A lot of punks are probably disgusted at this title but just take a minute to read.
A couple days ago, after a good sweaty rehearsal session, my bandmate and I sat down and decided to whack on the new Lil Peep documentary ‘Everybody’s Everything’ on Netflix. Neither one of us are fans of trap music but Netflix is killing it with documentaries at the moment, so we knew it would be worth watching. I found that the whole time I was watching, I was mesmerised by the similarities it shares with punk. Not necessarily music-wise, but aesthetic, attitude and (to a certain extent) image. I felt gratified when this train of thought was reinforced by artist Slug Christ in said documentary; “Punk isn’t a type of music. It’s an aesthetic. It’s an energy.”
Like any genre falling upon the untrained ear, trap music all sounds the same to me. Which of course is a very cheap criticism because all that says is “I don’t listen to this kind of music enough to know what I’m supposed to be looking for”. Whilst I did enjoy a couple of songs that featured on the documentary, I don’t see myself pursuing a trap musical venture any time soon. But maybe it’s just a matter of time.
I noticed there was a point at which Sum 41’s ‘Fat Lip’ played, with Gus (Lil Peep) miming the lyrics. So clearly this trap star moulded his musical taste on a love of music with attitude. In fact, there’s a video available online of Gus covering ‘Dammit’ by Blink-182. I also remember being dragged to a $uicide Boy$ gig with a few of my mates in Birmingham a couple of years ago (a rap group that supposedly grew up with Lil Peep) and to my surprise they did a cover of ‘What’s My Age Again?’. So, one would assume that an interest in punk music was prevalent in a fair few of these trap stars as they began to pursue a career in the industry.
This to me says that there must be a similar appeal when it comes to fans of punk and fans of trap, which I would put down to the aesthetic, energy and image. If you were to watch this documentary on mute, it would be hard to distinguish whether the interviewees were discussing a trap star who OD’d or a punk rocker who caught a vicious STI. The whole image is way too similar. The mosh pits, the brightly died hair, the excessive tattoos, the underground venues. You can tell that the people featured are proud to be part of something that many other people haven’t learned to appreciate.
And it’s no surprise that its popularity is ever growing. In this new age of digital media all you need is a laptop and the right torrent file, and you’ve got everything you need to start producing beats. In the same way punk rockers had to get themselves started with crappy recording equipment and karaoke machines (giving that constant white noise looming over the audio track), modern day Soundcloud rappers just need some knock-off production software and a good enough mic.
Essentially, punk is to rock, what trap is to hip-hop; a DIY branch of a genre of music that consumed the taste of the populace. Think back to when rock was big in the 70s. Back when lead singers were cultural sex icons and every band member had luscious manes. You had big names like AC/DC, Led Zepelin, The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith. These are the artists that inspired a generation of punks to pick up a guitar and start writing whatever they could. Yeah it sounded messy compared to the production standards of rock-stars at the time, and whoever hadn’t heard it before would cringe at the screams and distortion on the guitar, but it was their own music.
The same goes for hip-hop and trap. Hip-hop has been around since the 80s and has been climbing up in popularity ever since. With hip-hop growing alongside RnB in the noughties, we quickly arrived at a new formula that immersed itself within the pop music that we hear today. In the same way punks were inspired to pick up a guitar, trap artists were inspired to download production software and create whatever beat they could. In many cases it would be a simple beat with a simple hook. Just like how a punk band would keep the same ‘boom-cha-boom-boom-cha’ groove on the drums and repetitive chords on the guitar, then play as fast as they could till their fingers bled. Both genres are filled with clutter that may all sound the same initially but when you learn to appreciate the genre, you find yourself in a community that actively separates itself from the norm.
So, it would seem that trap and punk kids have a lot in common with their lifestyle choices. Perhaps the mingling of cultures will eventually give birth to the perfect blend of punk-trap music that will send us down an even deeper pit of misfit tendencies. Which we both clearly love. But for now, I’ve learned to appreciate the nature of the genre and the communities it produces. Perhaps I’ll be sipping lean and getting face tattoos in the coming years, but I’ll try not to get ahead of myself.
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