Best of the Decade: Melodic Hip Hop Pop

It’s been called “post-rap,” it’s been called “hip pop” and it’s been called “hey why won’t that OutKast guy just shut up and rap?” But no matter how you file it at the record store, it’s a relatively new genre of music that finds hip hop artists singing and experimenting with polished pop/soul/rock music, often (though not always) over hip hop beats. Examples include Gnarls Barkley, Andre 3000, N.E.R.D., k-os, Mos Def, Kanye West, Lyrics Born and more. Though they’re not rappers, I’d also lump in Santigold, Janelle Monae, Gorillaz and maybe even Nelly Furtado, since the sonic qualities of their work share many elements with the singing rappers.

Though we’ve always had rappers who could also sing (Lauryn Hill immediately comes to mind), the movement in question probably started with the release of Andre 3000′s The Love Below in 2003. Here was a rapper singing, but it wasn’t so much traditional soul music (like Lauryn’s) as it was hyper-glossy pop music with hip hop undertones. Songs like “Hey Ya” and “She Lives in My Lap,” weren’t just different, they were extremely catchy, radio-friendly pop jams written with an emcee’s edge and approach to lyricism. The album was also ridiculously successful, which set the stage for other rappers’ projects.

Though N*E*R*D’s In Search Of came out the previous year, I would argue that it was ahead of its time. A side project of the hip hop production duo the Neptunes, N*E*R*D was built around Pharrell’s falsetto, edgy, angsty (or sometimes just weird) lyrics and live instrumentation giving the Neptune’s signature production a new, more ragged edge. Through three albums N*E*R*D have made beautiful melodic pop songs like “Provider,” “Maybe” and “Sooner or Later,” as well as harder, more-difficult-to-pin-down tracks like “Lapdance” and “Rockstar.” While their latest album fits in really well with the hipster-driven, day-glo hype-rap that’s been happening lately, people forget that they were doing this stuff long before it was fashionable.

And then there’s Gnarls Barkley, the collaboration between producer Danger Mouse and emcee Cee-Lo. Cee-Lo had always been a great pure soul singer, going all the way back to the first track on the first Goodie Mob album, but this was really the first project where he hardly rapped at all. And while Cee-Lo is probably my favorite rapper, it’s hard to find fault with Gnarls Barkley’s melody-driven style. Danger Mouse blended hip hop drums, 1960′s psychedelia, straight-forward soul and much more and let Cee-Lo run wild over it all. More focused than Cee-Lo’s ambitious, uneven solo albums, Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere sounded like the future of pop music back in 2006. It might still be.

Add to this mix Kanye’s autotune adventures (with a hat tip to T-Pain), Mos Def’s work with Black Jack Johnson, Dan the Automator and Danger Mouse producing two Gorillaz albums, Santigold demolishing genre boundaries and k-os’ incredibly solid career (not to mention the occasional track from Pigeon John, Lyrics Born, Mystic and others), and I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a new genre—not just a bunch of random artists united by not sounding like their traditionalist peers, but an actual sound and style.

Then again, “pure” pop music has always been about breaking barriers. Prince and Michael Jackson were simultaneously rock stars, soul singers and pop geniuses. Likewise, what some are calling “post-rap” might just be a continuation of that idea. As pop music evolves, it’s going to take elements of hip hop, rock, soul, electronica and even country and mash them all together. While this doesn’t always lead to transcendent art (Fergie) it has the potential to be pretty great, as acts like N*E*R*D, OutKast, Gnarls Barkley and the rest have shown. I still don’t have a name for it, but maybe that’s a good thing.