looked awful) beard ever since: when will hip-hop find its Radiohead? Or, more specifically, why aren't there hip-hop artists who push the boundaries of their genre like Radiohead does for rock?

As a fairly huge fan of the UK heavyweights, I find the concept of a “hip-hop Radiohead” intriguing, but I'm not sure whether or not it makes sense.... or makes sense yet, anyway. Like so many big questions, it really depends on how you look at things. But, backtracking for a sec, the track that brought this question back to the forefront of my mind was, of course, “Paperbag Writer,” the new, Booth-exclusive freestyle from DMV up-and-comer K-Beta. One of the fresher and stranger entries in recent memory, it came backed by an instrumental derived from Radiohead's (kinda obscure) EP cut of the same name. (You can listen to the track on the bottom of the page.)

Like other Radiohead/Thom Yorke-inspired hip-hop tracks I've come across (Lupe, Kanye & Pharrell's “Us Placers” as Child Rebel Soldiers, as well as Lupe's recent “The National Anthem” freestyle come to mind), “Paperbag Writer” sounds outré at first blush but, deep down, works intuitively well. In my opinion, that's because the stylistic gap between today's hip-hop and the Oxford grads' more beat-driven material is a fairly narrow one. Thom Yorke seems to agree – how else do you explain this?



The jittery polyrhythms, intricate songwriting and attention to aural detail that define Radiohead's style are, to me, a natural reference point for hip-hop's future – the dots are right there to be connected by inventive producers and artists. Will this blending of genres add up to something as bracing, polarizing, and influential as Kid A? I have my doubts; I think it's a matter of evolution, not revolution.

While it's clear that many of today's hip-hop heavyweights are already taking cues from Radiohead, I believe a “Radiohead of hip-hop” wouldn't sound much like either Radiohead or today's hip hop – it might be as different from both as “Paperbag Writer” (the original) does from The Beatles' “Paperback Writer.” If the evolution of hip-hop chronologically mirrors rock history, we might be waiting a while, but, hey, look on the bright side – now would be a great time to start arguing over the identity of rap's Sex Pistols.