Are Music Genres Dead?

One more time. Then we do it one more time. One more time. Spin it, rock, spin it one more time. Hit me, baby, one more time. So you finally got me out on the golf course, huh? The Lynx, baby. Finally got me out. I mean, this dude plays like I I joke with him. I think he plays more golf than he does podcast or produce or mix music. No, but it's alarmingly close. I'll give you that. It's a Problem. Twice a week. It's probably average. Three times. Maybe. Are you broke now at all? It is not helping. This is a very expensive, very addicting sport. So I while I do encourage people to get out there and give it a try, because it is a beautiful game. Also, you need to be stable enough in the pocket area to do it, man. Cause it's yeah, no, I've taken a hit for sure. I think I still owe you for the last round. You do. Anytime you want to send that to me would be great. So I mean, how'd I do? This man has a swing, man. I don't know. I I knew you can like play basketball. I know you're an athletic guy, but he hasn't played in forever. I was doubting him a little bit, you know, I'm like I'm gonna get out there. And I was kind of sweating the first couple holes.

I was like, am I even gonna beat this guy? What the hell? He's he's got a nice little he got pure pretty pure swing, man. I was piping that shit. You were hitting him straight pretty consistently. I was impressed, man. But I did take the W as expected. Yeah. So um you will have to work your way towards your first W. One more time, W. You know what I mean? I had a few rough holes that really hurt me. Yeah. Like chipping, I think was you started off good chipping and then that kind of suffered, and then putting. And don't forget the sand pit. Oh, yeah. He's trying to get out of the fucking sand, bro. You cannot splash it out of there. I was sunburned after I left that beach, bro. It was horrible. I think it took me like four tries to get out of the sand pit, bro. It was horrible. We maxed you out on that hole before. you came out. I keep calling it a pit. I think it's a trap. It's all bad. Any bad words. This is how I much I don't know about golf, really. Yeah, yeah. No, not a pit. You made that one up. Yeah, no, for sure. But it was fun, man. Yeah. I had a good time. And I'm trying to play tomorrow, but. Yeah, no, we're playing tomorrow. Are we gonna do?

I'm down. All right, let's do it. Let's book it after this. Okay, for sure. But even on a higher level, what else are we maybe talking about with the with the space, the music golf space that is kind of exploding right now? Hip hop and golf coming together. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce the upcoming one more time open. Let's fucking go. What's it gonna look like? What are we doing? I mean, we really don't know much. No, we don't. But we're speculating. Speculating on like a closest to the pin type of hole. Yeah. We invite some music industry players out and have a great time, man. A little trophy, you know. A little uh there's just, you know, there's already a correlation between like business and golf. Yeah. So the music business is no different. Like people do like to get out on the golf course. I mean, you know, Schoolboy Q has a fucking like golf partnership. Obviously, record label executives are always out golfing. Yep. Uh a lot of just hip hop in general. There's become like almost street wear golf brands. Totally. You know, shout out Eastside Golf, I think is the one here in Atlanta.

Um, that is like super dope and like they're crushing it. So yeah, I mean, it was just like you're obsessed with it. I like it. A bunch of our music industry friends have also been picking it up. So we were like, why the fuck not? Like you know, we've been wanting to do events that get the music community together, but are maybe a little bit more innovative than just the typical like artist showcase or beat battle or whatever the fuck that is. yeah. This is some shit that's not been done, really. We could be on the forefront of this. Not much, exactly. Yeah, with music meets golf like so heavily like this. Yeah, this has not really been done, man. For sure. Hopefully, no one like tries to now we have to move quick. Yeah, we can now we're gonna move fucking quickly. Yeah, we needed this. official. So you will see a flyer coming soon. Yeah, regardless of if we have any plan or not. But um, but no, I'm excited, man. I you know, I think that'll be a dope. So it's gonna be fun. We are here today to talk about the big question on everyone's mind right now, yeah, or just in general. Well, it will be after we say it. It will be for sure.

Is genre dead. What? What? Oh shit. Oh shit. No, honestly. Um, we've just been working with a lot of you know other artists. We've had you know artists on that are really like pushing the boundaries of what we would consider the traditional genres. Yes, someone like a bear one boss comes to mind, right? Where he's pulling elements from a lot of different things, even someone like a Wiley from Atlanta, who's pulling elements from blues and hip-hop and um, you know, soul, right? RB, and he's just making this music that like you really can't put it in a fucking box. I would go a step further and even say that it's hard to find an artist that is purely one genre, yeah. Like, oh, that is an RB singer, that's all they do. Okay, so let me ask you the question. Let's just kick it off with our opinions quickly. Is genre dead? I would say that genre is dying, it's becoming more convoluted. We're seeing sub-genres pop up out of nowhere.

There's so many. I think Spotify lists like over 5,000 like sub-genres. Holy shit, just in their directory or whatever. I think, yeah, that's what I wrote down. Oh my god. And uh, you know, I wrote it down, but that doesn't make it true. Who said it? maybe Spotify, like, is that true? There's a million versions of genres, and people are just trying to further and further, you know, not be in a box, I guess. Because that's the scariest thing, I think, for artists. I know Billie Eilish famously said that she hates the idea of genre. Yeah, yeah. What did she say exactly? We wrote that one down too. I hate the idea of genres. Yeah, I don't think a song should be put in a category. Yeah. Which is cool. I get that. I definitely get that. I hate the idea of some type of category, like limiting you to what you can use in your production of a song. I think that's fair. is hating genre a new thing. That's a new thing, right? It's definitely like last 10 years, maybe. Like no rock artist of the past was like, I don't want to be called a rock star. Like, I don't want to be making rock music.

Like, don't put me in the rock box. I don't know. Did they say that this cross-genre thing has been happening since forever, though. You know, I know, but like people are like against you calling them some specific type of genre or like artist, right? Like it's a very it's like a sore subject for most artists. It's probably harder for you to feel how that would feel, not being like an artist yourself necessarily, or creative type. No artist wants to feel like what they've done, what they're doing has already been done and has a label and is already put into this. Oh, you're this, okay. And it's it's just a bad feeling for any creative. Yeah, but like Miles Davis, you call him the best jazz artist, you know, in the world. Like you think he was like, Don't call me a jazz artist. I'm much more than a jazz artist. I think jazz was newer during his time. I'm just saying, bro. So it was cool. I think it's like new as fuck and like trendy to be like fuck genre. It is, Don't put me in a fucking genre.

And there are uses for genre at the same time. Which is what do you mean? And like in what way is it good? We've joked about, you know, like artists, we help artists like distribute their music, and you have to like pick a genre to put your shit under, and they hate that. It's like, is this rap? Is it pop? It's kind of rocky. It's kind of EDM. It's this, it's that. But it's like I said y'all in it, so like, should we throw the country tag on it? Subgenre, secondary genre, tertiary genre gets crazy. But what it does is group you with similar sounding artists and playlists. And playlists. So that's how they do it. So that people listening to a song similar to yours might then stumble on your song and then like it. So it's very beneficial in that sense. That's a lot of pressure, bro. It is to choose the right one. Yeah. And I don't know that artists are actually thinking that much about it that way. I don't envy it. The decision. No, I mean, because like you said, even like the artists that we've helped, you know, distribute some songs, you know, you've had some songs come out through DSPs, and like it was not a fun process to be able to like which one's primary, right? If it's like a poppy rap song, yeah, or like a you know, alternative rock influenced rap song, like which one's primary, which one's secondary.

Shout out Gabriel Averitt, man, because he's a rapper that I met a long time ago, started working. He was always a rapper, he was doing hip-hop. The stuff he makes these days is is you know, a lot of guitars, like rock, kind of pop guitars, and he's like singing, you know, with autotune, even in the verses. He's is he rapping? Kinda, yeah, but it's melodic, it's singing, so it's like we still put him in the hip-hop rap category, but at what point is it not hip-hop rap anymore? Yeah, but I've always talked about it like this, as far as I feel like us as humans, or at least I'm going off of my own human experience, right? I do feel the need. I'm just trying to think of why we did it in the first place, right? Like, I feel like we have the need to put things in categories. We love categorizing things. How else do we talk about it? That's like makes conversation easier, right? How hard would it be if we didn't have it? For sure. So does that worry you about how we're gonna talk about music if it's like the genres are actually dead? I think we'd figure it out. In what way?

I think you had mentioned like moods, maybe. Moods instead of categories. Yeah. You don't just talk about like the song and like a very general blanket thing. But I think if it was moods, it would be easier for artists to put projects out in different moods. Flow in and out. In and out of the mood. Smoother. Any artist should be able to put out a project in any genre. And I think they're terrified to do that because they're labeled as one thing. And it's like, are you gonna lose your fan base that thinks you're this? Well, and I even talked about that in a you know in a post of mine where it was like, how early on in your career should you be showcasing that like you know, ability to step in one genre, step out into another, step over into a different one, right? Um, like you know, because uh it just gets a little confusing potentially for the audience, you know? Like genres, there's punk rock fans, for example, right? They go to punk rock shows. You show up performing a fucking poppy rap song at a punk rock show, good luck. Yeah, I don't want to know how that plays out.

No, it's not gonna go well. But you know what I mean is that we still, I don't know, like there's some listeners that are open to flowing with you in and out of those uh those sounds, right? And like genres, if you will, but I don't know that everyone is. But I think those are the better fans to have. I think those fans. that's very subjective. That's your opinion. Yeah, this is all opinions. We don't know shit. We're just talking on a podcast. You're right. What do you mean? It's your opinion, and these are my opinions. I mean, bro, like just think about pop. What does pop stand for? I mean, okay, pop's kind of the heart. just answer my questions. Popular music. What is the most popular genre right now? Obviously, hip hop. So is is hip hop not pop? Yeah. I mean, a lot of songs are making it onto pop radio. So what are we even doing here? What are we? It's dead. It's fucking dead. It just needs to be modernized. We need to figure out a better. I don't think the categorization of music is ever gonna go anywhere.

I think it needs to be categorization. I said that. You said categorization. No, I didn't. Y'all, did he say categorization or categorization? The categorization. The categorization of music. Thank you. Thank you, bro. Just needs to be updated. It needs to be modernized. I think trying to kill genre is a losing battle. Because, like you said, as humans, we do like to categorize things We have to. so we can talk about it, so we can so uh artists can know like who to get as an opener for their tour. Like, there's plenty of you know what playlist to get on. There's plenty of reasons we need to categorize it, but I think our categories are dog shit and need to be updated with the times. Who invented them? Couldn't tell you. I'm like, who gave these the names that they they did? I'll say this. It was a lot easier back in the day to do it when there was such defined ways on how this type of music was made. The modernization of music production has contributed a lot to the reason that genre is so muddy right now. Break it down, break it down.

So I can buy a laptop. What kind? Doesn't matter. Dell, literally anything, PC, anything, Mac. I can get I can go get a sample of anything. I can go to Splice.com. Which sample? I can go to Splice.com. This is not sponsored, but we love you, Splice. Should be, and get a sample, a royalty-free sample of any genre that I want. Genre. Yeah. And guess what? They're categorized by genre on Splice. I didn't know. They have to be. But I can point is I can make anything on my laptop by myself. Damn. You want to make a rock song back in the day, you're going into a nice expensive studio. You've got your drummer, your bass player, your singer, your guitar player, whatever, and you're doing it that way. It was much more a calculated routine of how to make that. Because it was so expensive, too. Like you better fucking be all in with rock if you're about to do all of that shit to make it, versus like you could try and make a rock song in 30 minutes if you were like, eh, fuck this rock shit. I'm making rap.

Yeah, you could just do it. Yeah, easily. Just train, just change to the next one. The barrier to entry is so low. Slow. And that's the reason that we have a lot more music now, which is another reason that genre is getting so muddy, is because so much fucking music is being made now. So it's just natural. It's like when there's you know, a thousand songs coming out a month back in the day, it's that's just not gonna deviate that fast. It's just math. There's not that many songs to deviate. When there's a hundred thousand songs being dropped on Spotify every month, the spectrum gets crazy. Insane. Any one kid could have a crazy twisted idea to mix this with that and that and it could blow up and now it's a new thing, and what do you call it. No, it's so true. No, so so I think you know, around the music production side, what also blows my mind just having seen you do this, for example, is like I brought my live saxophone over. I think I've told this story before, but I brought my live saxophone, my real can touch it alto saxophone. It's not a plug-in.

Yeah, to the studio. Yes. I got in the booth and recorded some shit. It was actually kind of fire. Not gonna lie. Shout out to me. We got there, yeah. Yeah, we got there, but then you started showing me all the goddamn saxophone sounds you can get on the internet and in these uh, you know, Daws, like you know, in these programs or whatever. Yeah, and you can control like how the breath sounds, even like the finger taps make it sound human. It's it's terrifying. It's creepy, and it's only gonna get you know more sophisticated. Let's not even get into AI right now. No, holy shit. If that's not the next level, this is not the point of the episode, Henry. Chill out. It's just a buzzword. I wanted to throw it in there. AI, AI. Click here, click now. AI is ruining ruining music. No, but but my point being that uh you kind of hinted at it, but I think it's the selection of sounds. I think it's uh it's not only just the way you can do it, but it's the access, it's the access to the sounds. Yes, that you can quite literally add a rock sample, right? Like an electric guitar, fucking just shredding guitar sample into your beat.

Then you can in five seconds, exactly. Literally go to YouTube, copy the link, Google YouTube to MP3. This is not, I don't know if that's legal, this is not legal advice. This is not I'm not condoning this. Fuck it. But it is possible to literally type in any song, grab it, sample it, chop it, rearrange it. And you used to have to buy a record, record it, you know, while it's spinning right in front of you, and then chop it up that way. Yeah, and it's just so easy now. Any song, any sound, any sound, anything, anything, right? So inevitably, you're gonna be able to make some fucking gumbo of a song where you're taking elements of this, of that, of uh, you know, a different sound, put them all together, and what the fuck do you call it? Yeah, no clue. And I think people these days listen to more genres than they used to back in the day. I think people back in the day were die hard in their genre. I'm a punk rock fan only. They had like a stereotype. That's how they dress, that's how they act.

That that's the music they listen to. People now are a lot more complicated, I would argue. And so the producers making the music, you know, if they're fans of four different genres, maybe they're pulling from all these genres in one song. No, you were definitely cooler, or I don't even know if it's cooler is the word, but you were definitely more unique if you floated between genres. People did look at you like, oh, like shit, like you have some like James Taylor, and then you got some like outcast in your rotation, and then you got some- but you're also not like fully either one, and you could get sniffed out for that. Some people judged you because of like, do you really know about any of these at all? You're not a purist. But some people looked at you of like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah, how you can weave in and out from a listener perspective, right? Yeah. Um, and yeah, man, I think I think you're right. I think that that's not really even looked at as unique. Like that's that's common. You better be listening to more than one. come on. It's so easy. You have every song at your you don't have to spend your hard-earned money to buy the one CD from the one artist.

You know, shout out to people who are still buying albums, but the majority of us are paying eight bucks a month for unlimited access to every fucking song on the planet. How much do you think Spotify costs? It's more, it's way more than that now. Is it? I don't look at my bill. How much is it? It was 10, and now I think it's gone up. Oh, okay. 10 versus 12, or 15, or something. Jesus, you're making me think it's like a hundred bucks a month. It's more than eight. I don't look at my bank statements, so like that's a terrible habit. I'm just, we need to talk about that on another episode. No, man. So to wrap up, is genre dead. Genre is dying. The word genre is becoming antiquated. Um, I think we could keep genre, we just need to update it, we need to modernize it. Absolutely. No, I think you're right. I think uh it's dying. Um, it's not yet dead. We still are you know utilizing it to what, like you said, submit music, to get on playlists, to be on certain radio stations, whatever, right? But I think it's going away, and I think that the sheer volume of subgenres is indicative of like what's to come. You know what I mean?

Subgenres. It's the new genre. Until next week, what are we doing? Getting out of here. Getting the fuck out of here. Peace. Peace, y'all. Bye, that shit like one more time. Bye, that one more time. Bye, that shit like one more time. Bye, that one more time. Oh.