EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 31 - Hybrid Trap
Genre of the Day - Hybrid Trap
Album of the Day - The Ineffable Truth by G Jones (2018)
March 31, 2024
In an era when a ton of major hip-hop statements feature dramatic synth overtures (Travis Scott’s “FE!N”, Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s “CARNIVAL”, Drake and Yeat’s “IDGAF”) it’s hard to remember a time when hip-hop and electronic music existed separately. Have they ever, though? Hip-hop was made possible initially by drum machines, samplers, and other technologically zeitgeist-pushing machinery. These electronic and hip hop elements often collide on the dance floor, a meeting of programming minds. With digital audio workstations allowing music nerds to fuse whatever percussion they want with whatever freaky little synth plug-ins, the sonically spare elements of trap percussion come into the fold of EDM with hybrid trap.
Hybrid trap is a vague name: a lot of trap is already hybrid as it’s exploded out of the Atlanta hip-hop scene over the past twenty years, from trap-pop to Latin trap and dreamy cloud rap. What we’re hearing today though finds itself specifically at the crossroads of trap and brostep. What the hell is brostep, you say? Brostep is an outgrowth of dubstep with extra emphasis on aggressive and atmospheric synth leads, focused on the releases' big buildups and drops. A lot of people in dubstep didn’t like the harshness of it, thus maligning the sound with the epithet “brostep” to lampoon its producers’ excesses.
Brostep is evidently polarizing, but a sound that makes sense to combine with trap. Trap is similarly busy though made up of just a few sonic elements: deep sub bass, hi-hats, kicks, and snare drums. It’s accessible enough to attract a ton of aspiring producers, but just like a particular instrument, making a standout trap beat is anything from easy. Complex, meticulous programming is necessary to elevate it from the ordinary to something that sounds new and fresh. That similar tinkering is applied in dubstep. For a producer accustomed to those miniscule changes that drive the uniqueness of a song, it’s a natural pairing.
On the spectrum from boundary-breaking tastemaker to genre-embodying torchbearer, today’s album falls much more in the former. G Jones doesn’t throw the thesis of hybrid trap completely in your face: a lot of these songs don’t even have much trap percussion. It's a nuanced take on the genre. “222 / Unknowable” is rife with glitchy, bright metallic sounds and a full sense of dynamism throughout. The constantly cratering, collapsing soundscapes grab a listener’s ears instantly. In demonstrating how hybrid trap branches out from straight-up trap, the sub bass of “Different Sound” has a ton of distortion. It perfectly illustrates the DAW-based experimentation underlying this fusion genre. “Arbiter’s Theme” plays further into contemporary trap, with Travis Scottian ambient ad-libs and skittering kicks pushing against glitchy, icy synth. The album takes time for moments of quiet musical experimentation like the pulled back “Everything All At Once”, glimmering chimes fluttering with ambient, raindrop-like synth pads. It’s a head spinning sonic journey, one that exercises tasteful choice in when to go head-on and when to lean out of the sonic might of both EDM and trap so that we can appreciate the moments when they intertwine more.