A few changes hip hop made at the beginning of the 2000s and 2010s have greatly shaped how the genre lives now a days. In the early 2010s, R&B singers singing hooks during rap songs got eliminated from the genre(for the most part/mainstream). Remember the 90s and the 2000s how many R&B+hip hop collabs there were? Empire State of Mind, Dilemma, all those Ashanti and Beyonce collabs...Eminem and Skylar Grey in the later part of the decade kinda made it corny tbh and s*** hasn't returned(in the mainstream) lol

But, more importantly. What happened to the instrumental hooks? Some of the greatest songs in rap history just let the beat ride after a phrase or the name of the song was said at the end of a verse. The West coast was great at this during the 90s. But everybody did it. Some famous examples:

By the mid 2000s, this technique was basically gone from the mainstream. R&B singers and autotune started to dominate, which eventually led to just autotune dominating. And now we got everybody singing, no matter how bad their voices are lol Obviously, there are songs that still use it. Other genres still use it a lot. Blinding Lights, you can argue, was the mega hit it was because of the synth breakdown/hook it has. EDM is the king of the "drop" as they say. What was the last rap song that was very popular, that was just an instrumental hook? IYKYK? I say bring it back

Because deeznuts

Rappers realized they didn’t need an R&B/Pop singer to crossover simple as that lol.

Thats not what the thread is about tho. It's about the instrumental hook. R&B part is just the first paragraph lol

Still, rappers realized they didn’t need to do it crossover, even with the sample drill wave now.

Drake changed the game

The attention span of today's rap listener is equivalent to a mentally challenged goldfish so if your hook doesn't consist of repeating the same three or four words or adlibs you already lost them and they are on to the next track.

Yeah but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when the hook of a song is just the beat and maybe a word or phrase being repeated. I just threw in the R&B singer part as something else hip hop has eliminated from the genre. Not about crossing over, just about making good music

I like this and will probably be thinking about it for a while. Thanks @op

Wow, do not lock thread, do not ban @op

Doesn't make sense. Because EDM is one of the most popular genres in the world and it consist almost exclusively of instrumental hooks/beat drops. Blinding Lights, the biggest song of this generation, exploded because of its insane catchy instrumental hook.

Edit: you did say rap listener. So rap listeners just dumb as bricks/impatient?

Cus it was WHACK

real

Tbf @localblaccmane said rap listener

YOU KNOW ITS HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP

this is pretty much what I mean, but this is pretty much pop imo. Last true hip hop hit I can think of that fit the description:

That movie had so many nice tunes lol

WHOOP THAT TRICK

blassic movie

this is a good thread
i miss this, it's nice to let the instrumental ride sometimes. it can really emphasize the verses

Absolutely! Really made that last bar of the verse critical. And guys like BIG were great at throwing in a phrase just before the hook, like "the funk baby!" on Machine Gun Funk or "pass the blunt" on Sky Is The Limit. There was an entire craft to this technique tbh lol

@FREE