The Marriage of Dream Pop and Hip-Hop

It is of no surprise that hip-hop is one of the broadest genres in music. Foundational to the vastness of its modern sound is the use of sampling, which in short is characterized by isolating the drum beat, chorus, bridge, or melody of preexisting song and using it to create a new composition. Through sampling, the genre’s potential has become limitless; gaining the power to pay homage to the music of the past in the new age as well as the ability to amalgamate with music of any and every kind. This revolutionary evolution of music can be attributed to hip-hop’s unapologetic approach to rebelling against the status quo. Hip-hop is more than a mere genre, a societal movement borne out of sentiment analogous with protest and resistance. 

The boundless nature of sampling has graced us with too many fusion genres to name; mixing hip hop with alternative, country, industrial, punk, lofi, horrorcore, nu metal, grime. Hip-hop artists are not only encouraged but incentivized to make use of any and every left-field track, in an act of pursuing uncharted territories. The productional innovation continues to keep music fresh, as sampling transgresses the confinements of hip-hop into most other contemporary genres. 

Within the realm of modern alternative music, dream pop has made its way into relevancy. Not only as its own genre, but as a sound making an increasingly heavy mark on the hip-hop community through samples. Contemporary dream pop emerged in 2010 as the love child of shoegaze and psychedelic pop. Raised by bands such as Galaxie 500 and the Cocteau Twins, an atmospheric and melodic sound captivated listeners and transports them to a hypnagogic dream-like state.

With this a new genre of hip-hop rose to surface. Call it Dream-Hop, Hip-Pop, or whatever you please, the bridge between the two genres has brought us some of the most popular songs of the decade. The hook and background beat in Schoolboy Q’s ‘Man of the Year’ samples Chromatics ‘Cherry’, Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees” samples Beach House’s “Silver Soul”, and J. Cole’s “She Knows” samples Cults’s “Bad Things”.

The aforementioned songs are a mere tip of the dreamy hip-hop iceberg. In April of 2012, Tyler, the Creator tweeted, “Gila By Beach House Never Gets Old”. The lofty vocals and rhythmic drums analogous with the work of Beach House serve as the perfect foundation for the incorporation of new lyrics and sounds. You can see the success of its dispersion in the works of Kendrick, The Weeknd, and Toro y Moi.  

Iconic bands such as the Cocteau Twins, Beach House, and Chromatics have made their mark in modern rap songs. The beauty of this genre marriage lies in the fact that you cannot make the sound with just one without the other, the sample relies on the main track and vice versa. The ethereal, dreamy synths of dream pop combine with the cerebral creativity of hip-hop to create a genre of its own, independent from all other styles of fusion.

Sampling in hip-hop has been denounced by some; an interpretation as the theft of another’s creative property, could be argued, especially by the die-hard fans of a sampled piece. But this assumption is inattentive to the importance of the intersecting musical pieces of hip-hop and wrongly overlooks the beauty of creating new art from sounds that already exist in and of themselves. Hip-hop artists do not take a song at face value and claim it as their own, but rather utilize their own creative integrity to make something new for people to enjoy in a different way than its original intention. The profound act of musical recycling pays homage to the past, with eyes transfixed on the future. 

Written by Ally Flygare