Genres

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you. Like the most challenging art, the music of Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly teaches you how to listen to it. Its production is dense and layered, drawing in strains of jazz, funk, blues, and hip-hop, and though squishing genres together is not new, per se, other fusionists tended to reduce the elements of each sound to, more times than not, populist beats and smooth melodies. TPAB, on the other hand, throws the boldest, loudest, and brashest elements of each genre against one another. It can be jarring and even disorienting.It’s an appropriate backdrop for Kendrick’s lyrics, which are knotty, neurotic, and, ultimately, transcendent. Those elements—anger, despair, empathy, and hope—have been present in protest anthems from “We Shall Overcome” to Beyoncé’s “Formation,” but they generally don’t converge in one song or one album. And, even less frequently, do the songs implicate their author, or blur the line between subject and the object.This is a new form of protest music, one where (to borrow a phrase from second-wave feminism) the personal is political, and the political is personal. In this new strain of agitprop, Kendrick is our most reliable narrator; he acknowledges the ambiguity, and he inhabits his stories rather than tells them to us. The moments of uplift—the chorus of “Alright,” or the first half of “i”—feel hard-won and authentic. He sounds like a savior, but, sometimes, he talks like a killer.Contradiction is a byproduct of this era. Our lives are endlessly complex, but we reject nuance. We’re globally interconnected, but locally isolated. We reject the weight of history, but still live in its shadow and play by its unspoken (and often unacknowledged) rules. All of us negotiate these things, in small and large ways, and Kendrick is no different. He’s just more talented than most of us, and perhaps a bit more honest.To Pimp a Butterfly resonated with so many of us because not only was it such a frank negotiation of these conflicted themes—identity, allegiance, history, and duty—but also because it’s a personal testimony, grounded in a very specific set of circumstances. Some of the catalysts for the album are obvious—the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Kendrick’s well-documented hardscrabble upbringing in Compton; the continual spectre of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and police brutality—but there are also largely hidden stories that explain the context and headspace that birthed TPAB.The process for creating TPAB was familiar to anyone who’s worked with Kendrick: endless ideation, constant revision, and precise execution. “We did good kid [m.A.A.d City] about three, four times before the world got to it… new songs, new everything. I wanted to tell that story, but I had to execute it,” Kendrick recalls. “My whole thing is about execution. The songs can be great, the hooks can be great, but if it’s not executed well, then it’s not a great album.”The process for TPAB was similarly painstaking, and had begun even before the release of its predecessor. “Good kid, m.A.A.d city wasn’t even printed up, and already he’s doing brainstorms for the new album,” Sounwave remembers.“We recorded 60 to 80 tracks for this album over the three years, and Kendrick tried many different concepts and approaches,” go-to TDE engineer Derek Ali shared in June 2015. “The final direction began to emerge in the last year and a half or so, with most of the tracks written and played from the ground up.”One of the earlier sessions for the recording took place during Kendrick’s 2013 stint as opener on Kanye’s Yeezus tour. Kendrick had enlisted L.A. producer, DJ, and multimedia artist Flying Lotus to help out with his light show, and, during the process, FlyLo had slipped him a “folder of beats.” As the producer recalls, “Later that night he told me he had the concept for the album.”While FlyLo speculates that Kendrick rapped over every one of his beats, most of the recordings never made it to the album, and he only ended up with one production credit, albeit a very significant one with album opener “Wesley’s Theory.” That song begins with an invocation of sorts, a sample of the chorus from Boris Gardiner’s smooth jazz track “Every Nigger is a Star.” Afterwards, Kendrick assumes the stereotype of a newly minted rap star—“Ima buy a brand new Caddy on fours/ Trunk the hood up, two times, deuce-four/ Platinum on everything, platinum on wedding ring”—before transitioning to the persona of Uncle Sam, a familiar symbol who’s transformed here from an icon of oppression to a consumerist pimp: “What you want? You a house or a car?/ Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar?/ Anything, see, my name is Uncle Sam, Im your dog/ Motherfucker, you can live at the mall.”From the inception of the album, Kendrick knew that the struggle he articulated would be a personal one, and would reflect his own battles with temptation and identity. “One thing I learned, from when you in the limelight: Anything that you have a vice for is at your demand, times 10 and it can kill you,” Kendrick said in 2012.But the album’s creation would be halted as Kendrick wrestled with a set of personal tragedies. In 2013, three close friends were gunned down in Los Angeles, seemingly one after another. Kendrick remembers being on tour, leaving the stage, where he “faced the madness, and gets these calls … three of my homeboys that summertime was murdered, close ones. Psychologically, it messes your brain up. I got to get off this tour bus and go to funerals.”On one hand, Kendrick was touring behind one of the best-received hip-hop albums of the decade in good kid, m.A.A.d city, but he was also tasked with going back to Compton to attend the funerals of loved ones. Kendrick captured this turmoil on the YG song “Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)” from 2014: “Im on this tour bus and Im fucked up, I got a bad call/ They killed Braze, they killed Chad, my big homie Pup/ Puppy eyes in my face, bruh, and Ive really been drinkin/ Muthafucka, I really been smokin, what the fuck? Im the sober one/ Man, Im so stressed out, I cant focus.”

Chad Keaton’s loss, in particular, was difficult for Kendrick to handle. "He was like my little brother; we grew up in the same community," he says. "I was actually best friends with his older brother, who is incarcerated right now. And him just always telling me to make sure that Chad is on the right path. And, you know, he was on the right path. But, you know, things happen where sometimes the good are in the wrong places, and thats exactly what happened. He got shot … when Chad was killed, I cant disregard the emotion of me relapsing and feeling the same anger that I felt when I was 16, 17—when I wanted the next family to hurt, because you made my family hurt. Them emotions were still running in me, thinking about him being slain like that. Whether Im a rap star or not, if I still feel like that, then Im part of the problem rather than the solution."

Kendrick + ChadGiven his harrowing childhood, there’s a good chance that Kendrick suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s not alone. According to Howard Spivak M.D, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention, PTSD is rampant among inner-city youth. Some studies have cited that one in three youth live with it. “Youth living in inner cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers,” Spivak commented. And, unlike war zones, most children in these areas are never able to escape. Those that do, carry their own scars.One related condition that Kendrick has been very outspoken about is the idea of survivors guilt, a complex that occurs when a person believes they are at fault for surviving a traumatic event. It was first identified in Holocaust survivors who didn’t understand how they escaped when so many of their friends and family members died in the gas chambers. “How can I be a voice for all these people around the world, and not reach them that are closest to me?,” Kendrick wondered.In addition to the problems at home, Kendrick was having issues adjusting to his newfound fame and wealth. Throughout 2013, Kendrick’s feelings of isolation and displacement intensified, and his unease with the space he now occupied was nearly crippling. The transition was jarring and cannot be understated. "Im going to be 100 per cent real with you," Kendrick shares. "In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero… Youre around people you dont know how to communicate with. You dont speak the same lingo. It brings confusion and insecurity. Questioning how did I get here, what am I doing?"And his interactions with the black kids that were bused in from other areas more affluent than Compton were jarring. “I went over to some of their houses … and it was a whole ‘nother world,” Kendrick says. “Family pictures of them in suits and church clothes up everywhere. Family-oriented. Eatin’ together at the table. We ate around the TV. Stuff like that—I didn’t know nothin’ about. Eatin’ without your elbows on the table? I’m lookin’ around like, ‘What is goin’ on?!’ I came home and asked my mama, ‘Why we don’t eat ’round the table?’ Then I just keep goin’, always askin’ questions. I think that’s when I started to see the lifestyle around us.“You always think that everybody live like you do, because you locked in the neighborhood, you don’t see no way else … You can’t change where you from. You can’t take a person out of their zone and expect them to be somebody else now that they in the record industry. It’s gonna take years. Years of traveling. Years of meeting people. Years of seeing the world.”Luckily, Kendrick would soon get to see a very important part of the world for him. In late 2013, he did a brief tour of Africa, an experience that changed his life. It helped him understand himself—where he’s from and even where he was going. “I felt like I belonged in Africa,” says Lamar. “I saw all the things that I wasnt taught. Probably one of the hardest things to do is put [together] a concept on how beautiful a place can be, and tell a person this while theyre still in the ghettos of Compton. I wanted to put that experience in the music.”He traveled the Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban, among other places. This had huge implications for his music. According to his go-to engineer, Derek Ali, Kendrick scrapped “two or three albums worth of material.” But more than being just about subtraction, the excursion inspired a whole new suite of songs. The iconic track “Alright” has its roots in that trip. The song’s chant, “we gonna be alright,” was sparked from witnessing people’s struggles in the country.Traveling in a black-dominated continent brought into stark relief many of the symptoms of American oppression. “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” deals with the idea of colorism—that people within the same race or ethnicity can discriminate based on the shading of the skin. "Theres a separation between the light and the dark skin because its just in our nature to do so, but were all black,” Kendrick says. “This concept came from South Africa and I saw all these different colors speaking a beautiful language."But even beyond the lyrics, the idea of unity informed the sound of the album. Just as Western culture draws lines between skin types, it also needlessly segments black music. Lead producer for TPAB, Terrace Martin, explains the approach: “I kinda don’t like saying jazz no more when it comes to TPAB. It’s throwing everybody off because we haven’t had a real black record in about 20 years with real black music and real black people doing the music, and people who understand that we’re under attack everyday who show up to do the music… that album is just black, it’s not funk. It’s not jazz. It’s black.”[caption id="attachment_10843" align="alignnone" width="576"]

Kendrick in Africa[/caption]But more than being the birthplace of any given song, the Africa trip helped heal Kendrick and gave TPAB a focus. “The overall theme of [TPAB] is leadership,” Kendrick later said, “[and] using my celebrity for good.” This came into focus when Kendrick visited the jail cell in Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was locked away for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. The experience taught him the value of resistance and resilience, and it helped him understand his role as a leader in his community as well as in the larger world.“I’m not speaking to the community,” Kendrick says. “I’m not speaking of the community. I am the community.”It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the album that came from these two very different experiences. TPAB debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and would go platinum. It received nearly unanimous critical acclaim—Rolling Stone, Billboard, Pitchfork, Spin, The Guardian, Complex, Consequence of Sound, and Vice all named it their album of the year—and it would go on to win the Best Rap album at the GRAMMYS. (It was nominated for Album of the Year, though GRAMMY voters felt that Taylor Swift’s 1999 was a more worthy recipient.) The Harvard University Library archived it alongside Nas Illmatic, A Tribe Called Quests The Low End Theory, and Lauryn Hills The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.It certainly wasn’t the first “woke” album, but it set the stage for the budding social consciousness of an entire generation. It also established Kendrick as a generational spokesman, and earned him a visit to the White House, where he met another African American who was also wrestling with issues of identity, experience, and power."I was talking to Obama," Kendrick says, "and the craziest thing he said was, Wow, how did we both get here? Blew my mind away. I mean, its just a surreal moment when you have two black individuals, knowledgeable individuals, but who also come from these backgrounds where they say well never touch ground inside these floors."Related Reading:The Narrative Guide to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a ButterflyTo Pimp a Butterfly Album Review—Dead End Hip-HopFlying Lotus Details His "To Pimp A Butterfly" InvolvementHere’s A Timeline Of Everything That Led Up To Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A ButterflyKendrick Lamar Breaks Down the Making of To Pimp a ButterflyKendrick Lamar: "I was DRAGGED off the street & FORCED into the studio" (2017)Kendrick Lamar, By David Chappelle Real Talk | Producers Talk Making Kendrick Lamars "To Pimp a Butterfly"SaveSaveSaveSave

“Break On Through (To the Other Side)” is both a feral howl of desire and dislocation and a sleek, supple creature that darts and pounces in a manner at once sinuous and sinewy. The Doors’ 1967 debut single, urging a shattering of society’s constrictions, served notice that there was something new happening, the likes of which no one had seen before. Its simultaneously explosive and seductive power embedded it irreversibly not only in the mood of the moment but also in the very fabric of American culture forever after. We recently reached out to Doors guitarist Robby Kreiger about the songs origins and heres what he told us:“We were working up “Break on Through” in rehearsal. John came up with this bossa nova beat. I didnt think it would work, but he said it would, and he was right. I had the idea to use the type of riff that Paul Butterfield used on Shake your Moneymaker. I wouldn’t say I stole it, just borrowed it. With Ray’s vox organ, it was sounding good! The lyrics were some of Jim’s best. As we played it at more and more gigs it got better and better. The only regret i had was that we let them cut out the word high from ‘she gets high’ on the single version. I guess that was too controversial for the AM radio, but we made up for that on the Ed Sullivan show (by singing), ‘get much higher.’ LOL”While its origins are relatively modest, its impact is far-reaching. Below, we’ll look at how the song changed The Doors and rock ‘n’ roll forever.Arrival of the Rock Gods"Break On Through" was The Doors introduction to the world—their first single as well as the first track on their debut album. It was the opening salvo of a four-man rock n roll revolution that would fill the collective cultural consciousness with a heady brew of sex, poetry, anger, beauty, and indelible tunes. The songs urgent entry into the publics ears marked the auspicious arrival of a group that would remain real-deal rock deities even decades after disbanding.The Real Start of the 60sThe Doors anthem of social sedition, fueled in part by Jim Morrisons use of LSD as a mind-expanding tool, arrived at the start of 1967, the year the 60s really became the sixties. The blend of gritty garage-rock tonalities and lithe, bossa nova-influenced grooves that rippled through “Break On Through” framed an invitation to abandon the cage of convention and leap headfirst into a bold, burgeoning countercultural realm. In that sense, for many it heralded the onset of the Aquarian age.Rock n Roll PoetryArriving ahead of game-changers like Sgt. Peppers and Songs of Leonard Cohen, "Break On Through" brought the world a brand of rock poetry that had nothing to do with Dylan. From its very first lines—"You know the day destroys the night/ Night divides the day"—it gave a glimpse of the possibilities still in store for rock n roll lyrics, possibilities Morrison fearlessly explored for the rest of his tragically short life.Trail of TributesIts a sure sign of a songs staying power when it appears in all sorts of disparate circumstances generations after its release. Any tune that can be covered by metal supergroup Adrenaline Mob, grunge gurus Stone Temple Pilots, power-pop heroes The Knack, and avant-garde guitar god Marc Ribot, as well as being sampled by hip-hop stoners Cypress Hill and Danish neo-garage rockers The Raveonettes, has got some serious shelf life.The Ultimate HonorIt would be absurdly easy to unfurl a laundry list of the countless times “Break On Through” has been used in movies, TV shows, and video games. And do you really need to know much beyond the fact that it was belted out on The Simpsons by Krusty the Clown himself, clad in Morrison-esque attire and writhing on the floor à la The Lizard King?

On one level, 1972’s “Suffragette City” is pure simplicity, an amphetamine rush that proves David Bowie could unleash high-decibel intensity just as potently as he could spacey ballads or post-modern artiness. Yet things aren’t so simple underneath its glittery crunch, where a tug-of-war is waged between nostalgia and futurism. If the pounding ivories and greasy boogie long for the ’50s, then the slashing chords and razor-sharp execution lunge toward the punk revolution that’s still a few years out. This tension, acting like a slingshot, shoots the penultimate song from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars clear out of the march of history and into that archetypal realm commonly referred to as rock music that’s so badass it’s timeless. Here are five facts to help you better appreciate Bowie’s hardest rocker.Science fiction and rock ’n’ roll.“Suffragette City,” like the rest of Ziggy Stardust, is inspired by Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. (Director Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation arrived during the album’s making.) Bowie certainly wasn’t the first rocker to embrace sci-fi (see producer Joe Meek or Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd), yet he clearly was ahead of the curve by soaking up Burgess’ uniquely dystopian vision. It’s a quality that would seep not just into punk and post-punk, but also industrial and even techno in the following decades.Mick Ronson’s killer guitar.Perhaps no early Bowie track better displays his love of The Stooges and The Velvet Underground; it all begins with brilliant guitarist Mick Ronson’s opening riff, roaring and clawing like a famished tiger. It’s an aesthetic Bowie would bring with him when he mixed Iggy and the Stooges’ 1973 landmark Raw Power, a record that helped kickstart punk and hardcore.Sexuality and gender.The live version took on a life of its own, generally becoming faster and more sneering. It also adopted a performative edge, as Bowie, during concerts, often would drop to his knees and pretend to suck on Ronson’s guitar. When a photograph of this wonderfully flamboyant exhibitionism made it into Melody Maker in 1972, it helped cement glam rock’s reputation as a movement steeped in transgression and decadence.Those blaring horns aren’t really horns.It may sound like horns during the cut’s first half when they fall somewhere between vintage Memphis R&B and The Beatles’ “Savoy Truffle.” But the sound reveals its source-—an ARP 2600 synthesizer—during the static-caked surge that ripples across the final 60 seconds. You can be sure that bands like Pere Ubu, The Stranglers, Tubeway Army, The Twinkeyz, and any other punk(ish) band experimenting with the cyborg impulse were taking notes.Film and television legacy.As with many other Bowie tunes, “Suffragette City” has racked up several IMDb credits, including Gilmore Girls, Vinyl, and Californication. The most telling, however, is 2005’s Lords of Dogtown, a period piece chronicling the Venice Beach teenagers who revolutionized skateboarding in the mid-’70s. The fact that these early shredders jammed Bowie along with The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Deep Purple stands as a testament to the artist’s lofty stature not just among punks and alternative kids, but longhaired surfers and heshers as well. There’s no messing with David Bowie.

"Everywhere started out as this simple acoustic love song," the then 18-year-old Michelle Branch modestly told MTV back in 2001, when her debut single was quickly climbing the charts. In fact, "Everywhere" could be heard just about anywhere, as it captured the spirit of both moody post-grunge rock and breezy Y2K pop. At the time, Branchs guitar-fueled confessions were something of a savvy response to the sexed-up pop of Britney and Christina, and while she electrified with some Alanis-like sass, she did so with with a youthful, innocent optimism. Still, "Everywhere" isnt such a simple love song. Branch is not pining or pouting. Her lyrics are bold and vivid and maybe even a little abstract: "Youre everything I know/ That makes me believe/ Im not alone." Is she talking about a boy or something grander? Either way, her delivery is empowering—shes confident while still vulnerable, and she ties both together in an instantly undeniable hook. A new generation of female singer/songwriters was most certainly listening. Here are five ways "Everywhere" made its mark on the music scene.It signaled the true end of 90s angst.Gone was the dark, disillusioned edge of grunge; the cool, canny pop star who could rock hard and still radiate a touch of sunniness had arrived. Soon after the release of "Everywhere," Vanessa Carlton was pounding her piano with the same balance of sass and sincerity in "A Thousand Miles." Sara Bareilles would later do the same with the deceptively defiant "Love Song."It inspired a new form of passionate pop-rock.In 2002, Kelly Clarkson would claim the first American Idol title. Shed soon use her newfound fame to propel cathartic, hard-rocking pop hits like "Since U Been Gone" to iconic status. KT Tunstall also came blazing through, wielding her guitar and commanding just as much respect with her infectious, soulful rock. It helped bring femininity to emo. Branchs influence would even stretch to emo hero Hayley Williams, whod inject the pop-punk scene with some much-needed feistiness and femininity with her band Paramore. It pushed country music in new directions. You can even thank Branch for helping reinvigorate country music in the mid-2000s by not only co-starring in her own country-pop project The Wreckers with friend and singer Jessica Harp, but also inspiring one precocious singer/songwriter by the name of Taylor Swift. "Youre one of the first people who made me want to play guitar," Swift once told Branch.It still can be heard just about … everywhere.Even now, traces of "Everywhere" still echo through pop, rock, and country, especially in the spunky yet candid songwriting of newer artists like Meg Myers and Kacey Musgraves. In a way, this once "simple acoustic love song" continues to make its imprint just about everywhere.

To celebrate Grizzly Bear’s first album in five years, the solid-if-not-revelatory Painted Ruins, Ed Droste assembled his favorite “under the radar” tracks for Entertainment Weekly. Unlike some artist-curated playlists—which are often cobbled together by the star’s handlers and/or is stacked with their own tracks—Droste truly digs in the digital crates. Good luck finding any information on Guise, a mysterious singer-songwriter whose “Weekend Relationship” is included here. Then there’s serpentwithfeet with the soulfully baroque “four ethers,” and rapper Thed Jewel, who calls himself “Fuschia.” Not every track dazzles: “Tremble,” a single by LPX of MS MR, is a fairly bland slice of electronic pop. But overall, this 10-track collection is an intriguing dive into the netherworld of Internet-mediated indie-pop. And this wouldn’t be an artist-curated list without at least one selection featuring Droste. He’s clever enough to avoid Grizzly Bear material, though, and instead includes “Faultline,” a new single by dream-pop duo Dede featuring himself alongside Los Angeles producer Kingdom.

Birmingham, UK art-rock brooders Editors return with their sixth album, Violence, this March. To get you pumped up for it, the band has shared the music they use to get pumped up. "Music is a big deal in our dressing room. From late afternoon, on show days, we normally have the speakers set up playing a wide variety of records from varying genres and styles, both new and old. But it’s an hour before stage time where things really step up a gear, so the playlist I’ve selected here is a greatest hits of what we listen to before we walk out on to stage. Crank it LOUD."——Elliott Williams, Editors

Remind us of why we were supposed to hate electroclash? Because it was cheap and disposable? Because it celebrated amateurism over art? Because it was a crude simulacrum of past musical innovations? Well, they said the same things about punk when it first hit. And, like punk, electroclash is the passing fad that never went away. For a sound that supposedly died out sometime in late 2003 in the clogged-up bathroom at some Vice-sponsored after-hours party in Williamsburg, electroclashs cocktail of primitive synth-pop, ripped-stocking attitude, and sexually charged provocation has become a permanent strain in the DNA of post-millennial indie.In its primordial late-90s state, electroclash represented the playfully scrappy antidote to the increasingly slick and aggressive nature of popular electronica, and a flirtatious, fashion-forward affront to the deliberately drab, self-effacing nature of wool-sweatered indie rock. Following a decade where A&R scouts were desperately seeking the next Seattle in Chapel Hill, Halifax, San Diego, and all points in between, electroclash represented perhaps the first instance of a post-internet, non-localized scene, with adherents springing up everywhere from New York (Fischerspooner) and Toronto (Peaches) to Munich (Chicks on Speed) and Liverpool (Ladytron). And by foregrounding female and queer voices, electroclash initiated a crucial early step in chipping away at the boys clubs that have traditionally dominated both indie rock and electronic music, a process that continues to this day.Like any hyped-up movement, electroclash was rife with flash-in-the-pan phenoms that time and Spotify have forgotten. (Pour out your complimentary energy drink of choice for W.I.T. and Ping Pong Bitches.) But you can also draw a direct line from electroclash to some of the most important artists of the 21st-century. This playlist compiles electroclashs definitive names alongside the established bands that stripped down their sound in response (Elastica, Broadcast), the seasoned DJs who embraced the neon vibe (Felix da Housecat, Ellen Allien), and the game-changing artists (M.I.A., The Knife) who elevated electroclash into a permanent feature of the modern musical lexicon.

In May 2005, the Illinois quartet Fall Out Boy were just starting to get known outside of Midwestern emo circles when they took a candid backstage pic with two unlikely supporters: JAY Z and Beyoncé. Jay, then an executive at the Island Def Jam conglomerate that had just released the band’s latest album, was probably just schmoozing as a businessman. But that photo-op foreshadowed Fall Out Boy’s ambitions to reach outside of pop-punk, and mix rap, R&B, dance music, and classic rock into a sound that could provide a little something for everyone.Fall Out Boy’s early forays into hip-hop were self consciously awkward. Their next album, 2007’s Infinity On High, featured a cameo appearance by JAY Z, but he just blandly played hypeman on the opening track, “Thriller.” The video for the lead single, “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” mockingly depicts the culture clash of Fall Out Boy recording with a hip-hop producer, and being “thrown out the hood” after they break someone’s 40 ounce. Kanye West appeared on a remix of the song, but he mostly just shrugged that he didn’t know what the song was about and riffed on the band’s tight jeans. But Infinity On High showed signs that the group wasn’t just clowning on their own tenuous grasp of black music: The Babyface-produced “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off” was an early glimpse of Patrick Stump’s chops as an R&B crooner.Over the next few years, Fall Out Boy would work hip-hop into their sound more fluidly, utilizing Lil Wayne and Pharrell Williams to great effect on 2008’s Folie à Deux. But they also demonstrated that their taste in rock ranged far outside pop-punk and emo, seeking out Elvis Costello, Elton John, and Courtney Love for collaborations. They wrote their own cheeky Christmas song, “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out,” and their cover sources ranged from Michael Jackson to Disney’s The Jungle Book.During an extended hiatus in the early 2010s, the members of Fall Out Boy moved onto side projects that illustrated their far-ranging influences. Patrick Stump’s 2011 solo album, Soul Punk, was full of lo-fi homages to Prince; bassist Pete Wentz united with future pop star Bebe Rexha for the dancey duo Black Cards; and guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley formed the metal band The Damned Things with members of Anthrax and Volbeat.Since reconvening in 2013, Fall Out Boy have put even more of a pop polish on their albums and have continued to stir together genres, making an entire rap remix album (2015’s Make America Psycho Again) and working with everyone from Demi Lovato to Missy Elliott. They even dashed off an EP of breakneck punk anthems produced by Ryan Adams, 2013’s PAX AM Days, just to prove they hadn’t abandoned their roots. Their seventh album, Mania, is set to continue diversifying Fall Out Boy’s résumé through collaborations with pop superstar Sia, folk singer Audra Mae, R&B producer Illangelo, and Afrobeat star Burna Boy. And it was preceded by a single, “Young And Menace,” that put the band’s sound in an EDM blender even while the lyrics nodded to Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx—yet another defiant statement that Fall Out Boy will never stay in their lane.

IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music, has undergone many interesting transformations over the years. It originated in the early nineties, and was used to described modern electronic music that eschewed the dancefloor bombast in favor of a more experimental interpretation of the medium. The term was used to describe artists such as Autechre, Aphex Twin, LFO and Luke Vibert. Theres a lot of space between all those artists -- and the term was always problematic -- but a few of the common aesthetic currents included jittery arhythmical backdrops and airy and at times noisy atmospheric embellishments. The artists also tended to be more conceptual, and were also generally better versed on the history of electronic music BH (before house). Of course, tagging a genre as being uniquely "intelligent" was always going to be problematic, and it was (rightfully) met with scorn by many critics and fans who thought there was nothing inherently dumb about most dance music. But the term persisted, and the music evolved. In many ways, it became a more specific aesthetic than its cousin "electronica" (which was also effectively a genre largely for people who werent into mainstream dance music) and it also outlasted its 90s peer trip-hop in terms of general relevancy.Few people are more qualified to provide an overview of IDM than Philip Sherburne, and his "essentials" article focuses on the more melodic side of the heady microgenre. Its a fun, non-intuitive take on the music, and the tracks by Gescom, Atom TM and Ms Jynx were all pretty great and unexpected. It also makes for a great playlists, especially if youre looking for a more wallpaper, background playlist. Philips sequencing is pretty spot on as well, and it represents a pretty good synthesis of his expertise as a renowned film critic and a DJ.

In September 2017, Enter Shikari released their fifth album, The Spark, which saw the British post-hardcore experimentlists foreground the synth-pop sounds that have always been an undercurrent in their work. It’s a move that makes even more sense once you hear what the band were blasting this year. “For us personally, 2017 was a game of two very distinct musical halves. We started the year looking backwards and touring in celebration of 10 years since the release of our debut album, and then halfway through the year we released what we would consider to be our most forward-thinking music so far.“While we were putting our list together, it became apparent that it’s been a good year for great music. It’s probably been a good year for shit music too, but we haven’t been listening to that. It’s always amazing how some people can still release new music from beyond the grave. Still, were glad they did.“This is a list of music released this year that we’ve been enjoying, from the smooth tones of Brian Eno to help with mindfulness, to the big bangers like Astroid Boys.”—Enter Shikari