Semantic Distance

i was scrolling through reels (as one does at 6:51 pm on a monday) and my mood was sadly soured by the takes of white people talking about, of course, hip hop in a podcast studio. ignoring the obvious micro-aggressions from everyone in room, it speaks to, i think, a conversation that we’ve been having for decades at this point. said conversation has been characterized by the golden age fallacy (i.e., the belief that a specific period in the past is objectively better than the present), with many perpetually looking backward, averting their gaze on the art being created in the present. for anything that does illicit some response—teetering between neutrality and small bouts of un-enthusiasm—it’s more of a fluke than an indication that good art is out there for us to enjoy.

in general, looking towards Industry artists as a signpost for quality specifically is misinformed because a) you will likely be disappointed and b) it’s a little disingenuous to believe that artists coming out of atlantic or columbia records are going to be doing a service to the genre they are occupying. and if i’m being honest, i don’t even necessarily agree with the premise that i’m working under. the bar for what constitutes as Good Music has been rising since access to the tools to make music are becoming easier and the veil of quality production is lifting, especially after hyperpop entered the zeitgeist. music artists, especially producers, are more keen to share tips and tricks they’ve learned along the way, understanding that the Industry (as we know it today) notoriously gatekeeps pertinent information from those that need (want, rather) it.

i’m not a boomer that puts 90s rap on a pedestal or genuinely believes that radiohead is the best band ever (let’s not open that one up), it’s more so rooted in the reality of ai-generated content on the internet and what that means for music consumption at large. we (unironically) live in a time where natural language prompts can create so-called artistic artifacts, with details on its training regiment becoming news covered by pitchfork and fader magazines. there’s a lot more onus on us to sift through content to ensure we are not consuming something made by a machine, and while that does seem like nightmare fuel, i use it as an excuse to spend more time curating and honing my own taste through deep exploration. if anything, this aversion towards ai swings the pendulum back, with artists wanting to make it abundantly clear that everything in their process if human-first—no technological intervention needed.

as the internet becomes increasingly bloated (non-pejorative), we have to work harder to find the art we care about. we have a lot more agency in our creative discovery than we realize; algorithms and recommendations from other content creators we deem with “good taste” only goes so far. when was the last time you listened to an album in full? listened track by track? the last time you went to a record store and didn’t immediately look for albums you already know? do you frequent non-streaming services for songs? what about youtube or vimeo—have you gotten lost in a rabbit hole of related videos, somehow ending up watching content in a language that’s not your own? of course, some of these methods of discovery assume your proximity to them, but there’s only so many addendums you can add to your complaints before it becomes obvious that you don’t really care about finding something worth your time.

it’s trite to say at this point, but we live in a time where literally everything is at our fingertips. entire ecosystems of music from other countries can easily be accessed given enough time searching. somewhat similarly, it’s not difficult to be a surveyor of counterculture via social media, routinely observing what artists are doing in the underground before we deem it cool enough to enter the mainstream. it’s easy to write off the entirety of a genre simply because it’s difficult to find artists within it that you connect with—but because something is difficult doesn’t mean the existence of what you deem interesting is completely out of the picture.