2010, commercial dance and the secret return of hip house

I tried to start talking about this on the rolling dance partisans thread, but given that's kinda the thread for high-theory dance-not-dance now I guess it wasn't the right forum.

Anyway, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently is how what was previously just post-electroclash hard riffin' rock-quoting sleazy house has, in the last 18 months or so, swung hard towards an "urban" sound (bad rapping, syncopated post-electro (in the proper sense) beats, often a strong dancehall or funk carioca vibe) in some weird mirrordance with commercial rap (BEP etc.) which is arriving at the same point from the opposite direction. Case in point: this "Boom Boom Pow" rip from producer Sidney Samson (whose "Riverside" is perhaps the most recognisable example of this trend).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPTgFI5J08

The other key example being post-Fedde Le Grand Hollander Afrojack writing/producing most of the groove for "Pon De Floor".

This is like the unacknowledged post-urban-fusion-of-everything that lots of people probably would like if they could ever bear to tune into commercial dance shows on the radio (or, like, go to dodgy megaclubs). It's also frequently a lot like uk funky, which has not coincidentally embraced particular Samson/Afrojack/Bassjackers tunes enthusiasticall.

Anyway, can we talk about this stuff here?

I'll continue to post examples for your edification.

Sorry Tim, I'm too tired to be cogent right now and you don't really deserve my flippancy, but wasn't this trend fully visible 2-3 years ago?

ya bunch of nerds

i love 'riverside', though i only found out about it through the lil silva remix. great track though!! possibly un-dislikable?

Sorry Tim, I'm too tired to be cogent right now and you don't really deserve my flippancy, but wasn't this trend fully visible 2-3 years ago?

hip-house in the sense of rapping, yes, but I think it's quite interesting to hear european producers who would otherwise be using whiter-than-white electro-house sonics now making stuff that quotes from dancehall and funk carioca and soca. A lot of this is reflective of the fact that these things aren't ultimately that far away from one another, but usually european dance producers don't know that.

It's definitely been an incremental, gradual development and in that sense probably fully "visible" - the "secret" in my thread title is more a reference to the fact that no-one talks about it.

this stuff has made american pop radio pretty much unlistenable

Does any of it get played on pop radio? I would have thought the US would just play everything going in the other direction e.g. Black Eyed Peas.

oh, that's kind of what i'm talking about, sorry (not BEP singles [altho sort of] but the stuff that has come after it)

In Australia the commercial dance that actually gets to the top of the charts is stuff like "I'm In Miami Bitch" and "I Like That" - includes rapping (of sorts) but sonically is still garden-variety commercial electro-house. Something like "Riverside" is still too deliberately grating to cross over from the dance stations or, like, 11.30pm Saturday night.

hip-house in the sense of rapping, yes, but I think it's quite interesting to hear european producers who would otherwise be using whiter-than-white electro-house sonics now making stuff that quotes from dancehall and funk carioca and soca. A lot of this is reflective of the fact that these things aren't ultimately that far away from one another, but usually european dance producers don't know that.

It's definitely been an incremental, gradual development and in that sense probably fully "visible" - the "secret" in my thread title is more a reference to the fact that no-one talks about it.

― Tim F, Sunday, May 9, 2010 3:42 PM Bookmark

ok sure, maybe european producers are just playing catchup now, but american (/british?) dance producers have been driving this melding just as much as the american (/british?) hiphop/r&b artists have cf. deej's frankendance thread

obv the touchstones are a little bit different for the americans and brits than the euros (which are, of course, different from each other themselves)

I think frankendance is a different-but-not-unrelated thing - frankendance is all about juxtaposition of genres whereas this is like full sets from Dutch and Belgian DJs playing 8 minute house tracks. Obviously that's what it's taking a lot of its cues from but these are different audiences and the music works by different rules too.

(in the same way that Black Eyed Peas aren't rendered entirely un-novel by The Real McCoy of Eiffel 55)

i was about to bring up frankendance as soon as i read this thread. the mainstreaming of diplo et al, this is kinda the modern urban club sound right now (assuming u dont go upscale-hipster which is all like cut copy/DFA stuff ... i havent been to a mainstream big-room place in chicago in a couple years, maybe they're playing this now?? but i think there's a lot of crossover w/ DJs doing frankendance) sorta snuck b-more club syncopation into clubs across demos

fwiw at least around here frankendance is kinda dead. its a lot more this middle-ground between that hipster club dj thing & modern electro house i guess? like classixx "i'll get you" & that treasure fingers "across the dancefloor" song and ... i dont know i dont go to evil olive as much as i used to lol

treasure fingers "across the dancefloor"

^^^i f/w this hardcore btw

yeah i dig that & the classixx joint too -- i dunno things have smoothed out a bit basically

I'll need to check that out when my sound is working again

fyi rev
CLASSIXX

As much as I love them, at least in the US Classixx are more pop than popular.

On the other hand, on any given number of Saturday nights lately when I've been in a cab on my way out in DC the local top-40 radio station is broadcasting from the local 3000-capacity megaclub and playing straight up Afrojack-style Dutch house, and when I get to the much smaller underground club there's an old school Baltimore club DJ playing... Afrojack-style Dutch house. It's amazing stuff and it is quite impressive the way it's mainstreamed itself without marketing or bigger names.

A remix of Riverside is coming out soon w/ Twista doing vocals.

There's a certain treble aggressiveness in the synth hooks in this genre that makes it kind of the second coming of acid, which makes it kind of inevitable that it would transform into hip house.

Pivotal artist in the post-electro/hip house mainstream crossover: PITBULL

Pon De Floor crossed over to the mainstream by virtue of being really damn catchy, Major Lazer's also make straight up top-40 crossover moves like this track w/ Ricky Blaze and Nina Sky, but it comes off like it could be a rote Jay Sean/Rihanna collaboration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWCdG0RacIk

Actually at this point it ceases to even be a crossover track - there's no underground edge or appeal left in it, it's just a pure stab for top-40 success in the most reductive way.

that song is such a banger

i disagree.

the urban/electro fusion has been fully in place for a while, though i'd agree with tim that it's a relatively recent development that, instead of urban producers mimicking electro, you've got your actual commercial dance producers making pop songs with urban artists (would've said the most visible example is david guetta scoring uk no 1s last year with kelly rowland and akon, and now producing that boring kelis single).

the entire thing is a huge disppointment to me - 5 years ago if you'd told me that a dancefloor-oriented fusion of electrohouse, hip-hop, r&b and dancehall would dominate the charts and enable british grime acts to go fully mainstream i'd have absolutely loved the idea, but in practice it all sounds rote and cheap every time out. the ravey stabs have been literally exactly the same in every song that's utilised them since "the way i are", the r&b vocalists finding the most success are uniformly dull (taio cruz, iyaz et al)...

i guess i could quite grow to like something like this, which seems to be some german electro dudes and lady chann and some singer giving it her best jocelyn brown) if it was a big hit but despite my love for chann i'm not exactly rushing to hear it again off my own bat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0hK5vgACko

i got really into "keep it goin' louder" belatedly, but mostly cuz of the nina sky "got the girls in the truck bout SIX CHICKS DEEP" chorus.

On the other hand, on any given number of Saturday nights lately when I've been in a cab on my way out in DC the local top-40 radio station is broadcasting from the local 3000-capacity megaclub and playing straight up Afrojack-style Dutch house, and when I get to the much smaller underground club there's an old school Baltimore club DJ playing... Afrojack-style Dutch house. It's amazing stuff and it is quite impressive the way it's mainstreamed itself without marketing or bigger names.

A remix of Riverside is coming out soon w/ Twista doing vocals.

There's a certain treble aggressiveness in the synth hooks in this genre that makes it kind of the second coming of acid, which makes it kind of inevitable that it would transform into hip house.

I'd say "interesting" rather than "amazing" but otherwise this is precisely what i'm thinking.

I think it's more interesting to me because awfully rote electro-clash with bored disaffected sounding female vocalists or grainy rock whines was such a massive thing in Australia and comprised maybe 1/4 of all my weekly singles reviews. I much prefer this replacement, though granted that's a relative distinction.

where these edifying examples at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuOYj7auPUM

i'm into this bit of ridiculousness lately, does it count?

That is awesome but covers too much ground to be said to encapsulate any one trend I think.

This Afrojack & Party Squad track "Drop Down" is a bit old now but I think is fairly canonical:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWFQeMLa0Yk&feature=related

Trawling through Party Squad's back catalogue on youtube reveals a treasure trove of european hip-house stretching back years...

Can it be that we've not spoken anywhere about the massive success of Yolanda Be Cool and D-Cup's "We No Speak Americano"??

This is like number 3 in the charts over here!

I actually really like it, although it's very 2006 - Derrick Carter meets Samim's "Heater" basically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3S4dBk4E1g

hadnt heard that before, but i do know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT8OEtf5r1U

i stays loyal to DOOP on the whole though generally.

Yeah "Doop" is the primordial mother of all of this stuff.

Where is Vahid and why isn't he all up in my thread.

pre-DOOP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agiaNgMDwH4&

this is barely like these but still way fun -- the 12" edit of Meco's version of the cantina band theme is in a similar vein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8BmYdruuCE

haha i never heard doop before

when doop was #1 in the UK, this was #1 in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96jFtzVa80A
I would have been much happier with doop

real mother of doop is "Sir Duke" though, right?

ace of base is dope, fuiud

heard "We No Speak Americano" out again last night (in the US), maybe doop house is the new deep house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocp_OORAGKc

Can I note that this thread was started in total ignorance of moombahton? (which I think existed as a thing but not a THING in May 2010)

^^ 2010 track

can ppl please post some post-2010 hip house they like

i want to find more tracks in the vein of honey dijon ft. cakes da killa - catch the beat

i love galcher lustwerk but his stuff isn't energetic enough for me

queer-signifying is +++

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzY_mUA0D0