Wonk music?

Recently the new sound of dancefloor hiphop has been dominated (in my mind at least) by the synth-heavy, off beat drumming and weird abstractions and glitches of guys like Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Nosajthing, Lazersword, glitchmob and the like. I really dig this music and while I don't know how much my own stuff fits in, I think of a lot of these people as my contemporaries and some of the best stuff going on in terms of production right now (whereas briefcase rockers/matte black is the future).

This collection of semi-related styles has been coming up for a while now and it's finally starting to really break through as a tangible scene, albeit a smallish one. The name seems to be Wonk, which as Giovanni pointed out, is the worst name ever.

The antecedent to this sound is always credited as J Dilla, whose influence is certainly felt. I know that Lotus, for example, is extremely influenced by the later Dilla sound. For me though, I think the real originators of this sound are Antipop consortium.

I got into those guys back in 2000 when they released tragic epilogue. Only recently have I realized how deeply they have influenced my approach to making music now.

Most people who know me know that I have always been a hip-hop guy, but that my circumstances led me to go into playing instruments instead of say, rapping or making beats. I didn't know a single person who had a sampler when I was starting to make music, and being completely broke for most of my life, buying gear wasn't an option even if I knew what to buy. When I left my parents house and moved to Montreal I started to get interested in how the music that I really loved was getting made. I knew that the electronic musicians I loved used macs to run a program called "max" to do weird stuff and I dreamed of being able to buy a powerbook and get into that world. I learned that hip-hop guys use a thing called an MPC or an sp-1200 to sequence their samples and drum hits into the bangers I would listen to. I learned about synths and what they do. This was all from reading, I had no access to any of this stuff.

I also want to add that in the meantime, the Neptunes and Timbaland had effective destroyed the classic hip-hop drum track, which used to be either a beat sampled from a record, or a beat that was sequenced to sound pretty much like a drummer played it. After "are you that somebody" or "shake ya ass" sequenced drums were freed from their need to resemble something an actual drummer would or could play. They also effectively shifted the melodic role from sampling to synth playing (alongside other producers like rockwilder, swizz, and others like them)

This was around the time that Antipop dropped their debut album. It was the first thing I heard that had everything I liked in it. It had the off-kilter drums and synth dominated sounds that the mainstream rap stuff was bringing, but it took both a lot deeper. instead of stock sounds from workstation keyboards like the korg triton, they used modular setups and created sounds that were more akin to the electronic musicians I was into (like Markus Popp, Fennesz, Pita, Microstoria, Jim O'Rourke when he wasn't playing guitar etc...). They took the drum concept a million miles further making beats that didn't even resemble drums on some tracks and that on others were noticably.. sloppy? It's a normal sound now, but at the time to hear electronically sequenced drums that weren't right on beat almost made no sense. Just when I thought I was getting a handle on how things were done, these guys came and flipped the whole game on it's head. This is not even to begin talking about their rapping, which is several blog posts in and of itself.

I saw them play live, in what was easily the best rap concert I ever saw, and a serious contender for best overall live performance. The guys pushed buttons on mysterious boxes and created wild sounds for a while, then when they had a loop going, someone would get up and rhyme. It was hypnotic. I would also mention that they were very ahead of their time in their look. Beans wore a red mohawk, which was a pretty gutsy look for a black dude at the time and they generally blew our minds with every element they brought.

They went on to release another classic record and a bunch of decent eps before being taken on tour with radiohead and then breaking up.

Beans went on to a solo career, and a tour with the unicorns. He's put out consistently good work that has eluded mostly any recognition. The other two, high priest and M. Sayyid made airborn audio which was pretty forgettable. Sayyid did a ton of great guest spots and a really sweet ep that I had on vinyl and now don't have at all. Priest put out a sort of dancehall-influenced album that was decent but overall they had all faded from the front of my consciousness until recently.

You have to keep in mind that this was my favorite rap group.

Then I hear all this new "wonk" stuff and I'm thinking to myself "yeah, there's some Dilla in there, but it's not exactly focusing on soulful sample chopping, which is pretty much what he's known for."

Then it hits me. This is antipop style beats! I think more so than Dilla. They will get no credit because most great artists don't, but I see it, and maybe you do too.

Maybe that's why I like all this new stuff so much.