The term trap music has been used for years to describe that dirty south drug-dealing rap. Artists like TI and Young Jeezy were the first to blow up the term with his songs containing the buzz word. Remember the Young Jeezy song “Trapstar” with Akon? Yeah that’s trap muzik.
Lex Luger basically revived the style with his productions for Rick Ross and Waka Flocka. The super fast high hats and snares are his unique contribution to the genre. Not that they didn’t exist before him, he just exaggerated and blew them up.
Since this style of rap music and dubstep are usually produced around 140BPM, they are easily mixed which put some of these rap songs in the EDM clubs as dubstep blew up over the last couple years. I remember watching Caspa drop “BMF” by Rick Ross (produced by Lex Luger) and the whole crowd went ape shit. It was clear that 808 bass can be just as effective as the machine wobbling bass of newer dubstep. The difference between what Jeezy or TI were doing and what’s blowing up festival stages and clubs right now is that the EDM trap style is made for dancing and not for Waka Flocka to scream over. There are tons of remixes of house and hip hop tracks with the signature timing, 808 kicks and lightning fast snares + high hats. They are carefully constructed to get your ass moving as an instrumental, not for drug dealing slang and superfluous adlibs.
If you attended music festivals (Impulse, Electric Forest, Camp Bisco specifically) this summer, you know that the stripped down, 808 drops are in a lot of ways the new Skrillex drop because the crowd has no idea how to react. If I had a dollar for each trap remix that dropped as the entire crowd lost their minds screaming “WWOOOOAAHHHH!” I could probably go to Bonnaroo for free next year.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/49406466″ iframe=”true” /]
At Bisco, Trap productions were played by Dubstep frontrunners like Zeds Dead, Skrillex, Minnesota and Bassnectar as well, further demonstrating the popularity of this style. RL Grime’s “Mercy” remix was played like it was Avicii’s “Levels” at Ultra. I’ll take Yeezy over Avicii any day, but let’s just see if this genre doesn’t became as quickly played out as the other EDM flavors of the month.
Here are some more examples this style:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/45739810″ iframe=”true” /][soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/33757576″ iframe=”true” /][soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/53672306″ iframe=”true” /][soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/50129933″ iframe=”true” /][soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/46527739″ iframe=”true” /]
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