#traphouse rock

❏ Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana (1991)

❏ Move on Up by Curtis Mayfield (1970)

All I really wanna do lately

Is make you hate me

Then call me baibey

I’m listening to Traphouse Rock by Kids These Days right now, and this album has to be a music nerd’s dream. Not only because it has the potential to be the hip hop equivalent of The Yardbirds, being the starting point for Chicago hip hop careers like Donnie Trumpet’s and Vic Mensa’s, but just because they truly feel post-genre. Listening to the record, there are so many instrumental nods to other songs, like big-name samples basically that they wouldn’t have been able to put in if they hadn’t given away the album for free. There was a nod in one of the early tracks to Outkast’s “GhettoMusick” that I had never noticed before, and there are more obvious interpolations of “Touch The Sky/Move On Up,” “Where Is My Mind,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” “My Body Is a Cage,” and many others I’m sure.

Aside from just the omnivorous quality of the music it incorporates, Traphouse Rock feels impossible to label as any one kind of genre. There are hints of the more intense, purist hip hop that Vic Mensa would go on to make, but there’s also plenty of Surf qualities -- uplifting, kind of nostalgic or youthful horn-heavy songs like “Talk 2 You.” Every member truly brings something distinct to the music, which is something that I’m not sure you can say about a lot of bands. It really makes me wonder how all these guys get along now, how they feel about the music they made, because it feels like there are just so many competing personalities on this album -- everyone just pulling the music in different directions. It’s so compelling, but it also makes me feel like there could’ve been a lot of tension there.

My friend, this jam is a TEN!