lo fi article to study/chill to

the beauty of 24/7 live streams is that you can hop in at any point and have very little catching up to do, so in that spirit i’m eschewing capital letters. there are no beginnings and endings, only content.

i honestly thought that once Spotify became a thing we all agreed that radios weren’t really necessary anymore. as i type that sentence i can feel my uncle shaking his head and lamenting how coddled the millennial ear is, but it’s just how i think. there is a zero percent chance that any one person will be able to listen to all music before they die, or even all good music, or even all music that they would like. so the best path forward that i can see is to spend as much time listening to the music that i like as possible. and nothing runs in the face of this philosophy as much as the fact that the current year is 2018 and live-streamed music is, if not making a comeback, carving out a strong niche in the form of 24/7 live streams of lo fi hip hop beats to study/chill to.

now don’t get me wrong; i love some good old fashioned melancholy. in fact, my love of nostalgic vibe chasing was what led me to these streams in the first place. as a certified sadboy™ it would be ridiculous for me to argue that the fantasy of curling up with my anime cat in my anime bed with my anthropomorphic anime headphones lacks a certain appeal. however, as a certified pretentiousmusicboy™ it’s hard for me to get past the fact that, on the surface at least, all the songs i’ve heard on lo-fi anime 24/7 hip hop streams sound like a pretty standard boom bap drum loop with a couple of looped chords on top of it. it doesn’t sound bad per se, but it does sound wholly inoffensive and never really challenges the listener, in many ways making it the perfect music to study/chill to.

but i cannot imagine these lo fi artists would be particularly stoked to hear that their music is good because it is easy to ignore. fortunately i was able to discuss more of the nuanced aspects of lo-fi hip hop with producer Eli B. Eli has been making music since he was 17 and cites Nujabes and J Dilla as influences for his sample based style.

i asked Eli what drew him to the lo-fi style and he gave the simple answer “none of it’s perfect,” and paused before embracing his role as lo-fi hip-hop historian. “a lot of the ogs use the SP series and resampling, so the beats don’t line up perfectly. what draws me to the style is the fact that it includes that human aesthetic.” Eli is referring to the series of samplers beginning with the SP-1200, which have been used to create sample based hip hop since their introduction in 1987. “these new beat tapes still have that analog whine, but in the ’90s the beat tapes were actual cassettes and had a nasty, grimy sound. it’s gritty, it’s raw.”

E-mu SP-1200

as my lesson continued, Eli casually answered one of my most burning questions about the lo-fi hip hop movement— why anime? as it turns out, Nujabes did the score for Samurai Champloo, an anime that ran from 2004 to 2005 and was directed by Shinichirō Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame. i told Eli this was one of my more burning questions and he laughed before continuing “i think it’s also just social media. people are reposting videos to gain popularity, and doing a quick edit of an anime show over the music is more appealing to watch than just a blank screen.”

Eli and i continued to talk about his roots in the lo-fi hip-hop genre, and the producer started singing the praises of his mentor, an older artist who introduced him to the style. “he was the first one to put me onto the difference between lo fi, boom bap, chill-hop, jazz-hop, all that.” i asked him to clarify what the difference was between those genres. Eli laughed and, without giving any material definition, said “that’s the inside joke about the whole 24/7 livestream thing, how they mash up a bunch of different genres and put ’em together. that coupled with the fact that lo-fi hip-hop has turned into this sadboy culture full of dudes who are just depressed and smoke cigarettes and get high all the time. in the beginning it wasn’t like that.”

as we took a moment to reflect on the golden days before the sadboy invasion, i asked Eli if he considers himself a nostalgic person. “well, yeah. i like to feel, to live in the moment. but i also like to reflect, on anything and everything that happens to me. and the music helps me do that. whether it’s just a beat or i’m writing lyrics.” i thanked him for his time and got to work listening to the fifteen or so lo-fi artists Eli had recommended in lieu of the live streams.

i still find myself mostly unmoved by the contrived nostalgia present in these streams, but i am compelled by how seriously Eli takes his craft and how much respect he has for the lineage that birthed him. most important, in my opinion at least, is Eli’s ability to draw a distinction between music made with passion and music made for an aesthetic. when i hear Eli talk about his music i can feel every ounce of the emotion that went into those songs, and i’m sure if i delved deeper into the genre i’d be similarly moved by other artists. however, as i watch the chat of ChilledCow’s lo-fi hip-hop radio stream scroll by at 11pm on a saturday all i see is aesthetic with nothing to back it up. people with fake names and fake pictures telling presumably fake stories as they stare out a fake window with fake rain pouring down, engulfing themselves in fake nostalgia.

and much like a 24/7 lo-fi live stream we end much where we began, in between a kick, a snare, and a piano chord with a vinyl hiss over it.

follow Eli B on soundcloud and instagram to stay up to date with his latest releases.

written by Walker Spence