On March 9th, two days after an impressive radio show at the legendary Diplo & Friends on Britain’s number one music station BBC Radio 1, there was an uproar about the social media presentation of a certain London-based producer and people got loud on reddit:
A hacker gained access over as much as 120 thousand followers on Soundcloud, a five-digit follower count on Twitter and Instagram and discharged all his envy and hate in public with caps lock on. After a few hours, the victim regained access over Instagram and Soundcloud, the Twitter account unfortunately had to be remade.
It was no other than London-based super-producer Troyboi, who was signed on contract to A-Trak’s label Fool’s Gold last year after being pushed on Soundcloud by the EDM Network and their subsidiaries. The million dollar question is:
What kind of music is it, that makes his fans (I count myself to them) go nuts? Is it trap? Is it house? Is it UK Garage? 2Step? Future Beats? One thing is certain though:
There is barely any lyrics in his productions. Neither singing, nor rap. Just synthesizer modulation and sample fireworks. Could be, that not many folks have yet tried to place themselves onto his mighty works and to challenge themselves. There is a high chance for this one, since the Roc Nation squad has reportedly failed to compose lyrics onto nice but forward-thinking beats by Just Blaze (Link https://soundcloud.com/just-blaze/miracle). Troyboi just pushes every unfitting element out, takes the stage for himself and focusses the audience’s attention on pure acoustic goodness.
The bass, deep like the ocean. Snares that slap you right in the face, making you want to move. Hi-hats like Uzi’s fired straight onto concrete. Like pyrotechnics on fire. Controlled chaos. Spectacular.
But there are some brave people who decided to be brave and place their voices. To walk into the lion’s den. The result, when there is a symbiosis between the work of two talented folks, can only be described as extraterrestrial.
I mean, how else can you describe this sound, without using metaphors, alliterations, euphemisms and lyrical stuff like that? It is sheer acoustic poetry. Folks may hear different things in there but books can be filled in the attempt to describe the Troyboi sound.
It feels like back in the days, when we, the music nerds celebrated Flosstradamus, Yellow Claw, RL Grime, spectating and participating in the trap and beats culture when it was on the rise. When the sound, which makes the elbows move up today, was in development. At least here in lazy and dusty Germany, while in the States the culture of electronic music developed at a faster, more unrestrained and more creative pace.
Just that the beats culture (counting trap to it as well), is not a one-hit wonder trend but gets serious momentum and provides serious growth of music culture. An indicator may be that Soundcloud and Beatport were blindsided when they suddenly needed to introduce a whole new genre section for a variety of new unlabeled commercial music.
This is happening just here. And the insiders will know that Baauer or RL Grime’s Kanye West remix was just the tip of the iceberg of the trap culture.
The real drivers of the scene were people like Loudpvck. Like Blue Chocolate. Like young David Lopez (which is Luminox), who sat down in Phoenix, AR, and rearranged the EDM classic “Rattle” by Bingo Players to the extent that you wanted to move your elbows and to get seriously fucked up. These were the people who wrote modern music history. A history of music beginning to call itself gangster.
Leave a Reply