Hip-hop and electronic dance music are slowly coming together. Is it a fad or is it something that is going to stay? It is still a little too early to tell but one thing is for certain. It is here and it is roaring like an angry lion. XXL magazine recently wrote an article after interviews with artists of each genre on how combining hip-hop and EDM is equivalent to musical gold.
From a PR perspective, this makes PR gold too. Hip-hop has been been popular since the 80s. It has had a built-in audience for the better part of the past three decades. Today’s EDM, on the other hand, is still a fairly new sound, but it has caught on like a wild fire. Intertwining the two genres helps both artists cross audiences and reach even more people. This ultimately gives their name even more exposure.
The idea of bringing these two genres together isn’t as far fetched as some people might think it to be. They both are considered party music and rely on sampling past artists and recreating their music to make their own sound. The only real difference is that EDM doesn’t use vocals on their tracks like hip-hop does. That is where these two genres found a niche for each other.
Take a hip-hop artists like Danny Brown. Danny Brown is 32 and has been in the underground Detroit hip-hop scene for the past decade. Yet, nobody really knew who he was until 2013 when he signed with EDM producer A-Trak’s label Fool’s Gold and changed his sound from rapping over hip-hop beats to rapping over EDM beats. His “debut” album Old is one of the first albums that is half hip-hop beats, half EDM beats. Meaning, he is appealing to twice as many fans. Going from relative obscurity, to now, a more successful artist, Danny Brown is one of the artists that is at the forefront of intertwining hip-hop and EDM.
Overcast! 