r/TripHopCreators

Hey there all creators!

It's no shock that trip hop's changed over the past 35 years, I'm just curious about people's takes on trip hop's changed and grown/mutated over the years.

I'm all for change, I just find how the expected norms for this genre have evolved in a really weird way. From sampling & scratching (90s) to subtle & light (2000s) to a collective 'meh' (the missing 2010s) to nostalgic re-envisioning of the 90s (2020s).

What initially caught my ears with trip hop was sample collages from rare records, and that seems to have mostly gone from the current generation of this music. What exists as trip hop now is something far weirder & looser but is as conservative as ever. Let's be real, the guard rails on this genre never welcomed or encouraged any potential Princes, Zappas, Bowies or Reznors.

In terms of new music, what most folks call trip hop is entertaining, even though it's different to what I imagine trip hop is. It feels like the edges of the genre have changed completely. New trip hop feels closer to Slowdive & Seefeel than Mo'Wax & Ninja Tune.

But like old mate Voltage Labs says - trip hop's not a genre but "a shared musical instinct". A rare time I totally agree with his opinions.

My take - trip hop's no longer a genre. It's a vibe, a production style & a fantastic contradiction*.

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For the record, I'll tag my music as trip hop even though I don't think my music meets the genre's limits (I can't do genres, if that makes sense). Trip hop's a very big influence for me and one of the reasons I got into making music.

*How can something so stylish be so out of fashion? I'm old enough to remember Mixmag labelling trip hop 'the fad that burnt twice as bright and lasted half as long', and yet here we are.