EVERY GENRE PROJECT - June 22 - Slap House

Genre of the Day - Slap House

Album of the Day - DRIVE by Tiësto (2023)

June 22, 2024

Perhaps the biggest thing this column has taught me is the sheer volume and breadth of genres Brazil has to its name. The country is a pot boiling over with musical variety. It’s not a fact that should surprise me. After all, it’s a country with an extraordinarily rich multicultural history and 200 million inhabitants, but we just don’t get a lot of exposure outside of Brazil. Sure, you’d be hard pressed to find an American citizen not aware of Girl from Ipanema, everyone loves samba, and Anitta has certainly made a push to be Brazil’s first major US market star from Brazil in the last few years, but beyond that, Brazilian music doesn’t get the exposure it deserves beyond its borders. Should a house genre doomed to represent the early weeks of COVID-19 be a mark of pride for Brazil’s growing influence on dance, or stand as a contortion of its creativity? How is Lithuania somehow in the mix? I am reminded of Cher, the heroine of the 1995 classic Clueless, remarking that “searching for a boy in high school was like searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.” Perhaps that is the case with my questions today inquiring into a flash-in-the-pan EDM sound. Nonetheless, I press onwards with the Every Genre Project’s explorations. 

Sometimes, it’s easy to know the demographic a genre is aimed towards by observing the visual presentation of the music. Slap house YouTube thumbnails are rife with images of matte-finish sports cars promising the sleek sound of the diamond life. Indeed, slap house transports you to a night racing around Toronto, Brussels, Orlando, or some other conceivably glamorous-adjacent-but-not-quite city. Slap house cropped up in the late 2010s, inspired by the deep, punching thumps of bouncing basslines Brazilian DJs had curated earlier in the decade. Ironically, though, Brazil’s contributions here aren’t immediately sonically evident because the unmistakable sound of Brazilian funk wasn’t really what they drew upon; international, tech-y house elements were the blueprint for its sound. Slap house is perhaps the first case study into the heretofore unexplored field of the Brazil-to-Lithuania information corridor. Lithuanian DJs pared down and rhythmically tweaked the basslines of Brazilian DJs late in the 2010s, aiming for a sleek, metallic sound lended some liveliness through some swung bounce on the bassline. It’s something of a cousin to the much brighter and peppier future bounce, filling in the void after its trendiness faded while keeping its bass melodies.

Slap house took a hold among producers after catching fire in the EDM community as it exploded out of Brazil and Lithuania through producers like Brazilian DJ Alok and Canadian duo Loud Luxury. The simplicity of the bass combined with the nature of DJ culture in which leading figures are perpetually hustling and adapting to whatever new sound begins to resonate among the crowds led to a lot of DJs cashing in on the sound at once. Some EDM fans seemed to have reviled it at the time, complaining that the same bass patterns were being replicated over and over again. It’s a historical artifact speaking to the state of dance music at a time when people couldn't gather communally and thus sounds stayed stagnant, since slap house took off on the eve of COVID-19 shutting down the world and, more importantly, the clubs. The sound was inescapable, at least in the social media sphere: the song “Roses” by SAINt JHN, remixed by slap house pioneer Imanbek, was an ever-present presence on, sigh, TikTok for me during those early months of quarantine. This video tutorial illustrates the straightforward approach of slap house, with simple lead melodies that closely follow the main hooks of the vocals, foghorn-chic horn stabs, and a slick swung bassline acting as the centerpiece.

Today I am visited by a set from possibly one of the biggest names on this column so far, the Dutch DJ Tiësto who was crowned with Mix’s Greatest DJ of All Time title in 2011. Given slap house’s aforementioned reputation, I wonder if this album brought him down a notch. I make no such judgements; I’m only qualified to analyze it within the context of the genre. “Back Around” and “Learn 2 Love” are two of the most well-done slap house renditions here, their urgent basslines biting with an intensity given prominence by slap house’s avoidance of maximalist buildups and surrounding components and AR/CO and Tiësto’s icy deliveries. Often, though, warmth is a necessary counterpoint to melodies that can feel overly cold to the point of distance, and it comes from an unexpected guest in Karol G’s sweet but crisp delivery on “Don’t Be Shy” and our bratty icon Charli XCX bringing some much-needed drive to “Hot In It.” Slapping in at only 30 minutes, the set is an appropriate length for slap house’s sonic potential. At times, it’s an intriguing taste of recent house minimalism and EDM’s ever-changing leading soundscapes, but often falters with guests unequipped to tackle a dance track like A Boogie Wit da Hoodie or resorts to the sample-grabbing of “Pump It Louder.” Does it truly slap? That’s for you to decide.