2016: A Cultural Reset (Article)
I heard someone say classes start next week. Not for me though, y’all be easy. But I can’t help but think: this Summer was weird. Not to date this article (because I honestly think this one will be relevant for years to come), but at the time of writing this we are either still in, fresh off, or nearing the end of a global pandemic. It’s this weird in between thing where nobody knows what’s going on anymore but everybody is tired of it so outside is functioning in a very limited capacity. Makes you miss them REAL Summers, like 2016. Every year as soon as it started to get warm, social media (mostly Twitter) goes up about Summer 16. But really this whole year changed everything.
Let’s look at where we were culturally in 2016. It was the last year of Obama’s presidency, and it looked like Trump was coming. It was the first year of the second half of the decade. The blog era had ended and trap music had taken off thanks in no small part to Future. Coming fresh off a legendary mixtape run, a classic album in DS2 and a collaborative mixtape with Drake, Future had put the house that he built on full display. He created a new style of druggy, underwater feeling trap and the entire music industry had taken notice, even nabbing him writing credits for Beyonce. He continued his momentum with another mixtape (Purple Reign), another album (EVOL), and a gang of collaborations with everybody from Ariana Grande (don’t let the video date fool you, the song dropped with the album in 2016) to JAY Z, where he would show off this signature brand of almost unintelligibly melodic rap that just felt so damn good to turn up to.
But if Future was showing off the house that he built, Young Thug was showing off how comfy it is to live in it. Thugger Jackson broke all of the barriers surrounding Future’s style. Similar enough that you can tell Thug was paying attention to Future, but wildly different enough that Thug became wildly influential in his own right (and maybe even more than Future). He dropped both Slime Season 3 & JEFFERY in 2016, two of his best projects. He even dropped the solid but less talked about I’m Up at the top of the year, which hosted two features from a pre-dreadlock Lil Durk.
Young Thug and Future are the pillars of most mainstream rap today and the runs they went on in the middle of the 2010’s are incredible. But the waves they made in 2016 were so much bigger than just them. Of course melodic rap was nothing new. Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Drake, hell even Nelly, Ja Rule, 50 Cent. Take your pick. But what Future and Thug changed was the type of melodies, cadences, and deliveries that rappers could tap into. The influence was becoming obvious in so many upcoming rappers this year, leading to a backlash and the coining of a new term for this bubbling subgenre: mumble rap.
XXL debatably released it’s most iconic cover in 2016. This was the most the cover had been talked about since the blog era (respect to the ‘09-’12 covers). People were debating if these were even rappers. The paradigm was shifting. This was the genesis of the soundcloud rapper that would go on to define 2017 and 2018 with ripples still being felt today. The colored hair, dreads like Lil Uzi Vert, braids like Lil Yachty, face tattoos like Kodak Black and 21 Savage. Hell, even the randomly outrageous bars of someone like Lil Dicky can still be found today (and probably even more now with success of FX’s Dave).
The 2016 XXL Freshman list might be the most successful group yet. That’s because this was the class that really changed what a rapper was. These were artists making the music they wanted to make. They just happened to be labeled rappers because they were young and Black and primarily used trap drums. Uzi would tell you to your face, he was a rockstar not a rapper. And that much is obvious when you listen to his music; the melodies and cadences feel straight out of a Paramore song. The difference is the spacey trap production, and the Migos triplet flow that pretty much everybody had adopted at this point. He even had a scene-stealing verse on Migos’ biggest hit “Bad & Boujee”, showing his less melodic side and proving he’s not a one trick pony. This new wave of trap even led the Migos to finally really get their flowers and drop their best album Culture in January 2017.
Then on the other hand you have Lil Yachty. He went the other direction, starting with bubblegum pop melodies and happy trap beats that influenced a generation and focusing more and more on traditional rapping. Going from catchy melodic trap to more substance focused lyrical content is actually very common with a lot of rappers these days, such as modern Lil Baby & Lil Durk. Even the same Soundcloud kids inspired by this wave such as XXXTentacion would balance both sides of the coin. But you don’t have 2021 Yachty rapping with Michigan spitters and Kanye West without 2016 Yachty’s Lil Boat mixtape and it’s nautical trap vibes. You don’t have 2021 music without “1 Night” or “You Was Right”. This new DIY wave of trap provided an easy entry point for artists to build a foundation on before later developing their skills and with this internet age we were able to see these stars earlier in their careers rather than when they would have their musical style “all figured out” later. This led to some of the most radically different and experimental music ever created. There were no rules anymore.
But the backlash was definitely there and more traditional rappers began to pop up left and right knocking this new wave. Maybe they could find themselves happy in 2016 with the first Griselda release, Westside Gunn’s FLYGOD project. The mecca of New York was starting to come back, really finding new life in 2016. Of course, Dave East made that XXL Freshman cover I was just talking about and consistently delivered a modern take on New York rap. Young M.A. had us all calling her Headphanie with “Ooouuu”. But even New York started to live in the house that Future built when an artist named Artist would repurpose the sound for the next generation of New York rappers to run with.
Ever since Atlanta took over hip-hop, New York had struggled to find it’s footing and cut through. A lot of New York rap either sounded like a copy of what Atlanta was doing, or the same old New York rap we’d heard for 20 years but with nothing new added and not enough skill to stand above the Hov’s and Nas’s. A Boogie wit da Hoodie dropped his first project in 2016 and created a whole new lane for New York. Originally sounding like a mix of Future and the late Speaker Knockerz (with a little bit of Drake and Fabolous for the ladies), A Boogie put a New York swing on the Migos’ triplets and put some really clean, catchy melodies over more East Coast styled trap production. And to the delight of New York rappers everywhere, there was actually more emphasis on lyrics than mumbles aside from the occasional dragged out melody. This same sound we here in artists like Lil Tecca, Lil Tjay and J.I. originated in 2016 with A Boogie.
Even Kanye West noticed how much a certain Future fan from Brooklyn loved the broads in Atlanta. He took Desiigner’s Panda and repurposed it for his own seminal 2016 body of work The Life of Pablo. I’ve already spoken at length about how that record changed the music game forever, but let me just read off how much this album meant to 2016. St. Louis’ Metro Boomin ran rap production in 2016 thanks to his large part in the legacies of pretty much every trap artist I mentioned above. So hearing that famous tag of his on any record really let you know it was a slapper, and often made the song better. But when it dropped on “Father, Stretch My Hands” for the first time? SON. This was one of the greatest moments in music of that entire year.
Prior to this we knew Kanye had high profile collaborators both on wax and on the boards, but this was that moment that rebirthed Kanye in a new era and also gave Metro a serious stamp by working with a rap legend. Most of us didn’t even know who Desiigner was yet and just assumed Kanye actually had a Metro/Future collaboration on the record. This wasn’t the only major stamp Kanye gave on this project. He brought pre-The Big Day Chance the Rapper in to spit what might be the best verse of his life on the album intro. The two would then go on to make history with Coloring Book, the first streaming-only album to ever win a Grammy. This all added to and continued the tradition of wondering which up & coming stars would appear on the next Kanye album with a scene stealing verse - a trend that has lasted from Nicki’s “Monster” verse all the way to Fivio Foreign’s showing out on Donda (if that’s still on the project).
But let’s be honest for a second. When you think Summer ‘16 you think one thing. Gucci Mane’s home. But while that is an important milestone, Summer ‘16 was all about Drake & Rihanna. Tropical sounding pop had definitely blown up and taken over the radio - thanks in large part to Rihanna’s already cemented legacy - but in 2016 dancehall and afrobeats were taken to the next level by the tag team that is Drake & Rihanna. “Work”. “One Dance”. “Controlla”. “Too Good”. Rihanna had dropped ANTI at the top of the year with Drake’s VIEWS following in April, meaning they both had ample time to blow these dancefloor classics up (and other singles) by the time the Summer rolled around. This is what really made Summer ‘16 the mythical season that it became. The sound continued to expand with releases from PARTYNEXTDOOR and Tory Lanez. Between this and all of the carefree sing-along trap, party music was in a great place in 2016 and was preparing to go even further.
With the most commercially successful rapper in the world switching to singing R&B songs and now doing more worldly dance music, it felt like rappers could really do whatever they wanted. And this was exactly what rappers like Future, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty were doing. Even Childish Gambino explored wildly a different style and released his funky throwback album Awaken, My Love featuring the biggest hit of his career, “Redbone”. The Soundcloud generation of the late 2010’s was defined by kids just making whatever music they wanted to on the internet, but it all started with being shown that they could. Culturally, the musical landscape of 2016 was about Black freedom. Black music took on whatever form the artist wanted to it take. Genres were being blended in such uniquely new ways they had almost become a thing of the past altogether. But we were all connected by trap drums and the almost tribal feeling of triplet flows. It all felt so carefree. And looking back at how much more depressing the world has gotten since, you can’t help but miss it.
When we look back in the history books there will only be two time periods, before 2016 and after 2016.