Notes on experimental hip-hop practice
Experimental hip-hop, as I practice it, is not a costume. It is permission to let a verse sit on a bed that would get rejected in a “make it brighter” session. It is permission for a track to be a corridor instead of a chorus machine.
A typical session for me does not start with a brief from a brand. It starts with a loop, a voice memo, or a texture I cannot get out of my head. I record before I have a speech ready for why the speech exists. Later I edit. Later I throw away. The public catalog includes survivors, not every sketch.
Rhythm is the argument. If the pocket is dishonest, no amount of lore will save it. I will spend more time on a snare’s relationship to a breath than on a metaphor that photographs well. That is a taste. You do not have to share it. You only have to hear whether the record believes itself.
Electronic texture is not a replacement for writing. It is a room the writing can walk around in. Some nights the room is more interesting than the writing. Those nights become instrumentals. Instrumentals are not “unfinished rap songs.” They are finished rooms.
I listen back at low volume. If a piece only works as a loud flex, it is probably compensating. I also walk away for a day. The day-after listen is meaner and more useful than the night-of listen. Mean is a craft tool. Mean is not a personality I owe strangers on the internet.
If you make music too: finish more than you announce. Announcement is cheap. A file you can play next year is expensive in the only currency that matters, which is attention you will not get back.
I keep notes, but I do not worship the notes. A session that produces a paragraph of theory and no file is a journal entry, not a record. A session that produces a file and no theory is still a record. Theory can catch up. Files do not catch up if you never bounce them.
Collaboration, when it happens, is named. Ghostwriting other people’s identity is not a flex I want. If my voice is on it, my name is on it. If their voice is on it, their name is on it. The catalog is large enough to be confusing; credits should not add to the confusion.