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  • safe 🪩
    Jan 17, 2021

    How James Blake & Kanye West Created Lorde

    In 2013, Ella Yelich O’Connor, a 16-year-old from New Zealand, released her debut album Pure Heroine. The album released on the back of an enormously successful lead single ‘Royals’. Pure Heroine represented a major shift in pop music, taking a darker, more minimal approach to the genre that quickly became the dominant sound through the 2010s. While Pure Heroine is a stunningly crafted album and deserves the credit it receives, I wanted to briefly talk about how the album created this new wave of pop music on the back of the success of two other genres - Electronic and Hip-Hop.

    Hip-Hop & Kanye

    The formative years that went into Pure Heroine’s creation were the pinnacle of the blog era of Hip-Hop. Much of the album and it’s predecessor ‘The Love Club - EP’ was recorded and written from 2011-2013. This period was huge for Hip-Hop - Kanye had returned from Hawaii with his opus ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, Drake had become the biggest rapper alive with Thank Me Later and Take Care, Kendrick had released his debut ‘Section.80’ and collectives like Odd Future and A$AP were staples of youth culture.

    Lorde has regularly credited Hip-Hop as being a significant influence on her music and Pure Heroine particularly noting Drake, Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky as important to her music. However, more than anyone else in the Hip-Hop landscape she’s credited Kanye West. Even on first glance this makes a lot of sense, Kanye is not only a cultural figurehead of Hip-Hop especially at the time, he’s also a trailblazer in the genre and in the same way he has shifted Hip-Hop multiple times, Lorde shifted pop. She’s covered Kanye songs live from Hold My Liquor to Flashing Lights and on the soundtrack to 2014’s Hunger Games: Catching Fire, she included a remix of her song ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ by Kanye.

    There’s a lot of ways to talk about the Kanye influence on Pure Heroine but I think the Kanye remix of Flicker is really key to being able to see how Kanye impacted her sound. Throughout his career, Kanye has used vocals as an instrument, weaving soul samples into beats and going as far as to use his vocals as an electric guitar on Runaway. One of the defining characteristics of Lorde’s debut is the way both her and producer Joel Little thread layers of vocals into the production. While not appearing on her debut, the remix of Flicker is remarkably similar. The dark minimal atmosphere Lorde pioneers throughout Pure Heroine is emblematic of both 2008’s 808s and Heartbreak and Kanye’s 2013 work Yeezus. Much of Pure Heroine is built on Hip-Hop tropes - tightened snares, skipping hi-hats and hard hitting kicks. Vocals are shifted on tracks like ‘Team’ much like the way Kanye shifts vocal samples. ‘Buzzcut Season’ shows how key the use of vocals is throughout Pure Heroine. It’s easy to ignore the background vocals since they blend so seamlessly into the production but it’s the backing vocals on this track that control much of the intensity going from no backing vocals during the stripped back verses to many layers intersecting throughout the chorus. She also uses what are essentially adlibs throughout the track to keep rhythm and contrast the sparseness of the production particularly in the second half.

    The influence from Hip-Hop is far from confined to the production however. While the slang and terminology of Hip-Hop has become widespread among youth of any background with the advent of the internet, in 2013 this was less common especially in pop music which still largely relied on EDM drops and stereotypical pop lyrics to get by. She references The Weeknd - another clear influence - on the album’s opening track ‘Tennis Court’, Kid Cudi on ‘Glory and Gore’ and directly addresses Pop Culture and largely Hip-Hop tropes throughout ‘Royals’. Even from a vocal standpoint at times she leans into the Hip-Hop influence, pushing closer to rapping than singing like on the hook of ‘Royals’. While Hip-Hop at the time was popular, this was still a different era to that of post-2015 when Hip-Hop was dominating the charts. Lorde’s embrace of Hip-Hop is part of what has made the album so influential - pop was bound to imitate Hip-Hop at some point as the genre started it’s resurgence, but Lorde did so in a natural and effective way that gave pop a shot in the arm without being directly derivative.

    Million Dollar Bills - a track from The Love Club - EP is another clear example of the use of vocals as instrumentation

    Electronic

    The other major genre that influenced Pure Heroine was Electronic music. Electronic music - much like Hip-Hop was also one of the most exciting genres in music reaching a pinnacle in that same 2011-2013 period. Artists like Burial, Flume, The XX and Jai Paul were all rising stars in the genre and Lorde has credited all as being major influences, remixing music with Flume and sampling Jai Paul on sophomore LP ‘Melodrama’. The artist who she’s credited most often is however British R&B/Electronic hybrid James Blake. Blake’s 2011 self titled is an incredibly clear source of inspiration for the project and for the work on The Love Club - EP.

    Blake, like Lorde combines beautiful, incredibly compelling lyricism and songwriting with dark, complex and unique production. There’s a lot here that can be brought across and compared with Pure Heroine but let’s just look at Limit to Your Love to begin with. The hypnotizing drop on this song was instantly popular and we see it almost replicated exactly on Lorde’s ‘Biting Down’ from The Love Club - EP. Listen to Limit to Your Love at 0:45 and then to ’Biting Down’.

    While it lacks that same bass punch, the synth at the center of ‘Biting Down’ deliver the exact same effect that makes Limit to Your Love work so effectively. The choice of synths and drums throughout Pure Heroine is clearly influenced by James Blake and in turn by the obviously influential auteur Burial. Much of the atmosphere of Pure Heroine is markedly similar to the incredibly atmospheric album Untrue by Burial which was undoubtedly an influence given Lorde’s references to Burial in interviews. Another major impact Lorde describes from Blake is the sparseness of the production. One of the defining characteristics of James Blake’s music is the way he takes a typically more heavy genre in Dubstep and puts a minimalistic soul heavy spin on it. This is made so effective by how bare his tracks are. It feels like a spin on a classic piano ballad but made with stripped down dubstep production. Vocals are used sparingly with notable instrumental breaks throughout and this effect is used regularly by Lorde on Pure Heroine. Tracks like opener ‘Tennis Court’ use extended vocal silences during the verses letting the percussion heavy production be the focus for a few seconds. Keeping the production and often the vocals so sparse let’s Blake’s voice be the focus of his music and with an equally strong voice Lorde uses this to enormous effect on tracks like Still Sane.

    Both of these influences are made especially apparent by the embrace of Pure Heroine by Hip-Hop and Electronic alike. The Weeknd and Rick Ross both remixed lead single ‘Royals’ showing its versatility as a pure Hip-Hop track.

    Flume, while not a household name at the time, remixed Tennis Court to enormous success gaining almost 100m views to date on his version.

    While the versatility of the music is obviously a credit to Lorde’s incredible songwriting, it’s also a sign of how the album is in such close proximity to these two genres and the tastemakers of those genres at the time.

    Conclusion

    Lorde deserves an enormous amount of credit for the album and the influence it has had on the pop sphere. She took two genres operating at their pinnacle and combined the best part of them to create a new sound in a genre that was stagnant. I hope this gives some insight into why Pure Heroine has been so successful in influencing the new sound of pop - in many ways its also Hip-Hop and Electronic music influencing pop just through the proxy of Lorde. It also offers some explanation for why this album and Lorde more generally is especially popular on a site like KTT - there’s such a strong and more importantly genuine connection to Hip-Hop and to Electronic - particularly the electronic artists like James Blake, Jai Paul and Burial who are especially adored on this site.

  • Jan 17, 2021

    Alright

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    2 replies

    All I read was Rocky created Lorde

  • Jan 17, 2021

    that’s what’s up.

  • Jan 17, 2021

    no but seriously I’m in for this read

  • Jan 17, 2021

    I believe our Lord created our Lorde

  • Jan 17, 2021
    DUMMIE

    All I read was Rocky created Lorde

  • Jan 17, 2021

    Really good read man

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply

    Kanyes the GOAT whats new

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    2 replies

    They didn't create that cake though

  • Jan 17, 2021

    I feel like, lorde might owe me s**

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply

    Wtf is this thread

  • safe keeps us safe

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    So what you’re saying is without kanye we wouldn’t have olivia rodrigo

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply
    Y0rn

    Wtf is this thread

    Wym

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply

    great read tbh. sometimes it's weird to me to see how influential hiphop can be for other genres, especially pop.

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Jan 17, 2021
    MrIndigo96

    great read tbh. sometimes it's weird to me to see how influential hiphop can be for other genres, especially pop.

    yea it’s funny you often don’t see it as obviously - probably cause the biggest difference between Hip-shop and pop is rapping which isn’t as likely to be used in classic pop

    So it’s more about the little choices in production and lyrics and feel

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    2 replies

    then she turns around and disses him for “stealing” her set design, when he did the same thing before

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply

    why did you not mention that Ribs is basically hold my liquor but pop @safe

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    JT Dawgzone

    then she turns around and disses him for “stealing” her set design, when he did the same thing before

    that was a misunderstanding I believe, even Vanessa Beecroft posted the actual inspiration. im sure everything is fine now

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply

    I love you Safe

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Jan 17, 2021
    JT Dawgzone

    then she turns around and disses him for “stealing” her set design, when he did the same thing before

    yea that was lame as s***
    Pretty sure they used like the same stage designer too so it’s especially stupid

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply
    the end
    · edited

    why did you not mention that Ribs is basically hold my liquor but pop @safe

    !https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7phW3bxdM!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUz020oOWi4

    Wow that’s a good ass point

  • Jan 17, 2021
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    1 reply
    safe

    Wow that’s a good ass point

    its never too late to edit

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Jan 17, 2021
    Undisclosed

    I love you Safe

    🙈❤️