November 2011
17 posts
“It happens about once a year in hip-hop production: someone invents or perfects a sound, someone figures out how to get a weird noise out of some piece of technology not designed to make that noise, someone figures out a way to make a drum machine say the same old thing with a different accent and the whole rap world tilts on its axis. If you manage to change the beat — if your sound drifts upstream from mix tapes to pop radio, if it becomes the only thing anybody wants to hear — you can change hip-hop. In the ’90s, Dr. Dre slowed gangsta rap down to a cruising-lowrider pace, creating music for which a cocky drawl is the ideal lead instrument, and Snoop Dogg became a star. Lex Luger’s sound helped elevate Rick Ross, who pounds haikulike syllables into the spaces in the music, and Waka Flocka Flame, a pure-energy rapper who just blows the house in.”
—Lex Luger Can Write a Hit Rap Song in the Time It Takes to Read This - NYTimes.com
