In the B station music variety show "Do You Listen to My Music", rapper Piggy's small work "A Red Pen" touched many listeners. Asked about income, the 19-year-old boy's answer surprised everyone present:
"My current royalty income is about 20,000 to 30,000 per month."
The reason why XiaoZuo's young age lived a rich life through music can be glimpsed from his works, and in the review session, judge Lang Lang pointed out that Xiaozuo's music cut to the market and mingled with the audience
"A Red Pen" sung at the competition site is a melodic rap song, and from the personal homepage of Xiaoshu, we can see that his most popular works in the market are basically in this genre.
Looking around the world pop music market, melodic rap is the hottest music category in recent times. Among the songs that have been at the top of the US announcement charts in recent weeks, melodic rap has accounted for more than half of the share. Many domestic top musicians have also added melodic rap elements to their new songs in the past two years.
Picture Note: Deng Ziqi melody rap single "Lonely" mv screen
As a relatively new style in the field of rap, melodic rap has also encountered resistance in its initial formation. In recent years, the attitude of the market and musicians to melodic rap has gradually changed – which shows that the world music market is moving towards innovation and inclusion, and also proves the huge market value of melodic rap.
Until the early 1990s, rappers were still generally reluctant to add melodies to their works, for many reasons, such as early rappers mostly grew up in a harsh, chaotic environment, and the subject matter of their works was also cathartic and expressed anger, which is of course more suitable for "scolding" than singing.
At the same time, rap music and R&b at that time were competing for the same audience group, and the two sides looked at each other unfavorably. In 1991, rapper Ice Cube also roared "f**k r&b!" in the song "The wrong nigga to fuck wit." ”。 So, just like wing chun in the movie refuses to use high legs to show its uniqueness, the rap ancestors have always insisted on only speaking and not singing in order to make a difference from the R&b they hate
Of course, later Master Ye told us that the high leg is still to be kicked, how to "hit ten" without kicking? In the rap field, there is also a group of people who are breaking the rules.
Nate Dogg is one of the best in breaking new rap music, after retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps, Nate Dogg formed the hip-hop group "213" with snoop dogg and warren g, Nate dogg with his magnetic voice and superb creative ability, adding a good ear-catching hook melody to rap songs (hook refers to the most hooked part of a song). Since then, Nate Dogg has worked with multiple rappers to sing the choreography.
After Nate Dogg, more and more rappers began to combine rap and singing. In March 2020, nine years after Nate Dogg's burial, Forest Lawn Cemetery in California remodeled his tombstone and enlarged the line that stood out as "king of hooks."
Entering the new millennium, rap and melody are further integrated, and rapper finding singers to sing hooks has become a routine operation. Rap and R&B musicians are also less hostile and are starting to be compatible with each other. Chris Brown, who won the National Music Award for Most Popular Soul/R&b Male Singer of the Year, has collaborated with rappers many times, and his distinctive voice has appeared in the works of wow wow, lil mama and others, which have achieved good market response and are very popular with young listeners.
According to the law of history, almost every improvement in line with market demand will attract criticism from conservatives, melodic rap is the same, until a few years ago, there are still people who are very unaccustomed to rappers looking for singers to sing for their own behavior, in the eyes of many people, this cooperation is still similar to "cross-talk actors on "Le Xia" or "Yue Yunpeng and Li Jian on the same stage", is a market gimmick is greater than the cultural value of the commercial linkage.
In fact, this view may be biased. I personally believe that melodic rap can greatly improve the artistic expression of songs. The appearance of musicians such as Nelly further proves this, and in songs such as "Just A Dream", rap and r&b are one by one, cooperating with each other, blending with each other, and many rap passages have more diverse rhythms. Songs with r&b or rap alone are difficult to create such an atmosphere.
In June 2020, the Grammy changed the "Best Rap/Singing Performance Award" to the "Best Melodic Rap Performance Award", which according to the official explanation was made to make the award better "representing the inclusiveness of the growing mixed performance trend in the rap genre".
Does this mean that even the Grammys, who are not too much pulled by commercial logic, recognize the artistic standard of melodic rap? In recent years, high-quality melodic rap works seem to have always been the masters of business and art, and are the vanguard direction of global popular music.
Melodic rap musician
There is also the "buff" plus
From the perspective of individual professional musicians, melodic rap, which is both marketable, artistic and avant-garde at the same time, should definitely be paid attention to and worthy of investment, in the Chinese market where the general income of musicians is not high, melodic rap may be a short way to help musicians get both ideals and bread.
From the production point of view, melodic rap also has many advantages, first of all, unlike pop, rock and other music categories that require complex instrumentation and arrangement, the creative threshold of rap music is extremely low, and it is even possible to spend very little money to buy an accompaniment online and write songs in the way of "first accompaniment, then set the song"
When hip-hop was just emerging in China, someone posted a passage on the Internet saying that "other musicians need to take various instruments to perform, folk singers must at least carry a wooden guitar, and rappers want to debut, only need a Taobao account (to buy accompaniment) and a U disk (used to play accompaniment during performances) is enough", this passage seems to want to mock the simplicity and amateurism of rap music, but it is this so-called "simple and amateur" that overturns the high wall that hinders people's entry into the music industry, so that creativity is no longer subject to music theory , singing, equipment bondage.
It turns out that people who have no formal music education, if they have the talent, have mastered the right method, buy a beat and write a song with hum, can also produce fine works. In 2018, American rapper Lil Nas x bought an accompaniment for $30 and created "Old Town Road" based on it, which won multiple awards and was certified as a diamond single by riaa.
As a commodity, rap music is also showing a unique market value, compared with other styles, rap in the text creation is more free, do not have to think too much about the song bite, format and other issues, more accurate and direct expression of Party A's intentions, therefore, in recent years, whether it is corporate publicity, or government departments to engage in spiritual civilization construction, when you need to find someone to write songs, rap music will become the first choice. In 2020, Station B also wrote the financial report content of the third quarter as rap and reported to the market.
Search for "rap" on the Weibo of the state-run People's Daily, and you'll see some cases of popularizing big policies in a trendy way.
As a 2.0 version of traditional rap, melodic rap still retains the part of "speaking", and the advantages of "lyrics creation space and flexible themes" are not detracted. A typical example is the small work "A Red Pen", which is melodic rap, but many moving lyrics are still presented in a verse way and trigger bullet screen praise.
After adding the chorus, melodic rap is more pleasing in the market than traditional rap, and the existence of melody is more in line with the law of song dissemination. Musician Li Jian once said when sharing his creative experience that a good melody is the basis for a song to be loved by listeners, and when the melody attracts people over, the "reasonable words" of the lyrics can be discovered.
At the production level, after adding melodies, the threshold of rap music has not become high, because the creators of melody rap generally only need to write hooks, do not need to carry out a complete melody creation with "starting and turning", follow the existing accompaniment for personal play, is still a more feasible creative scheme, one of the most popular songs in the small book "Don't like rainy days", is based on the accompaniment of "honesty".
In addition, due to the addition of melody, the rap part can only undertake the function of text output, not necessarily necessarily with difficult skills and a very infectious aura, which also reduces the burden for the singer, therefore, many parties are more willing to choose such works when buying songs and customizing songs. The threshold is still low, but the ceiling is high, and the rap music that integrates the melody makes the technically mature professional creators and producers have more room to play, whether you are "technical flow", "emotional flow" or "text flow", you can find your own place in melody rap.
How melodic rap is "Sinicized"
At this stage, and for a foreseeable period of time in the future, melodic rap does have a very high market value, but this does not mean that playing melodic rap can be fired, and every successful creator will use some "exclusive recipes" to ensure that they can be both in the same frequency with the market and unique. Let's look at a few examples
The concept of melodic rap when the song was released was not so widely known, but by today's standards, the song is a standard melodic rap. Nowadays, people praise the arrangement of the triplet, which has also appeared in this song very neatly. For a long time, Jay Chou has always been complained by our parents about "biting words" and "speaking like chanting", in today's view, this kind of "Weekly Qi" singing method is a very exquisite arrangement. Jay Chou's songs have a large number of rap and r&b elements, in many cases need a more flexible and silky interpretation, and the conventional Chinese pay attention to the word cavity round, each word has a fixed tone, if the Chinese is directly used for rap, it is easy to appear rigid, about this, you can compare Jay Chou's version of the "double knuckle stick" and Pan Changjiang's "word positive cavity round version" "double knuckle stick".
Pan Changjiang's adaptation must not be said to be bad, after all, this is a comedy rather than a regular music performance. Since the explosion of hip-hop programs, in addition to the strong promotion of hip-hop culture and rap music, more has also caused the emergence of a number of "rappers per capita" with no direction and blind learning, with a tone that is not native to the earth and the ocean, writing "works" that are too shallow to understand.
It is precisely because of this situation that Chinese rap lovers and musicians who are willing to use rap elements to create monetization need to be exposed to a more systematic and orthodox rap culture teaching, so as to avoid the decline of Chinese rap into comedy.
The song is very clever in the choice of theme, "manta" is a creature called "manta", gentle but extremely aggressive in dangerous moments, Liu Baixin uses the text expression of "manta", so that this song not only has the temperament of adventurous exploration in Western rap culture, but also fits with the simple survival philosophy of "easy not to cause trouble, not afraid to get into trouble" in traditional Chinese culture. This overlap between Chinese and foreign cultures allows Liu Baixin to maintain a more Westernized rap expression while impressing mainstream Chinese audiences.
This is an r&b love song with rap elements added, this song can be said to be the vanguard of a type of "Chinese-style" melodic rap songs, and for a long time after that, this kind of self-concern, sweet and delicate melodic rap has emerged in the Chinese market, and many of these songs have a good response.
The small works mentioned in the preface, his most popular works in the market are basically such songs, these songs through brisk and gentle pouring, the origin of the Western musical style and the unique Shy and delicate combination of East Asian boys, as if whispering in the ears of the listeners, in the song review area, the audience's praise of "like being kissed" can also prove how touching this kind of work is.
Write at the end
How talented does a person have to be to really support themselves with music?
A long time ago, there was a musician in Europe who did not want to work in the government to receive a salary, angrily resigned to become an independent musician, wanted to survive on royalties and performance fees, and died of hunger and cold.
The musician is called Mozart.
The times are developing, science and technology are progressing, and the sad song of musicians confined to poverty has not stopped, but the situation is not uninhibited, in the record industry period and the Internet era, many creators have grasped the market dividend and made a fortune.
Since the millennium, melodic rap has been on fire in the international music scene for 20 years, and its inclusive and diverse core makes it have a high ability for sustainable development, and many musicians and listeners who initially did not say anything about this style have also begun to accept melodic rap, whether from the perspective of market value and artistic space, melodic rap itself, and its integration and innovation with Chinese pop songs, are worthy of continuous attention.
The music copyright itself is now about to go into the public eye, so you have to hurry up if you want to get on the bus, after all, the people who drive in the morning can eat fat