Disclaimer: my knowledge of visual art is limited in terms of words and history. So please excuse me if I don’t get the terms correct.
Mumble rap diverges from earlier rap in value.
Back in the 2000s, to be listed as the best, rappers had to be considered “lyrical”. Songs must either have lyrics which reflect reality or lyrics which are witty and arouses playfulness. Lyricism was key: whether it meant describing the struggles of the ghettos or glamourising the get-rich-or-die-trying life. The clearer the picture the lyrics painted, the better the rapper was. Giants from this era include Nas, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent, all painting photo-real scenes of their life for the audience to fantasize themselves in. Money, drugs, hoes, and guns.
Then came mumble rap. Or at least, a fore-runner for what eventually became mumble rap: Kanye West. Since his first album, The College Dropout, Kanye didn’t focus on the 4 above. What differentiated his music from his peers was the focus of emotions in his songs: from feeling purpose-driven in Never Let Me Down to being embraced in motherly love in Hey Mama to a feeling of unstoppability in Can’t Tell Me Nothing and Stronger. Yet, he was far from mumble rapping. (Through the Wire doesn’t count.) It was at the release of his 4th album when things changed.
Plagued from his mother’s death and his break-up with his fiance, he needed a new method to express the emotions he could not describe with words. In 808s and Heartbreak, Kanye took the then heavily-criticized auto-tune and wrapped it around his ballad-style melodies, covering his songs which swept up and down the scales with the sound of monotony. This was a representation of his emotions and his concealment of them. Simple, straight-forward lyrics demonstrated his raw emotions covered and blurred by auto-tune and his apathy for enunciation.
While highly divisive among critics at the time, this new form of melodic and minimalistic singing/rapping has become the inspiration for many rappers and singers of nowadays, including Drake, the Weeknd, and Lorde.
Now on to mumble rappers. Although the lines connecting the dots are somewhat blurred, soon after the release 808s and Heartbreak, mumble rappers began popping up. Rappers who don’t give a damn about whether their lyrics make sense, as long as they sound good. In fact, many of these rappers rely on their lack of lyrical coherence and their ability to sing randomly-strung words together to create their trademark. (See Desiigner, Future, and Young Thug.) While how melodic and catchy their songs may be is subjective, it is clear that they have blurred the distinct, well-enunciated words of the last decade to create sounds of emotions through their mumbling, moaning, and crooning.
And how does all this relate to Impressionism? Impressionism came after a time of realism, seen in many paintings from the Renaissance era. The distinct, contrasting images of the Renaissance aimed at micmicking the physics of reality (e.g. geometry and form of objects, the movement of light). Experts were ranked through their ability to use lighting and shadows, their ability to capture realness. Yet, the Impressionist movement shifted attention away from creating the most realistic painting as possible, but towards capturing emotions within the paintings. Colors and heaviness of strokes were used to convey emotions. Images became blurred and lines began to disappear. That was the change.
And not everyone accepted the change. In fact, most people didn’t. Those who pursued Impressionism were criticized by past masters and their peers for lack of technical ability (i.e. capturing the observed realness of an image) demonstrated in their paintings. Audience did not accept, nor did they understand, the new methods and styles of painting. And Impressionism was thought to be the degradation of art.
Just like mumble rap, Impressionism intended to prioritize emotions over realness, self-expression over technique. And like Impressionism, mumble rap has faced its share of criticism by the past and current generation. What is interesting is how mumble rap will affect the direction of music within the next few decades. Impressionism led to multiple new movements, such as expressionism, surrealism, and cubism. Where mumble rapping will lead to, or whether it would lead to anything at all, would be something of curiosity, something I look forward to hearing in the future.
