At first glance, this project may not seem too distant from something one might expect to hear from the likes of Lil Uzi Vert or Playboi Carti. But, the Devil’s in the details, and Adamn does manage to sew his own personality into the fabric of the album. By the second song, we find ourselves riding over a cloudy, tone-setting Shlohmo beat, as Adamn quickly cements his vocal style – somber without being mumble rap, and reasonably melodic.

“I Am Adamn” is the statement of identity its title implies, borrowing heavily while innovating quietly at times.

Once you’ve got a sense of Adamn Killa’s sound, you more or less know what to expect, for better or worse. Through tracks like “Roof Roof” and “Piss in The Sheets”, the vibe doesn’t veer too much from what you might think catching Lil Yachty in a rare, sorrowful mood would be like. In that sense, this track list is a goldmine for those who want something that’s fun and easy to bump with a bit of a dark-tinged cloud hanging overhead, but more disappointing for those looking for something worth giving their full attention to for the duration of the project.

[su_spacer]
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/325207441″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
[su_spacer]

The art of creating lyrics that are either simple or tongue-in-cheek enough to be memorable is a delicate one, and it’s one that Adamn Killa doesn’t necessarily have a handle on here. There are some successes in this regard, like the straightforward hook of “Pay Your Rent” – “I be on my shit, why you talkin’, bitch? Why you talkin’ shit? Pay your rent, you live in a tent” – but there are also some lines throughout “I Am Adamn” that warrant a sigh (e.g., “Call her baby girl like her teeth loose”), along with a fair amount repetitive or substance less bars.

At 16 tracks, “I Am Adamn” takes its time laying down an hour’s worth of multi-colored bangers. While it’s no real artistic achievement or trailblazing project by any means, Adamn Killa has at least created a relatively enjoyable listen here.

In many ways this is a nostalgia thing. People who grew up with the music and are now adults are looking back on their teenage years. As nostalgia tends to make that which happened roughly 15 years ago cool again, we can maybe finally move on from our worship of the ’90s. Emo can finally come out of its dingy bedroom where it’s been living. Its transgressions forgiven. Its sentimentality no longer making us cringe.

The most interesting part of this shift in perception is not the revival of old styles (it never is), but the creation of new ones. This all started when I fell into a strange, sad internet hole and discovered the YouTube channel/pseudo-label “デーモンAstari“. Much of the music on the channel combines the music of your awkward phase with heavily autotuned sing-rap. Wedded to this musical blend is a decidedly internetty visual aesthetic that relies heavily on sad anime clips with a bit of vaporwave-ish Windows 95 worship thrown in for good measure. The musical style is as removed from My Chemical Romance as they were from Sunny Day Real Estate and they themselves from Rites Of Spring.

“Emo is the soundtrack to youth, and as times change, so does the music that resonates with young people. The history of emo is one of reinvention … of shifting musical styles.” – Andy Greenwald

There is something very now about this music. It’s more than just a breath of fresh air into an old style. This is a postmodern blend of internet mixtapes from Future to Odd Future, for kids who grew up on Adult Swim playing rap tracks before airing anime shows, whose first musical memory was hearing Jimmy Eat World on the radio. As Andy Greenwald wrote in his book “Nothing Feels Good”: “Emo is the soundtrack to youth, and as times change, so does the music that resonates with young people. The history of emo is one of reinvention … of shifting musical styles.”

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwyjxsOYnys”]

This music has been a long time coming. “808s and Heartbreak” pretty much set the template (as well as giving a great name to the aesthetic) of autotune assisted sing-rapping over hip-hop beats. That album blends Kanye‘s emotional autotuned singing with the eponymous drum machine of the title while ‘Ye indulges in pettiness after the dissolution of a serious relationship. Since then, rappers like Drake, Future, Young Thug, Lil Yachty, Travi$ Scott and Lil Uzi Vert have followed in this vein while making weird, emotional and melodic music that breaks with many of hip-hop’s established “rules”. Many of these rappers have even been described as “emo” for their soul-baring lyrics.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH9kl6XZixo”]

While these rappers have bent the rules, they still have been successful in the mainstream hip-hop world: their singles topped Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, they were interviewed in XXL and a few of them have collaborated with Kanye. There have also been outsiders who have made similar moves and received a different kind of success. Swedish rapper Yung Lean and his Sad Boys crew are hugely influential here with their white-boy autotune imitations of the above rappers. Part of Lean‘s appeal is the production provided by Yung Gud and Yung Sherman who combine the cloud rap of Clams Casino with electronic music touches.

The Canadian DJ/producer DJ Ryan Hemsworth has also been influential with his blend of electronic music, hip-hop and emotional indie rock. Hemsworth has even stated that two of his favourite albums are Waka Flocka Flame‘s “Flockavelli” and Weezer‘s “Pinkerton”, which sounds like the musical path for a good amount of this music. Both Lean and Hemsworth also have a very similar visual aesthetic consisting of Japanophile tendencies paired with a heavily emotional internet-worshipping aesthetic. This aesthetic might be best explained as the move from 90s emo’s obsession with bleeding one’s emotions and questionably poetry into a diary or a zine (“Diary” even being a seminal album in the genre) to publicly blogging these same issues on websites like Tumblr. Sad, suburban teenagers can now live on the internet in which they have created their own distinctive visual grammar.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMgkt9jdjTU”]
[su_spacer]
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_QsPuKtI3M”]

This new emo-goth-rap hybrid then combines elements of all of these musics. Some songs might sound like full-on emo tracks with hip-hop drums underneath, while some might be a more depressing and distorted version of current mainstream hip-hop. Like any genre or movement there are people who epitomise the movement and people who are hard to categorise, only seeming vaguely related. At the very least, even the artists who maybe don’t quite fit the mould are being included into this sphere by its fans and channels like デーモンAstari. Despite this, they generally share some family resemblances, these are: nostalgic cloud-rap influenced beats, clean guitars (sometimes sampled), short songs, autotune, emo-style singing, rapping and emotional lyrics (often about depression/suicide). These musicians are interested in rap music for its textures and its melodies not for technical rhyme schemes. It is not uncommon, then, to find some weak and fairly unexceptional rapping in lots of this music, but that’s not really the point. The production, however, is often wonderful. It captures the vague sense of emo sadness and nostalgia (the kind you might find in an American Football song) and blends it perfectly with the sad, hazy feeling of cloud rap beats. As with any of the music in a still developing scene, some of the music errs on the side of amateurish production values, but shows promise or is otherwise interesting for its pure novelty.

The music is also not without its issues. Combining the famously dodgy gender politics of emo and rap results in a perfect storm of douchebaggery. In both, women are frequently reduced to “bitches” or corpses. As Jessica Hopper wrote about in “Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t” , “We’re vessels redeemed in the light of boy-love. On a pedestal, on our backs. Muses at best. Cum rags or invisible at worst”. The rapper XXX-TENTACION has become a large figure in this scene despite (or, as Pitchfork suggests, because of) his imprisonment for domestic violence. With mental health issues the scene could be seen to be equally problematic. While in many ways having these artists discuss their sadness and depression can help others feel less alone and less stigmatised, it can also create an area where these issues are fetishised, where they can start to become cool. There are also the very current issue of sad, young men online with only an echo chamber of other equally frustrated young men to talk to. These situations have become the breeding grounds for extremist philosophies like the Alt-right. In terms of racial issues, it would be unwise to think that these largely white performers interest in Japan or African-American music signals any kind of allegiance with Black Lives Matter or other parts of the #woke internet.

The final thing is what to call this nebulous genre/scene that, for now, exists mostly around a few YouTube channels. Emo rap might work, but it’s not all clearly emo and that term has been half-used to refer to rappers like Kid Cudi for years now. Sad rap? IDK. I’m sure someone will soon find a way to categorise this and annoy all the artists who claim they’re totally original and can’t be pigeonholed. I look forward to the day. All I can say is it’s a shame that I won’t be coining said term and irritating everyone myself.

A brief introduction to the artists and songs worth knowing (most of these are best enjoyed with both the music and the video whilst alone at 1am):

– Lil Peep is probably the best and so-far the most well-known. His music is also the most successful synthesis of emo and rap. According to a recent Pitchfork profile his influences are Crystal Castles, Panic At The Disco and Gucci Mane (which says everything really).

“In “Girls”, Peep and collaborator Horsehead appear to be two scene-kids that have snuck into a Chief Keef video. It’s a surreal blend of sleek rap video direction and white kids with face tattoos. It’s also a clear attempt to enter the conventional rap world on its own terms. The beat epitomises the dreamy vibe of much of this scene while the lyrics seem to capture its dodgy gender politics.

“M.O.S” is a gorgeously gothic track that manages to be quiet and loud at the same time. Peep‘s vocals are slurred and low in the mix as if this were a My Bloody Valentine song. It really draws comparisons between shoegaze and this scene with a general emphasis on emotion and texture over clear lyrics.

– XXXTENTACION makes music that is occasionally gothic and distorted, occasionally emotional and sung. The デーモンAstari channel’s most popular upload is “I Don’t Wanna Do This Anymore”, one of his weepier songs, so I’ll include it in this list.

– Nothing, nowhere goes even further into emo than Peep. His music generally combines sad-sack lyrics with clean guitars and emo vocals but throws in some hip-hop production and some whiteboy rapping for good measure.

– Brennan Savage‘s “Look At Me Now” has a great gothic trap beat that Savage mostly sings over, with a tiny bit of rapping.

– Lil Bo Weep‘s “I Wrote This Song For You” was recently championed by Diplo on Twitter. Its genre might be best described as cloud rap ballad.

– yunggoth‘s “idk how to kill myself” is one of the vaguest trap songs ever written. Pretty much the only word you can make out in this ethereal banger is “bitches”.

– OmenXIII‘s “Drop Dead” is basically just a great gothic punk-rap song. He looks the part too, dressed all in black with some black nail polish for good measure.

In late 70s Britain, the sociologists Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie wrote that “it is boys who become interested in rock as music, who become hi-fi experts, who hope to become musicians, technicians or music businessmen. It is boys who form the core of the rock audience, who are intellectually interested in rock, who become rock critics and collectors”. Something, clearly, about the idea of taking music seriously fit with the way we allowed men to be men and not with the way we allowed women to be women. In 2017, and in this current wave of feminism, things certainly seem better but how far has an idea of masculinity ingrained itself?

Despite the more promising progressive moves of our current musical world, masculinity is firmly entrenched in music and our ways of thinking about it. You don’t have to dig deep to find worrying stories that make it feel like we’re still back in the seventies. Stubbornly rooted deep in our thinking about music are links between our ideas of creativity and masculinity. Music is hardly the only sphere of culture to have been arbitrarily gendered: science, technology and engineering fields (STEM) are famously male-centric fields. They remain this way not only through sexist jokes or the lack of support for women in these spaces but also in the way we think about what it means to be male or female. With STEM fields, for example, from an early age boys see more scientists on TV or their toys are geared towards creativity or their parents discipline them less because “boys will be boys”. These ideas of “natural” masculinity and femininity are conventions that, to many, have become common sense. If women do become involved in these industries, as the saying goes, they will frequently be forced to work twice as hard for half the recognition. A huge amount of this comes from a discourse of “seriousness” that sees men as logical and objective, while women are reduced to being irrational and hysterical – hysteria itself having been thought originally to come from the uterus.

While women are clearly just as talented as men (why on earth would there be a biological difference in these matters?!), their contributions are clearly valued less. Men are allowed the encouragement, the space, the funds and the critical attention to allow their talents to thrive. Accordingly, men are generally seen as the default for musicians, with women frequently seen as a deviation from the norm (you wouldn’t refer to The Rolling Stones as an all-male band, right?).

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIPxlFzDi0″]

To understand this we have to examine the fundamentally different (and frequently subconscious) prisms we see male and female behaviour through. A recent psychological study from Duke University suggested that: “think[ing] creatively tends to be associated with independence and self-direction – qualities generally ascribed to men”. Their study argues that if the same work is individually attributed to a man then a women, the supposedly male work is seen to be more creative. If we look back at nineteenth century gender roles we can start to understand this. Men, at this time, performed public work as the breadwinner of the house, generally involving physical or intellectual activity, while women performed the private work of the house as homekeepers, carers and moulders of young minds. Men, then, as they performed deeds outside the house were allowed the quality of “agency, which … refers to self-directed behavior and is associated with traits such as adventurousness and self-reliance”. Women, conversely, were believed to have “communality, which … refers to concern for others and is associated with traits such as social sensitivity and cooperativeness”.

The most culturally valued movements have been those that challenge the way we view society

These roles then directly translate into artistic and musical philosophy. The traits that we admire in musicians are those of disruption, independence and originality. These could be considered the main focus of the rock ‘n’ roll philosophy. So not only are we more likely to encourage men to be creative and enter the world of music, but we will also be more likely to recognise creativity in men even if they’re doing the same work. The philosophies of art and masculinity are then inevitably linked. The traits we abhor in art then are those that maintain the fabric of society (in the way of a stereotypical mother). The moments we value in music and art are those initial moments of rupture when everything changes but before the larger public is aware: punk rock in 1976, acid house in 1988, modernism in 1922. When you think of important artists, musicians and creators, the ones we value most are those that broke down doors and played by their own rules “exerting independence and distinctiveness”. We don’t value the bands that “maintain[ed] social harmony and interconnectedness”. From punk rock to Kanye West, the most culturally valued movements have been those that challenge the way we view society, not those that uphold its values.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGIFublvDes”]

The mythology of rock ‘n’ roll is for music that shakes the boundaries of culture. As musicologist Keir Keightley writes, “the idea of rock involves a rejection of those aspects of mass-distributed music which are believed to be soft, safe or trivial… the styles, genres and performers that are thought to merit the name ‘rock’ must be seen as serious, significant and legitimate in some way”. In this sense, rock doesn’t have to even mean distorted guitars but an idea of music being independent or distinctive. You can apply the ‘rock’ mode of thinking to everything from Nick Cave to Lil’ Yachty. Pop music, on the other hand, is seen to conform to what the system already wants. People taking music seriously will then value whoever is the most unique, not those who sound overly influenced by others. Pop culture is associated, then, with conformity and with femininity, a Stepford Wives suburban world of bland obedience. Rock culture becomes its opposite, eschewing conformity for a masculine sense of rebellion, leaving the home behind. As in Kerouac‘s On The Road, women are there to care for you, pay for you and ultimately to hold you back from the wild adventures you and your buddies can have.

“Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” is its rallying cry and unofficial slogan

Women (in the rock ‘n’ roll philosophy) are a symbol of both safety and oppression, the ultimate figure to rebel against. In this case “the rules” are often supposedly enforced by the mother. As the early twentieth century American writer H.L. Mencken wrote: “women are the conservative and conservators, the enemies of hazard and innovation… mothering which is their supreme gift is the greatest of …foes to masculine enterprise”. More recently this connection between mass culture and femininity has been made by Tyler Durden in “Fight Club”. As the characters see it, they are “slave[s] to the IKEA nesting instinct“, to the false dreams of television, consumers that are “byproducts of a lifestyle obsession”. The unnamed narrator (Edward Norton in the film) imagines an alter ego (Brad Pitt) who is the paragon of conventional masculinity in contrast to his own life as a white-collar wage-slave. Breaking away from this “nesting instinct” (clearly a maternal reference) can only be achieved by forming an exclusively-male group who reassert their masculinity by beating each other up and rebelling against this feminised mass culture.

Any musician can be taken seriously if they adopt the rock philosophy, whether they show a certain rebellious attitude in the way they deal with their label, their decadent behaviour or in their claim to speak for the people. Rock is a philosophy of rugged individualism. Rock’s political stance is neither necessarily right or left but a kind of libertarian anti-authority stance. “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” is its rallying cry and unofficial slogan. By rebelling against the culture you were brought up in, you are rebelling against this imagined nagging mother figure. As long as you’re breaking the rules, you’re fine. So swearing on TV is rock,renegade police officers in cop movies are rock, smoking cigarettes is rock and shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die is definitely rock (unfortunately reading sociological essays about ‘what rock is’ is not rock – probably best to throw a TV out your nearest window). The “rock rebel” is the character that rockstars inhabit, built on Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, this is the sense we have of the rockstar. A rugged individual who follows his(!) own path. The mythical rockstar figure is not concerned about his own health and is uninterested in following the rules of others. Even if they are just achieving the sort of “rebellion” that our culture values as rebellion (thus taking on its own sort of conformity).

In spite of all this, it is easy to think that as left-leaning feminists, we have left behind the culture of patriarchal masculinity from which we felt so estranged. This is not the case. The issue is that when we talk of masculinity, we are often talking about the masculinity of others as if there is one clear version of masculinity. We might think that AC/DC fans exude masculinity while us Radiohead-loving hipsters have risen above it. Those AC/DC fans love loud guitars and their lyrics are more clearly objectionable but this far from makes us immune.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM”]

As the New Zealand-based musician and academic Matthew Bannister points out, indie is not necessarily any less masculine: “it was a different kind of masculinity: activities of record collecting, debates about the composition of the “canon”; music “connoisseurship”, exchange and hoarding of information – all provide spaces for masculine identity formation.” Bannister writes that “indie provided a space where some men could assert masculinity indirectly by participating in a kind of objective order or symbolic system of authority”. In other words, by being into weirdo obscure music, a certain kind of man could assert their masculinity in their deep knowledge.

“Rock’s great paradox is that it has successively revolted against established notions of manliness while remaining misogynistic”

It is easy to look down on more working class ideas of masculinity and to never examine the ways that this hipsterdom can itself exude a certain kind of middle class masculinity. Basically, masculinity in our culture tends to exist as a form of power. This power can either be in the fairly obvious form of a heavy metal band lording over the stage with their virtuosity and dominance over the audience but also in the detached elitism of indie/hipster subcultures. As Bannister writes: “taste is a form of cultural power”.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5CVsCnxyXg”]

Another way masculinity paradoxically lingers is through its own subversion. There are ways that “normal”, macho masculinity is broken away from in popular music that can seem fairly progressive in some senses and totally regressive in others. Musicians from Young Thug to The Rolling Stones have cross-dressed while still referring to women as “bitches” or writing songs like “Under My Thumb”. This makes you think that maybe cross-dressing wasn’t as progressive as it first seemed. As Simon Reynolds writes in his glam rock history “Shock And Awe”: “Male pop performers annexing for themselves the feminine province of fashion and beautification, then, was not necessarily an indicator of respect for women. It was an extension of vanity, a new terrain for the male ego”.

Similarly the open emotional lyrics of Drake to emo bands are generally propped up by other forms of macho posturing. As Tahirah Hairston writes in an essay on Drake: “Sure, he’s really, really good at expressing his feelings, broadening the scope of masculinity in rap” but “Drake’s lyrics are rooted in patriarchal and paternalistic themes, complete with a fascination with “good” girls and saving women.” Simon Reynolds and Joy Press explain this, in their “Sex Revolts”, with the idea that “rock’s great paradox is that it has successively revolted against established notions of manliness while remaining misogynistic”. This is precisely the complex issue here, rock can both challenge and confirm traditional masculine ideals. Through cross-dressing or being bluntly emotional, these artists are still conforming to a masculine sense of rebellion, of shaking the system, even if they are subverting traditionally male behaviour in a different way.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxpDa-c-4Mc”]

In these ways, the whole “rock” philosophy has a certain degree of macho behaviour behind it. Acquiring knowledge becomes a new form of intellectual dominance. Consider the common complaint from women in any geekish world like this where they are challenged to prove their knowledge of pop culture as they have been assumed to be phonies or charlatans on the basis of their gender. Further still, the idea of “mansplaining” seems to speak to this same need for men to assert their dominance by use of brain rather than brawn.

It is certainly no bad thing that in 2017 music as a culture is comparatively less male-dominated than it was but it seems overtly utopian to suggest these ideas will be going away quickly, if at all. In our more progressive circles, we might be seeing slightly less male dominance but with all that’s happened recently these progressions seem precarious at best. We might be able to complain about gender roles and agree that they’re outdated but who, of any gender, can say they haven’t made ridiculous assumptions about a woman’s knowledge of music or just generally have treated women poorly through their own unchecked sexism? Our cultural values were developed with white, straight, middle-class, cis-gender people in mind. They won’t go away after a few listens of Lemonade.

“Hopelessness” – Anohni

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZW1BBkquFA”]
[su_spacer]

“Gemini Feed” – Banks

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IeyrEUkBSk”]
[su_spacer]

“Lemonade” – Beyoncé

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ”]
[su_spacer]

“Augustine” – Blood Orange

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXtzcViZPGA”]
[su_spacer]

“I Did” – Bonzai

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nurMSfSbPhk”]
[su_spacer]

“Broccoli” – D.R.A.M. x Lil Yachty

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K44j-sb1SRY”]
[su_spacer]

“Lazarus” – David Bowie

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8″]
[su_spacer]

“Nikes” – Frank Ocean

[su_spacer]

“Kill V. Maim” – Grimes

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2EJMd7ZN7w”]
[su_spacer]

“Gosh” – Jamie xx

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTGJfRPLe08″]
[su_spacer]

“Oh No” – Jessy Lanza

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaNZbUENKjk”]
[su_spacer]

“Wolves” – Kanye West

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsA84bXrBZw”]
[su_spacer]

“Glowed Up” – Kaytranada x Anderson .Paak

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWesK-nWts”]
[su_spacer]

“Super Hero” – Kool Keith x MF DOOM

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJGXSybL1NY”]
[su_spacer]

“Freak” – Lana Del Rey

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq30l5-vBbo”]
[su_spacer]

“Les Cactus” – The Last Shadow Puppets

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf5apyds8Xk”]
[su_spacer]

“1 Night” – Lil Yachty

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1WRpCsR2EE”]
[su_spacer]

“Technique” – Mai Lan

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMxYfVGBeIU”]
[su_spacer]

“Brujas” – Princess Nokia

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUcAPCxrSQs”]
[su_spacer]

“Human” – Sevdaliza

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t7SclAXoQw”]
[su_spacer]

You can check the whole playlist (only Frank Ocean‘s “Nikes” is missing) on our YouTube channel!

You can also check our other lists:

20 Favorite Videos

20 Favorite EPs

20 Favorite Albums and Mixtapes

Radar 2017

100 Favorite Tracks

The video of “Never Switch Up” also features an exclusive rap session for Noisey, which premiered the video. The track appears on Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape “Lil Boat” that was released in March 2016. It’s a clear message: Yachty stays loyal to his crew and to himself despite his success.