The other day producer Thelonious Martin posted a tweet about Lofi that sparked some debate in his comments:
White folks thinking they created Lo-Fi beats might be the funniest shit ever.
— Thelonious Martin™ (@KingThelonious) May 22, 2020
It got the team over here thinking… Are Lofi Hip-hop instrumentals gentrified boom-bap beats? The short answer is Yes. Before my Lofi hip-hop heads get riled up hear us out.
Gentrification happens in dilapidated neighborhoods where city officials, investors, & new movers come into the neighborhood renovate the area in an effort to give it new life. That sounds good, right? Take the bad area and give it a makeover.
The problem with gentrified areas though is that the gentrifiers often lack deep knowledge about the neighborhood they’re moving into. They don’t know the customs associated with the neighborhood, and worst of all they push out the people who’ve been in that neighborhood forever creating tension between them and the residents who’ve experienced that neighborhoods unique culture firsthand. We’ve seen gentrification on this level happen in places like DC, Atlanta, Harlem etc. and we now see that in Lofi Hip-Hop.
Bringing the housing analogy to Lofi/Boom-Bap: Boom-Bap is the dilapidated neighborhood; loved by many but few still live there. It’s ripe for new investors and they’ve come in droves to get a piece of the land. The issue is that once they got a piece they decided to give it a new name & customs. The old culture of the town doesn’t quite fit so they decided to “push out” that culture and create a new one. It’s no longer Boom-Bap, it’s LOFI.
Consider that Boom-Bap became a dated style as crunk, trap, snap, and other sub-genres of rap music permeated mainstream hiphop culture in the early 2000’s. As a result the golden era sound of the 80’s and 90’s drifted back underground once again becoming a ‘niche’ sound championed by the lyrical rap community and producers.
At the same time, the internet has allowed for the globalization of music which brought Hiphop culture to other parts of the world. So, while the south’s reign in Hiphop was taking place in the early 2000’s, parts of Europe we’re becoming more and more influenced by the sound of golden era Hiphop and producers worldwide were buying vintage drum machines to emulate that sound.
LFHH’s marquee sound is characterized by jazzy samples and dusty unquantized drums, and ironically, both are key factors in determining it’s identity as gentrified boom-bap. Only someone who doesn’t know hiphop’s roots would think that this combination is new. Jazz is deeply rooted in hiphop culture and popular groups from the golden era routinely had jazzy beats and dusty drums.
Understanding that the soundscape of Hip-hop had advanced and that the low fidelity sound was no longer mainstream producers began referring to their niche style of retro beats as “Lofi.”
With that in mind we have to think about the pioneers too. It’s largely agreed upon in the Lofi community that the pioneers the sound are the legends Nujabes and J-Dilla. We see that many Lofi hip-hop enthusiasts try to emulate their sound. But if we recognize the history of where these producers come from, it’s clear to see that their style of hip hop has been around for quite some time. It just wasn’t called Lofi. It was boom-bap in all of its unquantized glory.
Ultimately, it’s up to the listener to decide what’s considered Lofi, and what’s considered Boom Bap. But if we’re going to look its style, the people who were touted as the pioneers of the music, and its history, it’s clear to see that this Lofi hip hop is simply Boom-Bap with a new name.
As a culture, Hip-hop can’t be totally upset because this typically happens to cultures, as they become more mainstream; they become more acessible and they change. People who like to be on the outskirts of pop culture generally make their own subgroups and find other like minds who believe their ideology. But conversely, when gentrifiers are confronted with the history of the culture they “invented” they shouldn’t be upset either because well… it’s not yours in the first place.
– Drum Machine Addicts
