Let’s say social trends move in cycles and newly-released music is largely a reflection of society. We are then once again children of the 80s; the skinny jeans, flannel and wolf T-shirts. Sadly hip-hop too has now become hipster-hop and adapted to this forgettable phase.
It chose to adopt the vocoder’s younger cousin, the auto-tuner – a pitch-altering device that increases vocal harmonization. For those unfamiliar imagine a rapping/singing Stephen Hawking. Or more accurately listen to what was really responsible to bringing the auto tune to the mainstream, Cher’s 1998 Believe.
A New Fad for Rappers
With the newly-leaked tracks from Kanye West, Amazing and Tell Everybody That You Know, one can’t help but ask why.
What was hoped to be a quickly passing fad, due in large part by T-Pain’s 2005 Rappa Ternt Sanga, has simply avalanched. While some like Snoop Dogg on Sexual Seduction use it more as a novelty, the dam has broken with little hope of quelling it in the near future. Kanye’s upcoming 808’s & Heartbreak, also recently leaked, largely features the auto-tuner.
“I created a thing I call ‘Heartbreak,’ that’s like a mixed drink. It’s auto tune meets distortion,” Kanye explains in a UK interview with ww.hiphopdx.com November 11, 2008. “I’m delivering what I feel like is art, and that’s what I want to deliver from this day on. The records I’m doing right now might not have high hats and **** like everything else has.”
Except that everyone is starting to use the auto-tuner. Aside from the previously mentioned, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, to name a few, all have song(s) using it. Even prolific E-40 considered using the tool despite an already-unique style and voice. “That was my idea a long time ago,” says E-40 in a Hot97 interview with DJ Whoo Kid in late October. “I was going to **** with it but my engineer didn’t have it yet.”
Phase or Perfect Pair
So this epidemic still exists and doesn’t look to quit anytime soon. Long dead are the days of the Wu, A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, et cetera, when content mattered and when the grit in your voice was all you needed to complement beats.
Is this yet another sign of change? Is this what hip-hop is evolving into with the newer generations? Met with teeth grinding and fist clenching by many, there is solace in that this may be just a passing phase.
Of course there are other phases in hip-hop that may also have made some nauseous; No Limit/Dirty South phase, the bling bling phase, gangsta rap. Yet the auto-tuner seems different. In a genre that doesn’t normally use conventional instruments, it may seem like a logical step in hip-hop evolution like the DAT was in the 80s. But like the majority listed on the Mitchell Report, most of the guilty rappers will gain nothing and contribute nothing using auto tune. Listen to T-Pain sans auto tune.
Hip-Hop's Next Step
With continued technological evolution, perhaps it is rap’s goal to emulate and eventually become robots. Does hip-hop without human realism continue to really be hip-hop?
Those raising their noses to the auto-tuner can only hope that rappers will soon cycle back to the “good ole days.” Even those that enjoy the artificial sound may still agree that the current inundation is tiring.
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