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Nikola Nesic
Professor Malcom Campbell
UWRT 1103
11 November 2015
From Pop to Art Pop: The Necessity of Music Genres
As Im writing this essay, Im listening to Kendrick Lamars masterpiece To Pimp A
Butterfly, with the current track being Complexion (A Zulu Love) ft. Rapsody. A great record
so far with only four more tracks left before Im done. The record is a bit too long, but I think
that only adds to the quality. To Pimp A Butterflys story isnt something that you can tell in
around the average 45 minute Long Play, or LP for short. A question that now pops into my head
would be what I categorize To Pimp A Butterfly as. Of course, I could just say Hip-Hop, but that
is way too broad. Hip-Hop covers a bunch of different artists: Nas, Jay-Z, Little Brother, Souls of
Mischief, Kohh, Busdriver. The list goes on.
The thing is, while we can all agree that the listed artists would fall under Hip-Hop, do
they all really sound the same? Hip-Hop is a lyrically-driven genre, so do these artists rap about
the same ideas? To the more casual, radio-friendly music listener, these questions dont matter
much to them, but for the people who may enjoy the societal commentary coming from Kendrick
Lamar and Nas, or the calm, but conscious beats and lyrical style of Little Brother and Souls of
Mischief, or the abstract and experimental style of Busdriver, or the crazy, party-styled beats and
lazy lyrics of Kohh, finding out specifically what genre these artists fall under allows a listener to
entertain their tastes more and to get out of their musical comfort zones. However, are these
genres even necessary?

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The definition of a genre is a categorization of a piece of entertainment. One of the larger

terms used nowadays within the music community is a subgenre, an even more specific
categorization of a piece of entertainment. For example, while Kendrick Lamars music falls
under Hip-Hop, the genre, he would more specifically fall under the subgenres of West Coast
Hip-Hop, Conscious Hip-Hop, and Jazz Rap. While he has also dipped his toes into other
subgenres such as Pop Rap, Boom Bap, and Hardcore Hip-Hop, the list earlier describes the
majority of his music and what he is best known for. While the term of subgenre is still used, but
subgenres have become more commonplace in todays music community has genres on their
own accord. However, record labels, such as Pizza of Death Records, advertise on their official
website that they are a punk label, but use the umbrella label of punk to label the Pop Punk, Punk
Rock, and Garage Punk that they are known for releasing.
So, do artists stay the same genre for the entirety of their career? Looking at a band such
as Boris, a Japanese three-piece musical act out of Tokyo, that question is an easy no. Boris has
been known to be one of the more versatile bands in music, from their debut record Absolutego
to their more recent works in Asia, Urban Dance, and Warpath covering a multitude of genres,
including, but not limited to, Drone, Drone Metal, Stoner Metal, Noise Rock, Stoner Rock,
Psychedelic Rock, Japanese Pop (J-Pop for short), and Noise. From the list given, while the
majority of these subgenres do fall under the umbrella genre of Rock, some of these genres are
vastly different from one another. For example, Psychedelic Rock, according to Rate Your
Musics genre list, is a genre where the acts emulate the way music sounds while under the
effects of psychedelic drugs. while Stoner Rock combines Blues Rock, the psychedelic
elements of Psychedelic Rock, and the repetitive riffs of Doom Metal.

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One of the biggest issues within the music community today is the idea that music genres
are saturated at this point. Some listeners on forums and internet relay chatrooms will complain
that there are genres that just feel unnecessary and the whole idea of subgenres is just a joke. A
genre where the complaints mostly go to is the umbrella of Electronica. Principa Electronica,
an article written by New York University Journalist graduate David Hajdu who is also a music
critic for The New Republic, says that Electronica is music made ...by electronic means and
[evokes] the electronic realm. In other words, Electronica is made entirely by computer
software and is made to have an electronic feel to it.
Due to the much more accessible and easier nature of developing Electronica, the rise of
the genre has caused much mainstream success, leading to more people wanting to create this
music. However, as is with every genre, different people want to create different styles, thus
Electronica became cluttered with subgenres in order to describe every little niche within music.
For example, two subgenres within Plunderphonics, a genre where the music is entirely sampled,
meaning to take pieces of music from other artists and incorporate it within your own, are
Vaporwave and Future Funk. The main difference between these two genres is that Vaporwave,
due to the way that the music gets developed, creates an ambient and nostalgic feeling to the
listener. Future Funk does the same, however with only a faster Beats-per-Minute, or BPM for
short, in order to create a more upbeat feeling. This tends to be the case with more genres in
Electronica. For example, Drum and Bass tends to have BPM values of 160 to 180 and House, a
very similar genre in sound, has a slower BPM, specifically between 118 and 135 BPM.
While the main point of the opposing side is that these changes in music dont tend to be
significant enough to create a key difference between these genres, it is hard to prove that
statement true. Grab the first pen that you can find and tap it against your desk every 5 seconds

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for a bit. Then, do the same thing, but for every 2 seconds. When youre tapping the pen faster,
you can sense the more excited, exhilarating nature of it. Even if youre not tapping it at the same
intensity, the speed creates an entirely new emotion. Its the same with these Electronica genres:
Vaporwave tends to have a lower BPM to accompany the ambient style created from the
samples. Future Funks is higher in order to get that happier feeling. While something such as the
emotion emanated from a song can seem small, its something that small that can affect so much.
Its the same reason as to why Midwest Emo and Math Rock are separate, even with their glaring
similarities. Midwest Emo just tends to be much more emotional than Math Rock.
An issue seen often within the music industry even to this day is the misclassification of
music genres. A peer-reviewed scholarly paper written by Cory McKay and Ichiro Fujinaga
looks into this issue. One of the reasons that they believe this occurs is due to the fact that a lot of
the subgenres nowadays tend to not have clear definitions and change from source to source. Due
to this, acts such as Weezer have been misclassified as Pop in the past due to their Power Pop
sound. However, they mention in the same paper that the benefits to having a music
classification system is that web systems are able to take the information and create
recommendation systems and other similar tasks. For example, Rate Your Music allows the user
to find a certain genre and look at a list of musical releases over the years of records that fall
under that specific genre whilst being able to see what the RYM community believes to be some
of the best records in that genre.
All in all, while there are going to be some implied negatives to having music genres,
such as prejudice against certain bands apart of certain genres and the ability to not be able to go
mainstream due to genre affiliation, the convenience of music genres outweighs these negatives.
Music is without a doubt the biggest piece of entertainment in the world today. With the amount

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of musicians that are performing today, being able to categorize each one makes everything
much more organized. The system isnt flawless and people are quick to misclassify genres, even
if they are in the right umbrella, but these issues are easily remedied and the majority of the time,
positive things will come from using music genres.

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WORKS CITED
Future Funk. Rate Your Music. Rate Your Music, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Hajdu, David. "Principia Electronica." New Republic 243.19 (2012): 24. Points of View
Reference Center. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
McKay, Cory, and Ichiro Fujinaga. Musical Genre Classification: Is It worth Pursuing and How
Can It Be Improved? N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
"Pizza Of Death News." Pizza Of Death Shonbu. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Psychedelic Rock. Rate Your Music. Rate Your Music, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Rate Your Music. Rate Your Music, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
"Re: Are Musical Genres Important?" Web log comment. Audio Issues. Audio Issues, n.d. Web.
21 Oct. 2015.
Stoner Rock. Rate Your Music. Rate Your Music, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
"Vaporwave." Rate Your Music. Rate Your Music, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.