Hello hello, welcome back to this week's edition of Sunday Chillin'! I'm down in LA for the summer and I'm really looking forward to all of the shenanigans. This is the first installment of the second Genre Exploration series. Hope you enjoy!
History Again?
I've recently been having a lot of conversations with friends about the loss of rebelliousness and autonomy in many aspects of modern life. You may remember that we've previously covered things like HOA regulations, increased surveillance of our actions, and many other issues that have encroached upon our freedoms in recent years. Although this theme pops up in many of my newsletters, I thought this week we could focus on a form of rebelling that has historically gone hand-in-hand with music in ways that may not be immediately obvious.
To get a better sense of the historical context, we have to take this story all the way back to the 1800s.
As you probably learned in high school history class, the late 1800s were a wild time, with new world-altering inventions being discovered seemingly every day. One of these discoveries was the wireless transmission of radio waves. [1] Though much of the theory and mathematics were conceived of and developed by Maxwell and Hertz from 1860 to 1890, long-distance transmission is attributed to Guglielmo Marconi (what an awful first name) and his novel use of powerful antennae and portable receivers in 1894. [2]
From that point onward, the popularity of radio exploded as a medium for communicating information. Although initially used by militaries to pass messages back and forth quickly, it wasn't long before amateurs were trying their hand at it as well. The early days of these amateur experiments really just involved messing with the US military's communications systems by broadcasting on the same frequencies, so you can be sure that lots of legislation was passed in short order to put a stop to that. [3] More generally, the early 1900s set the standards for radio transmission and what was and wasn't allowed on a nationwide scale.
This might all sound quite boring to you, but I think it's basically at the point at which regulations are put into place that humans really flex their creativity and have some fun. Once the boundaries were defined, people all over the world had decided that it would be a lot more enjoyable to just do whatever they wanted anyway without telling anyone.
There's a lot that happened in the world after 1912 (when the Act to Regulate Radio Communication was passed), but let's fast forward a bit to the late 1950s, when amateurs began to get real crafty with the beginning of pirate radios. [4]
Pirate radios, delightfully, are almost exactly what they sound like: illegal radio stations broadcasting from international waters on ships. The pioneers of this practice came from the Nordic region, where Radio Mercur started broadcasting from international waters into Denmark in 1958. The owners of Radio Mercur thought that Danish regulations surrounding radio transmission were too stringent and protested by taking their efforts deep into the ocean where laws could not reach them. This became a common strategy and soon there were many such pirate radios broadcasting into countries all over Europe.
The UK was one of the first regions to have regular pirate radio stations and kept the anti-government spirit alive and well throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Many of the first prog-rock groups saw early success through pirate radios and used it as yet another way to subvert The Man™. This overlapped with the British Invasion portion of musical history and it was such a huge hit with the public that local newspapers would print the program schedules for these unauthorized stations every morning.
Flash forward a bit more and people began to use pirate radios to broadcast Grime, a genre that originated in London in the early 2000s. Grime is also sort of what it sounds like: grimy, messy, syncopated electronic sounds that have a rap track overlaid with complex, fast rhythms. Though Grime is its own genre, it ultimately gave rise to UK Drill when it fused elements of its style with Chicago drill.
We'll discuss drill music a bit more below (and besides, it's easier to just listen anyway) but I wanted to bring up the topic of pirate radios because I think the opportunities to subvert the rules in that way have dwindled in the past few decades. In the early days of settlers moving west, there weren't really any rules to begin with so it was standard practice for people to buy land sight-unseen and then to do whatever they wanted with it. And continuing onwards to more recent times, the Internet was the new Wild West that allowed enterprising folks to experiment however they so pleased even as more rules were put in place. [5]
Ultimately, humans will find a way around rules and do some really cool things in the process so it's certainly not the end of the road. Maybe we should all be looking for those sorts of opportunities, even if it's just to have some fun, and it feels like art is one of the last few places where we can do so. Many music artists express their displeasure with current topics and trends in their songs and music has remained as a way to have discourse about the various prevailing issues of the day. Radio, and now the Internet, just provide a medium through which these messages can reach larger audiences and should be left as free as possible.
We've approached the end of this history lesson and hopefully you're still awake. Let me know if you come across interesting areas of art (or life generally) where this is possible, I'm always looking to hear more about the high jinks that people get up to. In the meantime, onto the music!
To get a better sense of the historical context, we have to take this story all the way back to the 1800s.
As you probably learned in high school history class, the late 1800s were a wild time, with new world-altering inventions being discovered seemingly every day. One of these discoveries was the wireless transmission of radio waves. [1] Though much of the theory and mathematics were conceived of and developed by Maxwell and Hertz from 1860 to 1890, long-distance transmission is attributed to Guglielmo Marconi (what an awful first name) and his novel use of powerful antennae and portable receivers in 1894. [2]
From that point onward, the popularity of radio exploded as a medium for communicating information. Although initially used by militaries to pass messages back and forth quickly, it wasn't long before amateurs were trying their hand at it as well. The early days of these amateur experiments really just involved messing with the US military's communications systems by broadcasting on the same frequencies, so you can be sure that lots of legislation was passed in short order to put a stop to that. [3] More generally, the early 1900s set the standards for radio transmission and what was and wasn't allowed on a nationwide scale.
This might all sound quite boring to you, but I think it's basically at the point at which regulations are put into place that humans really flex their creativity and have some fun. Once the boundaries were defined, people all over the world had decided that it would be a lot more enjoyable to just do whatever they wanted anyway without telling anyone.
There's a lot that happened in the world after 1912 (when the Act to Regulate Radio Communication was passed), but let's fast forward a bit to the late 1950s, when amateurs began to get real crafty with the beginning of pirate radios. [4]
Pirate radios, delightfully, are almost exactly what they sound like: illegal radio stations broadcasting from international waters on ships. The pioneers of this practice came from the Nordic region, where Radio Mercur started broadcasting from international waters into Denmark in 1958. The owners of Radio Mercur thought that Danish regulations surrounding radio transmission were too stringent and protested by taking their efforts deep into the ocean where laws could not reach them. This became a common strategy and soon there were many such pirate radios broadcasting into countries all over Europe.
The UK was one of the first regions to have regular pirate radio stations and kept the anti-government spirit alive and well throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Many of the first prog-rock groups saw early success through pirate radios and used it as yet another way to subvert The Man™. This overlapped with the British Invasion portion of musical history and it was such a huge hit with the public that local newspapers would print the program schedules for these unauthorized stations every morning.
Flash forward a bit more and people began to use pirate radios to broadcast Grime, a genre that originated in London in the early 2000s. Grime is also sort of what it sounds like: grimy, messy, syncopated electronic sounds that have a rap track overlaid with complex, fast rhythms. Though Grime is its own genre, it ultimately gave rise to UK Drill when it fused elements of its style with Chicago drill.
We'll discuss drill music a bit more below (and besides, it's easier to just listen anyway) but I wanted to bring up the topic of pirate radios because I think the opportunities to subvert the rules in that way have dwindled in the past few decades. In the early days of settlers moving west, there weren't really any rules to begin with so it was standard practice for people to buy land sight-unseen and then to do whatever they wanted with it. And continuing onwards to more recent times, the Internet was the new Wild West that allowed enterprising folks to experiment however they so pleased even as more rules were put in place. [5]
Ultimately, humans will find a way around rules and do some really cool things in the process so it's certainly not the end of the road. Maybe we should all be looking for those sorts of opportunities, even if it's just to have some fun, and it feels like art is one of the last few places where we can do so. Many music artists express their displeasure with current topics and trends in their songs and music has remained as a way to have discourse about the various prevailing issues of the day. Radio, and now the Internet, just provide a medium through which these messages can reach larger audiences and should be left as free as possible.
We've approached the end of this history lesson and hopefully you're still awake. Let me know if you come across interesting areas of art (or life generally) where this is possible, I'm always looking to hear more about the high jinks that people get up to. In the meantime, onto the music!
And the songs, of course.
This week's music all comes from the genre known as Drill. Drill is a much more intense form of trap where the lyrics primarily focus on violence, the difficulty of life on the streets, and the general despair that comes from gang relations. This isn't exactly light listening for a Sunday, but the synthy, reverby sounds with the super hard hitting bass and drums makes for great hype music.
It's also cool to see how different cultures adopt similar sound profiles while injecting their own flavor. Drill originated in the impoverished regions of Chicago and was then subsequently picked up by artists in the UK and Australia. Though record labels made a bet on the genre back in the early 2010s, albums from artists like Chief Keef ended up being huge flops and the genre faded out. Recent years have seen a resurgence though, and you might even be familiar with Drill artists such as Lil Durk (Chicago), Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign (NYC), Headie One and Stormzy (UK), and ONEFOUR (Australia). Much bigger artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj have also hopped on Drill beats so it is starting to appeal to the general public more.
Enough talking, I'll let you listen for yourself and see what you think. Do try to keep an open mind though, the lyrics can be pretty intense (when you can understand them, some UK artists have some strong accents), but try to remember where these different artists are coming from.
Wiley Flow - Stormzy
Spotify | YouTube
We Go Up (feat. Fivio Foreign) - Nicki Minaj
Spotify | YouTube
Straight Back to It - Central Cee
Spotify | YouTube
Only You Freestyle - Headie One, Drake [6]
Spotify | YouTube
Cruise Control - ONEFOUR
Spotify | YouTube
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] Wireless transmission is really crazy and magical when you think about it. 99.99% of us never really think about the infrastructure and technology that makes modern life possible, but just witnessing something in our society would instantly incinerate the brain of a peasant from the 1400s. Think about all the people in history who have never gotten to see funny cat videos on the internet. A tragedy if I've heard of one.
[2] There's a book by Erik Larson called Thunderstruck that tells the story of Marconi and how he worked out the various details for long-distance transmission. The book simultaneously follows a murder case that has a tenuous connection to the technology and it all connects at the end. The premise sounds interesting enough but it was a terrible book, I read like 1/3 of it and gave up. Larson spends most of the book explaining the various patent disputes that Marconi was embroiled in and how he didn't trust anyone. Why would anyone want to read about this? Maybe this is the curse of all of Larson's books though, The Devil in the White City was like this too.
[3] Imagine prank calling someone and that someone was the US Navy. I can't imagine that they appreciated hearing a bunch of fart noises while they were discussing which European country sucked the most. Good to know that people have always had a penchant for meddling with authority.
[4] Some argue about the date here because illegal radio stations were popular long before pirate radios. I think this date specifically refers to offshore stations, but I also included it so that I could have equal representation for Danish people. Representation matters when we're discussing breaking the law.
[5] I suppose that crypto and blockchain pretended as though they were opening the door to yet another era of exploration, but sadly I don't think it panned out. And in the meantime, we've been increasingly closed off in our walled gardens to the point where our every click is scrutinized. But hey, at least you can buy a .jpg of a monkey and convince yourself that you're really fighting against the financial titans that run our world. Perhaps if NFTs were a thing in 1776, we simply wouldn't have had a revolution, people would have been satisfied with a picture of an ugly monkey wearing the wig of a forefather.
[6] Back in 2020 I listened to this song 100+ times to learn all of Drake's lyrics. Not my proudest achievement, but an achievement nonetheless. Or maybe it's just because I was stuck at home during the pandemic. No regrets though.
It's also cool to see how different cultures adopt similar sound profiles while injecting their own flavor. Drill originated in the impoverished regions of Chicago and was then subsequently picked up by artists in the UK and Australia. Though record labels made a bet on the genre back in the early 2010s, albums from artists like Chief Keef ended up being huge flops and the genre faded out. Recent years have seen a resurgence though, and you might even be familiar with Drill artists such as Lil Durk (Chicago), Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign (NYC), Headie One and Stormzy (UK), and ONEFOUR (Australia). Much bigger artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj have also hopped on Drill beats so it is starting to appeal to the general public more.
Enough talking, I'll let you listen for yourself and see what you think. Do try to keep an open mind though, the lyrics can be pretty intense (when you can understand them, some UK artists have some strong accents), but try to remember where these different artists are coming from.
Wiley Flow - Stormzy
Spotify | YouTube
We Go Up (feat. Fivio Foreign) - Nicki Minaj
Spotify | YouTube
Straight Back to It - Central Cee
Spotify | YouTube
Only You Freestyle - Headie One, Drake [6]
Spotify | YouTube
Cruise Control - ONEFOUR
Spotify | YouTube
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] Wireless transmission is really crazy and magical when you think about it. 99.99% of us never really think about the infrastructure and technology that makes modern life possible, but just witnessing something in our society would instantly incinerate the brain of a peasant from the 1400s. Think about all the people in history who have never gotten to see funny cat videos on the internet. A tragedy if I've heard of one.
[2] There's a book by Erik Larson called Thunderstruck that tells the story of Marconi and how he worked out the various details for long-distance transmission. The book simultaneously follows a murder case that has a tenuous connection to the technology and it all connects at the end. The premise sounds interesting enough but it was a terrible book, I read like 1/3 of it and gave up. Larson spends most of the book explaining the various patent disputes that Marconi was embroiled in and how he didn't trust anyone. Why would anyone want to read about this? Maybe this is the curse of all of Larson's books though, The Devil in the White City was like this too.
[3] Imagine prank calling someone and that someone was the US Navy. I can't imagine that they appreciated hearing a bunch of fart noises while they were discussing which European country sucked the most. Good to know that people have always had a penchant for meddling with authority.
[4] Some argue about the date here because illegal radio stations were popular long before pirate radios. I think this date specifically refers to offshore stations, but I also included it so that I could have equal representation for Danish people. Representation matters when we're discussing breaking the law.
[5] I suppose that crypto and blockchain pretended as though they were opening the door to yet another era of exploration, but sadly I don't think it panned out. And in the meantime, we've been increasingly closed off in our walled gardens to the point where our every click is scrutinized. But hey, at least you can buy a .jpg of a monkey and convince yourself that you're really fighting against the financial titans that run our world. Perhaps if NFTs were a thing in 1776, we simply wouldn't have had a revolution, people would have been satisfied with a picture of an ugly monkey wearing the wig of a forefather.
[6] Back in 2020 I listened to this song 100+ times to learn all of Drake's lyrics. Not my proudest achievement, but an achievement nonetheless. Or maybe it's just because I was stuck at home during the pandemic. No regrets though.