Review Summary: Pain reinterpreted
Hip-hop is steeped in the juxtaposed elements of braggadocio and humanity. Both in the breakout hit "Rapper's Delight" and the underground spoken-word sensation "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," artists weaved unflinching experience with musical accessibility and pride to create an art form which celebrated music as a vehicle for message. Though both 70's hits employed familiar forms to pave the way for communication of an altogether different form, they displayed radically different approaches to the fusion of voice and ensemble. The Sugarhill Gang's funky boom bap and Gil Scott-Heron's aggresive drive supplied their corresponding vocal parts with rhythms to be (respectively) matched or outpaced.
Fast-forward to the 21st century. American hip-hop has spiraled into sub-genres that appropriate elements of global genres almost as much as global pop stations have integrated hip-hop into their rotations; global hits like "Gangnam Style" and "Despacito" latch on to the rapid-fire delivery of hip hop artists to complement the density of lyrical and musical content in their composition. Hip-hop evolves from a complex, lyrical form to the ideal entertainment for the internet generation: hook driven, endlessly quotable, and easily transformed into memes. Somewhere along the line, the relationship between form and content disintegrates to a relationship between digestibility and content.
This is where the Scandinavian GBE & SBE come into the picture. Following in the footsteps of rap auteur Lil B, Yung Lean and company create lyrically sloppy hip hop that floats atop ambient-leaning beats. While Yung Lean's raps veer nonsensical, the meaning of his lyrics becomes less and less important as his peers in the mainstream - Soulja Boy, Kanye West, Lil Yachty, etc. - follow suit. Yet while these peers remain relatively tied to mainstream conventions in crafting their instrumentals, GBE & SBE fly off into the realm of aesthetic perfection. The resulting cloud-rap sound anchors conventionally beautiful, chordal ambiance with heavily structured 808 beats. It's a juxtaposition that invites rather than challenges.
This aesthetic functions best when it sets its sights on aesthetic pleasure and emotional dissonance. The juxtaposition at the heart of hip-hop's creation reignites with the collision of Bladee's smooth, near-apathetic vocals and producer Ripsquadd's ecstatic, arpeggiating instrumentals. While Ripsquadd's production functions as a romantic view of heartache, Bladee's lyrics accentuate the hopelessness tied to such feelings: "Rain check, I get the rain check / I don't want your love, it's tainted /I won't make it /I'm just waiting for a payment."
The result is a startlingly immediate composition that makes alienation catchy and grants its trap-influenced rhythms the freedom to tap into the emotionality of their frantic rhythms. In such a way, "Rain Check" preserves the juxtaposition at the core of hip-hop while gently redirecting its power to a new focus.
The music of SBE and GBE scan as immature and rightfully so: it focuses upon the emotionally and musically immediate. Yet the value of this music remains undeniable as its source. The feelings inspired by areas of friction within our social lives run deep; the only way to make sense of them may be through reincarnation in an aesthetically political context. After all, the personal is political. So long as a product like this one displays clear power, it will be worth creating art out of experiences that on their own may seem too mundane to warrant exploration.
