On Hair and Hip-Hop.

I have been listening to Lady Gaga since forever, but I only realized on my recent binge that she literally has a song that captures the stifling emotions I have had post haircut while in school.

Every time after a haircut I had to go through the five stages of grief. I blamed the barbers who used to mess up and make me look like a pineapple, but mostly it was my parents' who were the masterminds behind the disaster.

The issue had gotten very existential and had me questioning the ideas of agency, freedom, identity etc. I echoed Gaga's lyrics presciently when I asked "why can't I be who I wanna be?"

Now that I have much more control over it, I still tend to mimic my old hairstyle, but now it's based on my consent, choice and comfort. Or maybe I just got conditioned into liking that specific hairstyle and my parents continue to wield power in the Foucauldian sense.

Anyway, it was nice paying attention to the lyrics of a song for once and it has genuinely surprised me.

I have another incoherent stream of thoughts about song lyrics and how much they matter.

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I personally don't pay much attention to lyrics since I mostly don't understand them and listen to songs while working anyway. This is perhaps why K-pop is my preferred genre of music and also why I tend to avoid the Hindi indie and Bollywood music scene because the songs become too hard to ignore. Obviously, there are other reasons for this choice but this is an important one. I wouldn't say I want music as just background noise but I don't like it being too intrusive. I enjoy the beats, not the words.

Now I can see how this isn't the case with most people and they tend to have an emotional connection with what they choose to listen to, and that is totally reasonable.

What bugs me is the popularity of the rap/hip-hop genre and the whole discourse around it. Those who listen genuinely seem to value the verses and have well-developed thoughts about the songs. It is seemingly a highly sophisticated subset of people who have a higher appreciation for art than I can possibly hope to have.

But at the same time, the lyrics aren't that special. And the songs as standalone beats don't stand out a lot too. So it's not like you can have it as ambient music while you study or something. This is indeed a generalization but stands true for a lot of music in this genre. Take Donda for example, other than 2-3 songs, I found the album to be bad if I may say so. This is a purely subjective view based on only how it sounded to me, but how do people go back to listening and re-listening such songs based on lyrical merit alone. Isn't it just equivalent to listening to some sort of weirdly recited poetry? In a world without music would these people be attracted to poems?

That being said, I do like some rap. I love Brockhampton songs and Denzel Curry's verse on Tokyo Drift is totally my jam but I see these songs as having a fire flow over some nice music. Harry Mack on Youtube is one such example of how I would like my rap. These examples align with my taste in music and I don't mind focusing on words in such cases since they sound very good.

It could also be suggestive of how "basic" my taste in music is. I mostly love pop which is meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I write as if I have an understanding of why Chopin is considered great or why Metallica are legends in the industry. But then again, my question is not if hip-hop is good or not but how do people listen to it.

This, in fact, holds true for every other type of music too. I just haven't thought about them like I have thought about hip-hop but I have no idea how and why people listen to grindcore or jazz or classical music. People's listening habits are quite intriguing. Hope I get to have conversations about it someday.

Well, for now here's the song that made me think all this and revisit this blog: