The State of Beats in 2022

A lot has happened since 2016…

When The Crackle started in late 2016, the Beat community was a burgeoning scene. The term Lo-Fi was freshly coined, artists were connecting on Facebook and SoundCloud and beat videos were only done by a select few. Fast forward to 2022 and the community has changed drastically. Spotify playlists have exploded, the rise of short form content has led to increasing demands of the artist and beat making has never been more accessible. No doubt the scene has changed.

But how and why did it change? To find out we spoke with Radicule, OSHEN and oneyun da prophet (aka Wun Yun). Three fantastic producers and stalwarts of the community since day dot.

So what are your perspectives on the general state of the Beat Scene or Lo-Fi in 2022?

Wun Yun: Lots more money involved compared to when I first got introduced, at least. It's also heavily Spotify based now. I would say I joined in around 2014-15 and it was all about hey, can you follow my SoundCloud or download my shit off Bandcamp? Now from the perspective of somebody who runs a forum, it's constantly like hey, do you have a playlist on Spotify? Can you add me to your playlist on Spotify? Can you pre-save this? So seems over the last, I'd say, two years, especially, it's been geared really towards Spotify in my experien

OSHEN: I'm kinda with you on that same take. I mean, I'm 30, but it feels old saying I came into this when it was the MySpace days of music. It was the same thing where people would say, ‘Hey, would you mind following and just checking out the music?’ Like it wasn’t so money centric. I mean it's not such a bad thing that people want to make money off of their art, but it has changed from being more about the fun shit that you can end up doing. ‘Come check out what I'm doing, check out what my buddy's doing’, whatever it may be. It's come to what Wun brought up about people trying to be on a Spotify playlist, or they're trying to look to be featured by some page. I mean for marketing reasons and making money off your art, it makes sense but I also see a lot of artists burn out super quick, or get really frustrated. Those are the things that they are building up on a pedestal and thinking that’s where their career needs to be. It kind of takes away a little bit of them just having fun with art.

Radicule : I mean, yeah, I agree with everything that's been said so far.  Coming into the Beat scene, and then seeing its progression for the past 10 years since I've been making music, it's definitely changed. I think back to the MySpace days of putting music on your page and just hoping people will get that play count up. So it's definitely progressed and taken different forms over the past decade alone. But more recently, yeah, it's almost like Lo-Fi is kind of synonymous with Spotify because that's been the driving force for a lot of artists. That's kind of the main thought. 'If I get on a really dope playlist, or an official playlist, then I'm all set, I'm golden.’ Like everybody wants to make some bread and even though streaming doesn't always equate to a high payout,  it's still a nice piece of change to get. I have seen artists, like OSHEN said though, kind of burning out over that being the primary focus. There's not really a whole lot outside of that playlist centered culture in terms of connecting with fans, creating your persona etc . Even thinking about playing shows and things of that nature gets left behind when the thinking is more fixated on one single kind of metric.

Do you think that the scene is more or less recognised than say five years ago? In my mind, I'd say there's a more general awareness of Lo-Fi but within production circles I still think that Lo-Fi probably leans more towards that playlist chasing thing, rather than being seen as a scene as a whole. From my perspective, being a producer since 2012, I was always looking for this community but it just didn't have a name. So do you think there's more or less recognition for the Beat scene today?

O: So yeah, like I said before, I started originally in the MySpace days. Then you had the Reverb Nation days, then Bandcamp. So when SoundCloud came about it was like this groundbreaking thing. Much easier to use and send people to overall, but at that time there weren't a whole lot of artists I could find outside of going deep into forums for the Beat community. It wasn't as digital or online as it is now. Nowadays, you're actively able to find a community. Whether it's on Instagram, Reddit, SoundCloud or even Facebook with Wun. We didn't have that like five or six years ago. You knew people did beats, but then it was more like a secret nod kind of thing. Like you acknowledged one another but it’s not right out there. Nobody really got together and talked about it. I mean I can't really speak for like, say, the LA scenes or anything like that but as far being recognised by both artists as well as those outside of the community who are just fans; I think it's come a long way in getting recognised. Now what Lo-Fi is as far as the wider Beat scene is concerned, like with the playlisting and how the sound has changed, is a whole other story. But I think it's come a long way in the last five or six years.

W: It’s actually interesting because I have legit data and demographics on this. I've ran a Facebook group called lofi.family for the last five or six years now, so I've kind of got to see the spread of Lo-Fi for lack of a better term. Over the last five years, it has grown significantly. In places I wouldn't really think there would be a ton of Boom Bap Hip-Hop producers. It's really big in Korea. It's blown up there. Russia loves it, especially Phonk. Thailand is pretty big, the Philippines is getting big. So I've noticed it not only getting bigger in North America or the UK but elsewhere too. I mean the UK was the biggest market back then. Like I know so many people over in the UK, but I knew nobody in my local area so that's why I made a Facebook group in the first place. So yeah, I've noticed the scene just getting more diverse in it's spread, but I think it kind of lost a bit of it's sneakiness or underground status? Which has definitely made it more accessible to everybody.

What would you say Rad? What's quite unique about your journey is you've had a lot of live shows and things like that across the years, and I think that is quite an innovative part of not only your journey, but also the East Coast side of things where I've seen a lot of events crop up. Like the In Plain Sight stuff, the Brooklyn Beat Syndicate, all those kinds of dudes. So it'd be interesting to get your perspective with that experience you had.

R: Yeah nah, for sure. I feel like, being in New York when I was younger, I definitely was going online a lot because I was too young to be able to go to a lot of those shows and venues and be a part of those events. For me, the very first showcase that I'd gone to was by a collective called Beat Haus. Basically, that just kind of cracked the lid open for me as far as seeing ‘oh, wow, there's a community of producers and people that like the same music that I do, or make the same music that I do.’ Plus it was a kind of cool, open environment to just kind of come enjoy that music and know that you're going to be able to listen to beats in peace, you know what I mean? So, I’ve definitely seen it progress from there to all the different showcases that came up as far as like, In Plain Sight, Brooklyn Beat Syndicate, Supply Chain, all those guys; it's great! It's progressed a lot, in my opinion, as far as the ability to showcase one's talents. As far as the recognition, I mean, there are a lot of people that are producing the stuff that you hear nowadays, that’s directly influenced by our culture and people. It's a similar thing when you see mainstream heads kind of plucking little things from underground culture and trying to bring it to a massive scale. You see a lot of that. Not to ruffle any feathers but I mean, frickin' Pepsi had a Lo-Fi stream that pretty much got canned as soon as it went up haha.

O: I didn’t want to chime in, but I was like, ‘Oh, he's probably talking about Pepsi’ haha.

R: Haha. Like when they did that, I think everybody had a collective like record scratch moment haha. It was just hilarious and I knew everybody here would resonate with that as soon as I brought it up haha. But yeah, that's when you really start to see that kind of level of stuff and exposure. At that point it was clear that other industries are watching us and that's kind of a good sign? Because it's like when you have the sauce, someone's gonna try and take the recipe. It's definitely gotten to a point now though where I think a lot of artists are gaining more notoriety. Sometimes it can be a little tumultuous, in a sense, because then you teeter into the realm of what happens when it's accessible to everybody. Then it feels like there's an over-saturation and you have to ask 'Am I making stuff that's still pushing the envelope forward? Am I falling into a bracket, where it's stuff that's sounding very similar and homogenised?' So yeah I think that's kind of like the temperature of the culture, at least in my opinion. That's kind of where we're at right now.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting you bring up the Pepsi thing, because it's reminding me of how much has changed since we started. Like in the UK the Conservative government had a Lo-Fi playlist around the election! Haha

W: Boris Johnson!

O: What??!

Haha it was like 24/7 Lo-Fi Beats to vote Conservative to or something. It was wild.

R: BRUH haha

You only have to compare what OSHEN was saying at the beginning, how we started out, secretly nodding to each other and  now we have governments using the sound.  Radicule you mentioned saturation, and I think we can all agree that there is kind of a critical mass of sound happening at the moment. Do you think that social media sort of helped fuel that spread or over-saturation? I think it is quite interesting because you can take that in two ways right? You can look at like the Lo-Fi study girl or playlist culture but you can also look at the massive rise of producer centric videos with The Kount and many others. So it's kind of a double edged sword but I'd love to get your guys thoughts on social media's influence on the sound or the perception of the sound.

R: Yeah because in some cases, you have the positive realms of it where you see guys like Kaelin Ellis or The Kount or Nothing_Neue out here. Like all the homies making beat vids that creates a feeling of like, I can do that too! That's what's so cool about it, because everybody can come with their own specialty. Nobody's gonna be exactly the same in the way that they shoot a video or the beats that they play or how they go about constructing a track in front of people. So that variety is really a huge benefit of using social media to grow the culture.

But, then on the flip side, you have the realms of social media which is a numbers game which can become like a plague to some artists or an obsession. You know, like we kind of said before about wanting to get on playlists, the hunger for those numbers means you have that focus which is intertwined with what sound is actually being put out. There's a lot of artists that are making pretty innovative and creative stuff, that are continuously trying to say ‘How can I add something new to my repertoire?’ But when you have different curators who, in some cases, have a very particular kind of sound that they’re looking for, it almost shoots people's creativity through a filter to where they feel like, ‘alright I know I can get super wicked and super out there with my production, but in order to get on this playlist, I have to strip back a lot of elements.’ That sometimes can be pretty limiting to a culture, especially when you do want to see people get as wild, weird and creative as they can. So yeah, that's kind of my take on it. There's, you know, obviously a pros and cons list much like everything in life.

W: Well, I always say that the problem with social media is the mentality of bigger number, better person. It's just something that is inherent with social media and it affects the Beat scene to an extent. We've all seen people fight on Twitter and be like ‘Well I have 200k monthly listeners, thank you very much’ and it's like, okay, I get it. I think for the most part, social media has helped the art. It's helped people learn how to do new things. I learned a lot from YouTube tutorials. I've even gotten friends like Flavour Symmetry to make me video tutorials. So that's the cool thing about the internet but I do think the really negative aspects stem from that bigger number, better person mentality. It also has affect how people approach making and releasing music. I know people who reduce their beat quality just so they can get put it on Spotify, maybe getting a playlist because they collab'd with somebody who has a good connection. It's easy to do. I collab'd with somebody, got on Beatstrumentals on Apple Music, got a bag. I was quite happy with it but it's like, I made that beat just so I could get on Beatstrumentals. To be honest, I just wanted to get some money. That's where the internet comes in. Normally I make five minute beat tapes but I was like okay let's make a 2:32 min beat and send it to all streaming services.

Yeah. I think that's a good point. It's like people kind of self editing before they've even had a chance to experiment. What do you think about it, OSHEN?

O: Yeah, so kind of on Rad's point about it being a double edged sword. At no point in human history, have we ever had so much information and so much connection to other cultures at our fingertips. So it doesn't make sense why there's any ignorance in a world where you can just go on the internet and connect with somebody for answers. But in terms of the Beat community, it’s a double edged sword in the sense that it provides accessibility, which can be good and bad, you know? I got back into beat making, after taking a bit of a walk away from it because I burned out. I was a person who had made music just for the fun of it, and had started to get the numbers and was talking to people that really mattered. But then it just became a lot. Things came up and I burned out. I was making a lot of the same music these Lo-Fi streams host but it was kind of like what James had said about being in the scene for a while; nobody had actually slapped a label on it. So after discovering those streams and being like, ‘yo I used to make this’, I kind of wanted to jump back into the culture. So that kind of accessibility with that mainstream aspect of it can help introduce people or reintroduce people to the art form.

On the downside though you have, say that Lo-Fi Girl stream, where they started out featuring everybody. It didn't really matter what specific style you were. You had to have that chill vibe but, for the most part, you could experiment a bit. Now though, it seems they've kind of become afraid of copyright strikes and stuff. So it's almost like they are throwing out the sampling aspect of things and sticking to the live instrumentation, which is great. But that's just one part of our Beat scene. A lot of it is experimenting and being able to just rework things, instead of just creating brand new works. So the downside to that is that a lot of people now are used to the sound and think everything needs to sound exactly like it. Going back to one of Rad's points about certain playlists having all these producers making the same sounds and curators curating this exact type of sound. Unfortunately, it starts to encourage self-editing on the artist's side. You can take somebody who might just be gnarly with it, who’s tweaking their beats and their music is just kind of getting stripped down to make that playlist cut. It may be done to secure a bag or to feel like you're validated and belong, but that's really not what it's about. You should just make what you want to make without fear that people aren't gonna accept it. There's always a crowd out there for it but with social media being the way that is and how Lo-Fi has gone a little bit more mainstream, it becomes a question in the artist's mind. So yeah, it's kind of shifted how both artists and fans perceive the sound.

Yeah, I think needing to 'belong' is a really good point because this leads on to the next question, which I know is gonna spark a big kind of outpouring of debate but that's exactly what we want. Do you feel like Lo Fi is gentrification? Like has Lo-Fi been gentrified? Obviously it is based in Hip-Hop which is an African American art form and we are seeing this rise of a specific sound, seemingly without any reference or reverence to the originators.

W: I just want to say real quick, if political strategists are using Lo-Fi to gain something, that definitely means it's somewhat gentrified. At the very least, if Pepsi is using it...like do you think Pepsi would be using Gangstarr for their shit? They found a form of Hip-Hop they could use and look cool for the kids. So that's my quick two cents before I dive into this topic.

R: Yeah, I mean I have been no stranger to this topic but in a sense, I would say yeah, there are elements of gentrification. At least there is definitely a gestalt of gentrification that comes with Lo-Fi. As far as the individuals on a lot of different labels, compilations and things of that nature are concerned, it's a lot of primarily white male artists that are receiving a fair deal of push. In some cases it's just who comes to the doorstep of those labels, collectives and curators; but there's those playlists and pushes being made and you have to ask who's being featured on these labels? How is the work being promoted?  You do see some praise and give a nod to individuals that are black, POC or women in the community; but there's not necessarily a major focus that's placed on those individuals that might be innovators: That might be the foundation or founders of the culture [beat culture] or even the predecessors of that Lo-Fi culture itself. There's definitely a feeling of that. Even in terms of different actions by different prominent names. You see it on Twitter every other week. There's some new producer beef or Lo-Fi beef and it gets to a point where you do have to take a step back and say, you know, this is sort of a bubble that was formulated inside of a culture that's largely founded by black innovators you know? Black men, women, those that identify as non-binary started this culture, so it becomes kind of a frustrating space when you see the individuals that are being supported versus the faces of the individuals that are trying to push the culture forward and have been innovator's, being pushed to the side and pushed out of the main view. People who are doing some very creative stuff.

So to put a button on it, it's a similar thing to how you'd see artists in other genres over the years get their base inspiration from black artists and then present it in a way that was palatable to various audiences. Like yes, it's Elvis, but it's not quite Little Richard, you know? People will have palettes for all different types of artists, and the way that music is presented, but when you see that kind of commercialisation of Hip-Hop, that sort of commodification of it to where black voices are being suppressed, or individuals that are making a major push to be inclusive, yet still push the envelope forward, are kind of pushed out of the spotlight for work that might not be as groundbreaking or as socially conscious or powerful, it ruffles some feathers and it creates a little bit of a negative discourse. So basically I feel like yes, it does have a lot of elements of gentrification to it but it's important to have people that are at the forefront, that are having these conversations and trying to then bridge the gap and actually build something that includes everybody. Making sure that it gives proper credit without kind of seeming like it's trying to steal, in a sense.

I think that's a really good point you make about Lo-Fi fitting within the larger Hip-Hop ecosystem because definitely, when I came into the scene, the term Lo-Fi was not attributed to it at all. In fact, one of the big problems in terms of recognition in a wider sense, was it didn't have a name. It was Hip-Hop but definitely had its own flavour, aesthetic and discourse. We were inspired by the kind of 90's era stuff that we had missed due to being younger, so we made our own version of it. I think over the years, as it's grown, we've lost that. I think that the Hip-Hop in Lo-Fi Hip-Hop has been de-capitalised, and that has made people who are coming in fresh quite unaware of the roots. 

W: I just have a point just because you mentioned not experiencing that era Hip-Hop per se. So in my first hand experience, Canada’s about 15 years behind on Hip-Hop. When I was like 12/13 I was going on tinychat, finding Canadian rappers and they would be rapping to what would be classified now as really good Lo-Fi or Boom Bap kind of beats. Like if I just heard the beats I'd still be like damn. So I kind of more or less grew up fairly recently on Boom Bap, just by my experience. I think a lot of the things people don't recognise about Hip-Hop is the greater culture of it. What got me into Hip-Hop was tagging. I fuckin' loved this SDK - Stomp Down Killers collective. They're a Canadian collective of about 10 rappers but they started with graffiti. They're like a little graffiti mob that would run around and tag up places. There's this music video called 'Rap Biz' by Snak the Ripper and it is just like the personification of Canadian Hip-Hop. It's just some dirty fucking white dudes getting drunk, tagging up under a bridge ha. Like, that's the kind of shit I grew up on. So now with the greater picture of Lo-Fi, it's like, ah these kids don't know. Even like breakdancing and shit. They don't know that's Hip-Hop. They don't know tagging's Hip-Hop. There’s so much stuff that just kind of fell to the wayside. Now that everybody has access to make a beat, they just kind of skipped the education. They can make beats now, so they don't go back and look into the scene and appreciate what they're investing their time into. Without being involved in the Canadian Hip-Hop scene, I would have just been making beats but I met the rappers, I met the producers and it gave me an appreciation for the culture itself. Not just music, if that makes sense? But yeah, shout out to Canada. We being behind schedule on Hip-Hop music has helped me.

O: For me, and I'm assuming we came up in the same kind of era as far as beat making went, in that education was your initiation. You actually had to learn everything about it. I mean, if I had to say what the first Hip-Hop style type music that ever got me into it and it’s musicality it would be Linkin Park on the Meteora album. I was like, 'Oh, this is dope.' Then it wasn't until like Tony Hawk's Underground when I was listening to NAS, Quasimoto, Murs and others that I started to think 'Yo, what? How do I get into this?' Also one thing that I'd really loved, that just came naturally to me that I didn't know was Hip-Hop, was tagging. I got a can of spray paint, and there’s a wall. This makes sense to me. I didn't know that's was called graffiti or anything. It just made sense so I'm just gonna do this. I used to also breakdance. You really had to, in every element of it, you had to do your research on your local scene, or people that have done things outside of it.

Wun probably gets this with the graffiti aspect but you're looking up what crews are in the area, who's throwing up what, and who's representing who. I remember there was one crew that were great and all, but one of the reasons that they were so great is that all of their tags were backed by some really big street gang. I was asked to come over and was like, ‘I'm good’ haha. But you know, you had to do your research on who was tied to who and the same thing happened with going into production. When I really really got into Boom Bap, I was starting to study Damu the Fudgemunk who I think comes out of Brooklyn? The work he does with drums and how he just understands different breaks, was just like magic to me. I wanted to learn how to do that. Then you know, trying to break down how Premier does his music. So when you were coming up with it, you had to understand it. The big dogs would be like, 'Yo, name this. What happened with this?' It's like they're trying to check on your knowledge and then you got the pass. It's changed in essence now, and whilst accessibility is a great thing, it can also sometimes water down what an art form has in the sense of its history.

Going back to the gentrification question, do I think it is? Yeah. I think that there's definitely a sense of gentrification. I think the topic arises of where it happens can be up for debate, because if you go on Twitter...They call that shit out so fucking fast, check it and the person kind of recedes into hiding or apologises; but it'll slide on Spotify with passive listening. It’ll slide on Instagram because people are looking to increase their numbers and do whatever they can to get their name out. Then additionally, with some of these larger labels, they did a great job at the beginning of 2016/17 where they were really introducing people to the music. They were involving everybody, for the most part, to the best of their ability. But now, as they turned into fully fledged labels, there's the issue with copyrights. So then they start bringing in musicians who create a Hi-Fi type of music. You know the beauty of Hip-Hop, is that it was accessible in the sense you could use whatever the fuck you wanted to make it. I think it was like, the Art of Rap documentary and it was either Dre or Ice T who was like, ‘We didn't have any instruments, we couldn't afford instruments but what we did have in the house was a turntable. So they just used that, fucked around with it and there we go, we had our own music.’ That was always the beauty of it. It was DIY. It was accessible. It didn't matter if you were rich or poor, came from an affluent background or you didn't have a lot of things available to you; the resources were what you made of them.  It's come to a point now though where you have to afford less accessible resources. I'm all for people playing strings and these full fledged productions, but it feels less like Lo-Fi. So when that's being thrown out on a more mainstream scale, it somewhat intimidates people who want to get into it and don't have those resources. Hip- Hop started with sampling Funk and Soul and whatever you had in your vinyl crate. That was good enough. You had to be crafty enough to rework these originally Hi-Fi sounds but in your own way. That was your accessibility to these live instrumentations and whatnot. Now it feels more daunting to take on and because of that, a more mainstream sound is being pushed out. It feels like it's less of how the culture started as it's starting to push into being something else. Like if you ask somebody what are the origins of Lo-Fi? You get people referencing J Dilla and Nujabes when they're just not! They were just producers who inspired the sound but people will go Dilla is a Lo-Fi artist. Nujabes is a Lo-Fi artist. No they are not. At all.

W: Yo if you ever say that in my FB Group, it's straight up ban haha.

O: Yeah, and it's wild because I remember listening to Nujabes on the bus ride to school. Being like, Yo this dude's just like, wild with his jazz samples and everything.’ You know, he's just this Hip-Hop producer. That's all I saw him as. He makes a kind of Boom Bap? But I couldn't categorise it as solely Boom Bap because it was this whole other thing. With Dilla… it made no sense how good that man was. He was his own thing. That's the whole point. But now you have this newer generation who don’t get that. It probably falls a little bit on our own shoulders as longtime participants not educating in a better way, because the first thing that we usually do is almost get revolted when somebody gets the history wrong. They don't know much about the history, so they're going off a game of telephone from what somebody else has probably said.

As a result, we should be kind of correcting and being like 'Hey, you know, kind of study up on what it is' you know? This isn't the old days where you really had to earn your fucking bones in this, but we should encourage people to actively try to understand the history. As we brought up earlier it is a black art form and these labels, and just in general the artists that you usually see, are primarily white. It just feels like it's taken away from what the roots were, which was no different than Jazz, was no different than Soul in that it's trying to make something out of nothing and doing very well at it. It's because of the struggles of those cultures that you get the music. You don't really get that anymore with the more mainstream side of things but when you actually are actively within say Beat Twitter or Beat Facebook or on Instagram and following the right people; it's still alive and well. It just depends on the context of what you're looking at. But yeah, I would agree that it is kind of gentrified.

Yeah, you made a really good point in there about how almost policing the culture. I think Twitter does a very good job of calling it out. I also think with Lo-Fi some of the difficulty lies in being able to point to the first song or first instance of the style you know? Because it's an offshoot of Hip-Hop, there's no definite start point or artist.

O: It’s true because when you look at the general public view of Lo-Fi, it goes back to those Hi-Fi instrumentals we see now. It's sounding more and more like Smooth Jazz. It has just a tiny bit of a Hip-Hop element to stay there in people's mind, but if you were to go back and look at Ras G, if you're to look at Dibia$e's work; it does not match whatsoever. When I was coming up those were two artists that I was like, oh yeah, this that grimy ass sound where you're just stretching and tearing the samples apart but it still feels fun. It still feels like something I could just throw on for the sake of just throwing it on. I could be doing my homework or I can be just fucking mobbing down the street or something. Now it's like, again going back to the playlisting and the fact that it's gentrified, it's become a safe genre. It's something that you can throw on for your kids in a suburb, you know? You don't feel threatened by it. There aren't these hard ass drums or loud, weird samples. It's this very passive genre. I think that's where people get mad with others, like on Twitter or Instagram, where they're like, 'Oh, you've got like 2 million plays, but no fans.’ It’s like on one side congrats, you got a bag but also you got nobody showing out with that brand recognition for you because they don't know who you are. They just heard your song was on a really large playlist. Like you got the money, but you got no results to keep that energy going.

Yeah, for sure. With this rise of streaming culture, we've seen the question of gentrification has arisen and I think there's a few big events we can point to that sort of fuelled this question. I’d love to get kind of your reactions to some of them and how you think they affected the scene. So you know, one very recent one that comes to mind and, if I'm being honest hit very close to home because I'd seen this outlet grow, was the debacle of Dust Collectors.

W: I’d like to say for the record that everybody here like leaned in, like 'What are you gonna say???' haha

Haha I mean we all know what went down but for context, Dust Collectors was a label that during the aftermath George Floyd's death, whilst the collective music community was working out ways to help, started collating a pretty misjudged compilation and even worse forged donations to the movement.

O: I would like to start on this fellas if that's cool? I think kind of like what you had said James, like we’d seen them growing up. There were two things that really came to mind. When I met the head of it he was 15 and I was like, ‘Yo, this is wild that like this 15 year old is doing all this.’ He was asking me for my advice because I had a lot of expertise in social media and I was fine with giving advice, giving help pointing in the right direction etc. I then met their other head who was not problematic but you know, I think this other head was like 24 or something like that? He was in college, finishing off his degree. He was the far more mature one. I saw the light in the younger ones eyes and that sparkle he had was matched with a seemingly genuine love for the culture. Now I never, never shame someone's age. If you're doing something, right, I don't give a shit if you're 50 or 10. I don't care. But what I do care about is that when you're running a business and when you are representing a culture, especially one where you're a guest in it, you need to watch what you say. There was so much behind DC by the community, there was so much money they were making and at that point, I can understand the early days of being very cocky and braggadocious when achieving these milestones. You know they got in with Apple, Spotify, all these people behind the scenes before it was like, the cool thing to do. They were smart about it but they also had a lot of help from blogs, from curators, and they just started shooting their mouths off. The problem was they weren't just representing DC as a label; they were also representing the artists, the curators that helped them, the blogs and all that. As that growth of representation builds, you need to think twice about what you're going to say. On top of that, by the time this issue came up, he's 18, right? He grew up in a generation where social media has been part of his upbringing. For our generation we're able to say ‘Yo we learned you don't say certain things.’ You're 18 or you're young, so you're gonna get wild with it but like we've learned what you should or should not do on social media. This is a person who's born in social media. He already knew the practices so it was really frustrating to see that immaturity, especially when you had people who are older than him who understood business in DC. So there should have been checks and balances with that label.

So first off, they were gonna make this beat tape in honour of George Floyd and it's gonna be all about wanting to help the people, but then they didn't really have a whole lot of representation on it. They didn't discuss what the cuts were gonna be either. At the end of the day it's still technically branding for them, so it's like they're trying to cash in on this death and this monumental moment that, as we can all see two years later, had such an impact. It felt no different than some mainstream entity trying to cut in and capitalize on something terrible. Then, additionally, with the whole photoshopping the cheque debacle… Like they were making so much money that that wasn't even necessary. That was a drop in the bucket for them. Then again they were constantly shooting their mouths off. There were no checks and balances. Nobody at the label for that tape decided to go 'Hey, does anybody want to talk to the black community and ask what their thoughts are about this?' Nobody talked to the rest of the Beat community either. It was just that one head, the 18 year old, who just shot it out there. Then on top of that, they just kept backing him instead of taking responsibility. So that’s led to where they are today. Still releasing but very low key. The community kept on them for 2-3 weeks then DC sort of quietly began uploading again. However they never really fixed it. I mean, it's been two years now and the Beat community keeps just dumping on them because they never took responsibility.

Also, I mean, if anybody had been paying attention, you saw curators like lofi.nites, LofiHipHop, Dig&Run, The Dusty Deli, LOFI VIBE, and a few others; backing them and helping them grow, and that younger head never once thanked anyone. He always acted like it was all him and so that made the Beat community even more pissed. They had artists putting them on, they had curators putting them on and then they were just shooting off their mouth. Like DC represented a lot of people and a lot of hard work, so they should have had a system where everything goes by everyone. They didn't do that. So with everything that went down, it just seemed like it was just something that was waiting to happen and to no surprise it did.

I mean, that's the big thing, isn't it? I feel like that's quite emblematic of where the scene was going. Like, you had someone who got into it for the love but then the money came in and the checks and balances were not in place. They then made a monumentally insensitive, irresponsible, and downright offensive series of decisions. Then on top of that, it kind of spat in the faces of all the individuals that helped them. I even helped in the past and when I saw everything poppin' off, I genuinely felt betrayed.

O: I remember when it happened I honestly just felt super-bad (and Rad probably saw this because it was definitely blowing up through Twitter) for Nothing Neue. He had a project coming out and to have your label do such an ass job of representing you? Yeah, I would be affected by that.

W: Yeah I think he (Nothing Neue) had to do some serious business work to deal with that didn't he?

O: Yeah. I know he had a lot of curators and other platforms reach out to him and try to help with playlisting and speaking to DC to help him but that's so shitty. That was one of his favourite projects. He was passionate about it and for the situation to arise like that it's like 'Are you fucking kidding me!? Like you're taking the wind out of my sails with that shit?'

R: I had to crack open a beer for this one because this one was big ha. So yeah at the time I had spoken to the younger co-founder of the label earlier that day. Little did I know it was gonna lead up to a whole fucking mess. They were talking with me about trying to get labels to put their best foot forward in the aftermath of what happened with George Floyd and I was kind of just like 'Ah, I don't know if popping off is a good idea.' We've seen what popping off on the feed gets you. So I was like, ‘this is not gonna end well.’ With the forged cheque, it was really like you could have just donated the fucking bread you know? You could have had the actual confirmation if you had donated for real! So yeah, it felt like a slap in the face because not only is it a betrayal to the artists that really care about the cause, but also all of the black artists that are on your label that have work out with you: That have believed and bought into your vision, bought into your ideology of being this unifying force. Then you do something like that? It’s not to age shame or anything like that but I kind of said to him in the aftermath 'Listen, man, you're a young kid playing with grown folks' money.’ Like you're working with people that have families and kids that depend upon what you bring as a label to the table. So then when you do something like that... yeah, it forces you to have a mass exodus of artists.

Some artists probably thought, and this feeds into the gentrification aspect of it, ‘the cause didn't really affect me or didn't hit home to me as much, so I'll still rock with this label.’ But then you have that other side of the coin with artists being like, ‘dude you just completely shit the bed.’ Now those artists are in an awkward position: Looking like they're rocking with DC. So that's where you saw this mass exodus of people saying ‘take my stuff down. I need you to remove it. I will reupload it. As an artist when you feel like you have to clean up a label's mess, it's very frustrating you know? Actually at the time I was warning the contact I had over at Apple Music on the BEATSRUMENTALS playlist that there's probably going to be a lot of artists whose tracks are no longer going to be available anymore. Like, they'll probably re-upload and y'all should definitely re-upload their work to the playlist because then it's going to be 100% their bread but those artists shouldn’t have been put in that position by DC in the first place.

In the end it's like damn, as an artist I have to have more integrity than people that are supposed to be handling the business side of things. The ripples from their actions spread wider that the initial fuck up. That situation with DC was definitely a very big contributor to the bubbling question of gentrification. The question was kind of stewing and brewing, and you had multiple people discussing it, but DC blew the lid off of the whole pot. To bring it to now, I haven't seen anything from them since. I haven't heard a peep from them. Yeah they are still releasing stuff but I don't even see it in my feed at all, you know what I mean? It's just gone. Eradicated.

Yeah you're totally right. I still don't get why they didn't just make the donation? It's a total head scratcher. Moving on to Wun Yun, you almost have this unofficial  job title of Lo-Fi whistleblower haha

W: The Edward Snowden of Lo-Fi man! Haha! It's my favourite thing to do. Again, holla at me if you got hot goss I'll  spark that shit up in front of my community ha.

O: Wun is the reason that you need to remember to be on your best behaviour haha.

W: Yeah I got 5000 Facebook kids that are just ready to bombard your Twitter haha. So yeah with the DC situation. These type of situations actually happen a-lot. I get DMs from artists all asking for advice. Especially smaller artists as people kinda see me as a community leader from heading up lofi.family. Like 'this guy knows about record deals' and I'm like errr ha. But anyway this kind of stuff gets brought to me and I remember when I first went on Twitter and read through everything that was going on with DC; I was like 'Yeah, this is like the definition of what gentrification boils down to'. Where DC felt like they needed to show they were down with the cause, but it was all a performance because in the end it was hollow. I mean it just boils down to somebody being young, I'll give them that. I wasn't always the smartest on the Internet. The reason I ended up being an internet Facebook person, is because I was a shithead on the internet for my whole preteen and teenage life. The problem with that though, is if you are running a very big record label you are the spokesperson no matter your age.

We all thought about what we could do as a community to help. Even I thought about it too as someone who ran an FB group. I was like okay, should I be talking about this? Like, is this my place? The difference is that where I thought let's consult with people, let's discuss this, see if there's anything we can do to help; DC just were like ‘Bam! I need Twitter to approve of me instantly.’ Like you guys mentioned, it would have been so simple to just donate the money. You don't have to donate much like, I know how often revenue from streams comes in. It's like every two weeks to a month. Like just giving a little bit of that revenue to the cause.

However I also do think the community is quite unique actually compared to other genres or scenes thanks to us being this internet music genre. Word travels fast and it's like, oh, did you hear that DC is faking charity donations and that a bunch of artists are leaving their label? We can pick up on bullshit but we can also be supportive like 'Hey, can you look over this contract for me? It says Chilled Cow wants 80% of my revenue on streams that are being generated by their YouTube stream.' Which was another big 'reveal' that happened over the years. What we can do as a community is sit down and say 'Ok, let's talk about this.' Then thousands of people are made aware, and eventually it gets to the source and they either have to comment on it or try to brush it under the rug. I think one big thing that a lot of people haven't really mentioned too is that the young guy is apparently back with DC. From what I understand he just kind of faded out and then once a year or two passed, he kind of unofficially reemerged. I've seen that quite a few times on Twitter. It just kind of shows that labels sometimes aren't the best things. They're sometimes very poor representations of our community.

Yeah I think revealing those ‘secrets’ makes you think, how long has this been going on? With DC it blew up very publicly. Very in their face so I think the community can actually congratulate themselves to some degree on that because they saw that shit, they investigated that shit and they ended that shit. There were no lawyers, there was no defamation. The people decided this.

O: It’s like going back to how we were saying we kind of have to police our own community. For the first time in a long time, the entire community agreed on one thing and just went in on it. Like there were no punches pulled with it. The whole community was like, ‘Yeah, we're not having this today.’

I guess that's the benefit we can pull from the whole debacle. Now the radar is super sensitive. So in comparison to these monoliths of terrible decisions, what are some artists or platforms you really think are championing the true spirit of the Beat scene or Lo-Fi? 

W: Well I’m trying with Bunnyhug. I'm trying my best out here with SoundCloud collectives. I still refuse to let that die ha.

O: I think if we're talking about platforms, I think Bandcamp is actively trying to support the scene. I think there's still room to grow with it because at the end of the day, it is a business but they are trying to capitalise on being the people's champ kind of deal. They have started pushing it more as of late. Not just with Bandcamp Fridays, but also with the gentleman who is writing up about Beats albums. He is an active fan of the culture and listens to everybody's work. People who I've talked to who have emailed their submissions to him have said he's gonna at least give you the dignity of listening to your project. It's not just going to be shrugged off. So even if you don't make it on the site or make it to the list, he actually cares. He does his deep diving. So Bandcamp has been doing a good job of it. But if we're talking about artists, let's throw in Rad and Nothing Neue. I absolutely love seeing when you guys post things, because it's like...you're smooth man. It's just silky smooth.

R: Don’t make me blush out here man! Ha.

O: It just feels so good and that's cool seeing Neue do his thing too! Neue reminds me so much of Damu the Fudgemunk who was a huge inspiration to me because I love what he does with drums. Everything he does with the sounds. It's like a mix of Lo-Fi. It's a mix of Boom Bap. It's a mix of Trip Hop. Like it's all these different genres that just blend and aren’t fighting each other. Then you have Dibia$e, who just continually keeps doing his thing. He's having fun with it and is a little bit more on the checking people when they come through the door kind of thing too. He is passionate and really cares about the culture. Then you have Kaelin Ellis and The Kount. I mean you look at The Kount and how everybody wants to buy these high priced cameras to shoot a live set or whatnot. But The Kount just sets up his phone on the front facing camera, so like the pixel quality's down already. He doesn't give a shit. He just knows his shit rocks. That's what it's always been about. It doesn't matter what resources you have. It matters how the product comes out. It doesn't matter where you came from. It doesn't matter how you did it, as long as it worked. Watching them do their thing makes me feel like I did when I was really young, just experimenting with all these things for the first time. Now I get to watch! All these newer producers come to mind and then you have people like Nimzo. I think he's like 40 or something like that, but he's a prime example of never being too old for this shit. He just keeps pushing his stuff when he wants to. He doesn't care about how many plays. He doesn't care about how many views or how many followers. He sees it as a nice thing to have. At the end of the day, he just wants to make some shit that he rocks with.

W: Nimzo makes me feel validated in the Beat scene. I call him Sensei Dave because he's so much older than me. He's like 20 years older than me, but when we first connected I was like yes, this guy!  I was actually gonna mention him as an artist too. Like I just feel  his music is perfect. I send it to people when I'm like this is what kind of music I fuck with. I fuck with Sickarone too. I fuck with that Beat Tony album. Great tape.

Yeah, I mean Wun you must see a lot of new music come up.

W: Yeah I got guys you've never heard of! nurv down in Australia. I got Nimzo. I've got number two editions of all his cassettes because he wouldn't give me a number one haha. I was like 'Come on, give me number one.' He's like next time next time haha. But yeah I'm very focused on my niche. I really like my little community and the passion it has. I originally wanted to just find friends to listen to with because I live in a place where country music concerts are like the best thing that happened to the city. So as lofi.family grew, I started to realise I'm in a position to be very helpful to people's careers. As James would probably remember because he's an OG of my group, HM SURF and bluørangee were relatively small artists when I started the group. I remember them just like growing up in front of me. Sadiva, who's now signed to Def Jam, was also in the group. I guess I'm like a proud dad with some of those people. I grew up watching these people so I take lots of pride in putting on people in my community. Eily Orcko is also someone I have to give a shout out to too because I love him rapping over Boom Bap. He is just so nice with it.

R: Yo y'all about to get me emotional over here because like y'all have named people that I like know. Like I've smoked with them, I've drank with them. Like Nimzo, fuckin' Nothing Neue; I've kicked it with those dudes and I'm just like, damn, it's crazy to be in that company and to be amongst y'all too. We just need to start our own festival and all converge onto one one place in the future!  But yeah I'd say on the platform side the homie over at LOFI VIBE is definitely doing their thing. They have been killing it as far as like, the weekly presentations and the Vibe of the Week polls. What they do in their stories is absolutely insane. They do an amazing job of exposing an audience to so much different music. They've been killing it. I definitely want to give a shout out to Audiomack. Audiomack has kind of been a competitor to SoundCloud for a while and I know they kind of beat the bricks off of SoundCloud a little bit recently with the way that they pay out artists as far as streaming is concerned. I have a homie there named Dylan who does a lot of articles for Audiomack and DJ Booth. He's also done some stuff for Pitchfork where he's done a deep dive into the Beat community and Beat culture. He's been someone who's just been writing incredible articles about producers and artists for a minute. So I definitely got to give props to him. Artist wise, of course, you know the gang. Nothing_Neue. The homie Bars. She raps and makes beats as well. Like, I remember just being able to be a little video vixen for her recent video haha. The whole squad goes crazy like her. The homie Melton, who produces as well. The homie Anny. She's been doing some good stuff too, vocally. Nimzo has been fucking killing it. I've been peeping a lot of videos by Moshun. She's been going off as far as beats and incorporating live instrumentation as well. Brain Orchestra is another one. Like, that dude is just lit like a fucking rocket that keeps going onwards and upwards. Bad Snacks as well. She has some crazy progression.

O: I’ve known her since her earlier years here in LA. I know she moved away but it's wild to see how far along she's come, despite the amount of shit a male dominated industry has given her. Seeing her success, especially when you're friends with someone, makes you go ‘Yo, that's my homie. Go homie! I'm fucking proud of you. You keep doing what you're doing!' It's great to see her get stuff off her chest and then still succeed despite being pressed by people. She's one of those people that respects the sheer Hip-Hop angle, but she wants to push her own sound too. You get people who come into Lo-Fi and they're just after a quick money grab. Like it kind of fits with the fact they can play a jazz guitar or whatever, then they dip. People get pissed at that but Snacks has shown that she knows what she's doing. She knows what the culture is about. She cares what it thinks and when she started doing even more experimental stuff, and it stopped being so much Lo Fi, it became just her sound. Everyone was like, ‘You do you. Even if it's no longer even Hip-Hop, we will listen to you and we will back you up because you actually gave a shit.’

What have been some of the bright spots or top moments in the scene for you guys over the last few years? Could be albums, events. Anything really!

R: Okay, now, it's only because I remember this so fucking vividly, but i'm gonna say when I played with the the homies at Nightworks over in Boston. They had a show maybe three years ago? This was well before everything shut down in the world. The god Ohbliv was on the bill and I literally like, shit my pants, because I've looked up to this man for years. Ever since I started making beats so to be on a bill with him, it totally threw me for a loop. When I got there I got to chop it up with him for a little bit and he was just the nicest guy. I remember him being like 'Yeah, I know your work.' and I was like, he knows about me! Yo, it was crazy! It's weird when you are in a community that's like, so scattered but interconnected at the same time? I remember the homie CLWDWLKR, who I've done a couple tracks with and is the super homie, lives within a semi close distance to where Ohbliv is based in Richmond so I remember talking to CLWD a couple of times, and he was just like 'Oh, yeah, he's heard of your stuff' and I was just like, bro... Like it was one of those moments where it was the opposite of never ‘meet your heroes.’ Ohbliv was just the nicest dude ever. We chopped it up about music and just really shared appreciation for one another's work. I'd say that was my top moment. I still have the flier from that show. Like I framed it. I literally got a nice painted frame and was like, 'Yo, I need to frame this. This is going up in the crib.' I had to preserve it.

W: My favourite moment was honestly that I got to be on interlude on an album. It's always been my dream since I was like nine years old to just be an interlude on a Hip-Hop album. So that was cool. Then probably just having people reach out to me and be like 'Hey, can I send you my cassette? I want you to listen to it.' Whenever that happens it's very cool because at the end of the day, I don't really take as much pride in being an artist as I do in being somebody in the community. So yeah, I guess it boils down to being welcomed into the community over the last few years. I'm from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I went to school from kindergarten to grade eight and there were two people that weren't white at my entire school, so being on the internet and connecting with other people from different cultures has been dope. Like, I learnt that damn there's people that aren't just miserable, frozen human beings around the world haha. In The last five years, I've found a couch in almost every country of the world to sleep on. I can stay with James in the UK, I got couches all over the US. So I think that connection has been great.

O: I don't know if I could nail it down to just one? I know one for me personally was the day that I finally decided to throw a song on Spotify last year. For the past 10 years, I've been making music just because it's one of those escapes from things. It's like the one thing you can control the outcome of. You get to be introverted, not deal with people's shit and you just get to make something that you want to listen to. The whole reason that I got into beats, I remember I was in Target back when they used to have an electronic section that you could fuck around with. I was like 'Oh, they've got drums on like a piano. That's awesome.' So then a buddy was like, ‘Hey, you should make beats’ and I was like, ‘I have no clue what to do with that.’ Then as I started learning it became something that could be my own soundtrack. I always just had fun with it, but it wasn't really out there for other people's enjoyment necessarily. So coming back into the scene, a bunch of buddies of mine in the community were just like 'Yo, it’s so great to see you back doing this' and that felt really comforting and good. It's one of those things where people who are outside of the community like to think that the Beat community is toxic, but it's not. It's just certain situations and certain contexts that they're missing. There are times when it can be absolutely toxic of course but for the most part, there's a lot of support. I think that ties into the other moments that I've really liked seeing. It’s that level of acceptance for individuality, especially recently.

Like artists taking care of themselves and people are okay with it. I remember the curator LofiHipHop took a break recently because he was dealing with some shit, and people were like ‘Yo, it's cool. Take your time. You've done so much for us. It's fine.’ The Beat community just having each other's back is great to see. Especially when someone feels burnt out from music. The community is there in the most part to support them. Also personally, seeing shows or events has been a highlight. I mean the first show that I saw was Jinsang, eevee and Sophie Meiers back at the very beginnings of it. They had this secret show at a warehouse on 4/20 that was packed. It was the coolest thing. I have the poster for it framed up, too. So from that to then being able to see like the homies shows and then performing myself too. I love when somebody comes up to me saying, 'Yo, I really like that' or 'Yo, I heard about you.' That's wild. Like the internet spreads so far and you don't even realise it so it's just great to feel welcomed back after taking a break for a while and finding out that the community still supports one another.

What do you guys think the future holds for the community at large? In five years we're having this conversation again. What do you think we will be talking about?

W: I think it's gonna go the way that Vaporwave kind of went. I think we're kind of at the peak right now. Vaporwave isn't well known anymore, but the quality of it is immensely better. It's just gotten better and better and better. I kind of think I've always viewed it that way because I jumped ship from the Vaporwave community where I was just the one Lo-Fi dude and really there's a lot of similarities to me. I feel like we're gonna go from being like the big main thing and then slowed and reverb (which is just gentrified DJ Screw) will become the new Lo-Fi and we will retreat back to making beats and chilling you know? ha. But yeah, it's kind of my prediction, but I'm a nihilist so... haha

R: I think within the next five years we're going to be talking about the influx of more artist run and singular imprints. Potentially the general steer away from labels. From my own experiences I have to ask what a label is really offering a lot of artists in this changed climate now? Artists are realising they can shoot their own beat videos, they can do high quality stuff on a more minimal budget; all within the comfort of their own home. Like I don't need to go to a studio, I don't need to pay for hours at a photo studio to do what I want to do. I can get all the equipment in house and just make a quality product for people to digest and feel like they're a part of, all on an independent budget. That's just my vision of it. We'll be talking about the springing up of imprints under artists where it's totally run by the artist, and they may have collaborations of a few other individuals that are under them, but nothing super major where it becomes out of control you know? I think we'll be talking about which producers are putting out incredible visuals or which producers are putting out incredible packages of their entire work, along with maybe seeing the passing of the label structure as we know it.

O: Kind of building off of Rad's point, I feel like we're gonna drift away a little bit from that label structure. I think that has to do with one of the benefits of social media. You're now able to understand the information that's needed to get yourself out there. One of the reasons that labels were important up to say about 2012-14 was artists still didn't know how to really use the internet for their careers. Despite it being around for almost 14 years at that point, artists were still not using it so actively. Labels provided the knowledge that these artists didn't know to look for. Nowadays through Tik Tok, through Instagram, through YouTube; people are just actively talking about what happens at a label. Actually exploring what it means and asking questions to protect themselves and their art. At the end of the day your music is an extension of yourself and you want that extension protected. So I feel like we are going to walk away from that label aspect. At least in this community, people now have the resources at their fingertips and the community is willing to discuss these things openly. I mean, even I have had labels reach out to me and it's been very easy to ask around, find out their deal and get accurate feedback from the community. It then becomes apparent if they are for real or just after a cash grab. People (like Wun for example) who will straight up tell you the facts as it is and then leave you to do with it as you please are essential. That's what we need in this community.

I also get a little bit on Wun's point about comparing it to Vaporwave at peak. I see this community in this genre being a little bit cyclical? Like I remember when I started in this, thinking this sort of style of music had died off. Outside of finding a few beat makers on YouTube back in around 2011, like Damu, who were actively on there making blogs about Boom Bap and all that; I thought that sort of 90's sound died off and we're kind of just trying to do our own version of it like we said earlier. But then all of a sudden in 2015-16, this community arises and you're like oh shit, it's come back into frame, it's come back into style. Now I feel like people, especially with 2020 and with the way that the DC incident went down, are more willing to have the tougher conversations. It stopped being that you swept under the rug that things were being gentrified. Those things were being watered down. That people weren't representing the culture with its best interest at heart. Now people are aware and people are calling that shit out. To the point that we are starting to get into the territory of asking people to start respecting the roots more. To learn more about what's happened in the community, in the culture. It's okay to experiment, to do other things, but respect and learn. As a result, I'm seeing more and more people, whether it's on Instagram, Spotify or SoundCloud; stop giving so much a shit about what kind of sound is popular to the masses and just making a sound that is authentic to themselves. People like Dibia$e, Nimzo and others are just making sounds they want to hear. If there's an audience that wants to hear it, that's fucking awesome but at the end of the day the only audience that really matters to them is themselves. Everybody wants that bag, but we're starting to see again that it's cool to experiment. It's fucking cool to see these people who are just going for it and you're starting to see that more and more again which is exciting.

R: I did want to add just one more thing because having this open discourse and this open kind of roundtable is awesome. But yeah, I just want to say at the end of the day, a lot of artists are realising that as we start to get the tools to create our own setups and to create art that people can digest in multiple mediums, that the label question arises in people’s minds once again. Traditionally labels will be like yeah we'll contact a graphic designer, we will contact a product designer to do your tapes and your vinyl and stuff; but now artists do all of that. Artists can do the design on their own artwork. They can do the animations on their own roll outs. They can do the designs of their vinyl and tape. So it's like what are you offering me in addition to the exposure and maybe a couple of curators? That's where I think artists are moving towards. Like I got a green screen the other day for $25 and I was like holy shit, the amount of stuff I can do with this green screen is incredible. All for the price of a meal at Wendy's.

When artists are kind of uncovering those secrets and seeing it's not as complicated as the world has made it seem, they are finding they can do multiple things. They can not only make the music, but they can be the writers in their community, they can be the voices of what is accepted and what's not accepted in the community. They can put on other homies in music and expand to a larger audience without feeling like they have to go through another filter to do it. So I think that's really the main thing. A lot of people are realising ‘I can do this, you know?’ It may not be the easiest path but you start to realise that you can create these bridges between worlds that are your inspiration. I think we're gonna start to see artists go back to incorporating what they love into their music. I used to, even in my own work, self-edit almost.  But now it's like, fuck it. If I want to make a weird hodgepodge blend of anime, wrestling, hood stuff from the 90s, skateboard culture, tagging and everything that I love; I'm gonna do that. I'm just gonna say to people, this is what inspires me and this is what I like. Hopefully you find something that you can take away from that. I think that's a realness that a lot of people desire. They want to see artists and producers wear their influences on their sleeve, and not feel like it's nerdy or out there or taboo. People want artists to put what they love front and center, and that can only be a good thing.

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Listen to Radicule, OSHEN and oneyun below: