Production Breakdown: Genres - Who Needs ‘Em?

Can you believe that, not long ago, there was a sizable contingent of heads who really and truly thought that hip-hop was either dead, or on its last legs? I mean, I'm sure there are still those who'd agree with that sentiment, but it's been quite a while since I've heard anyone seriously espouse it – and anyone who would, well, they're probably not paying a whole lot of attention.

Yeah, I know: this is such an old debate that what I'm doing is less like beating a dead horse than it is like kicking over a pot of glue made from a horse who died half a century ago – and, wow, even for me that's a strange analogy – but there's a point coming... ready? OK, here it is: I think that hip-hop's days as a clear-cut genre are, if not finished, rapidly coming to a close. And, far from being a bad thing, that's the best thing that could possibly happen.

To backtrack a minute, though, what set me off on this train of thought was AudioDax' latest feature, “Right Way.” Like the Indiana up-and-comers' previous EP leak, “Matter of Time,” the track found Temble and Krypton Flo serving up an eclectic, out-the-box mishmash of genres, blending peppy, electro-pop boardwork, Owl City-esque melodies, and braggadocious but good-natured rhymes. After listening to the record, I got to thinking, “Where do these guys fit in the hip-hop landscape?”

One easy answer might be to say that they just aren't hip-hop per se – they're pop, with a guy rapping. And it's certainly true that a couple rapped verses don't automatically make a track hip-hop. But what does? Perhaps the answer can be found on the production tip (that's what I'm supposed to be talking about, after all): live DJs? Looped breaks? Sampling?

There are plenty of purists who certainly would cite these as defining features of hip-hop, and they'd be right – when those elements are present on a track together, you can be fairly certain that what you're dealing with is a hip-hop record. Personally, though, I think that this position need to be taken with a fairly large grain of salt: otherwise, you end up with marginal cases you that you have to brush under the rug. Like AudioDax, or the increasing number of tracks where a rapper sings as much as – or more than – he or she actually raps.

Don't get me wrong, boom-bap rhythms, turntablism and the like will always scream “classic hip-hop” but, as has been the case for quite a while now, the old-school devotees can no longer lay claim to”hip-hop” as a category – it's simply become too big, and too diffuse.And that's the same reason, for example, a “death of rock” would make no sense: if you posed the question “What is 'rock?'” to a music-lover, the first thing you'd get would probably be a much-needed history lesson, but if you pressed him or her for hard-and-fast criteria, you'd be unlikely to hear anything more specific than: “Um, there's generally guitar... and a backbeat.” And even that wouldn't always hold true.

What makes a musical movement difficult to pun down is the same thing that prevents it from dying out, so let's embrace hip-hop's marginal cases. Perhaps genres are less like boxes than they are like intricate patterns of light refracted through a crystal – or maybe it's more like a series of tubes. But that's enough from me; what crazy simile would you use to describe the state of hip-hop today?