Why aren’t Black men more represented in the present day pop/rock scene?

[Tair]

• Yves Tumor
• Dean Blunt/Hype Williams
• Bloc Party
• TV On The Radio

 

[PlayerNinety_Nine]

As far as straight up rock - I just got hip to these brehs



Hardcore band from LA. The album is dope. shyt reminds me of something I would have found on tape at the second hand record store in '94.

The lead singer, Anaiah Lei also has an indie rock band with his brother called, The Bots.

 

[Mull]

I like this kind of a thread. I don’t have the answers but in short social media forces a lot of folks into a box so if a black guy did come out as rock or pop he’d be mocked into oblivion. Just my 2 cents

 

[Tair]

Yves tumor is dope but breh is also unapologetically gay as fukk.
Which I'm totally fine with, I saw him live earlier this year.


With that said yeah. A lot of fukking rock is white and corny.

Sue me.

I've been listening to Yves since 2016, and you a right. But I don't even give a damn about him being unapologetically gay, "Heaven to a Tortured Mind" is a good album.

I just like good music.

 

[Tribal Outkast]

Man black folk wasn’t even fukking with Santigold even after Jay and them were trying to put her on. I don’t see any black rock going super mainstream in the black community and it does suck. Hopefully that will change

 

[Thanos]

Rap is new rock, the kids who grew up on rock, pop, and metal are rappers. There are couple black bands but it's not huge scene and lowkey Afropunk did some damage.

 

[Gains]

plenty of black pop/rock musicians in the indie scene waiting on your support

 

[SCJoe]

It feels like the half the rock crowd migrated to Cudi, Tyler or Billie Eilish type sounds, the other half went to “Country”

 

[O.Red]

Trying is the bare minimum, breh…the music has to actually be good.

The issue with Wayne, Cudi, etc. is that they’re not actual musicians. They may have learned to play guitar, but they’re not proficient. We need legit black musicians in that space.

The brehs/brehettes that are in that space are generally doing Punk, which is aesthetically right up our alley, but sonically there’s no groove to it. I prefer my rock psychedelic.

Gambino’s Awaken, My Love was a masterpiece because it captured the sounds of Funkadelic so well.

Awaken My Love is not a masterpiece

Donald Glover is a cover artist

 

[dangerranger]

Truthfully speaking and it’s this is one man’s opinion it’s because of the internet and we black people don’t control our music in terms of where it goes. What I’m seeing that again is pure speculation is that the internet has made black culture into one “thing”. So everything we do is congealed and because we don’t have full control, the separation and the classifications are gone. Our genres become meshed under the guise of the “culture”. R&B and rap were once separated and I know the music industry started pushing rap into r&b but now the two are damn near synonymous in terms of mainstream. This is dangerous because they should be separate. But follow my thought process, there is something even worse at play, our music is slowing morphing into pop music but it’s disguised. Old town road was not a rap song but it fell under that category and we know why. Lil nas x is not a rapper, he’s a pop artist for all intensive purposes. Look at trippie reds or Iann Dior. It’s not traditional rap. It’s alternative rap but heavily influenced by rock. These artists are “barred” from being labeled rock acts but some of their songs play on pop stations. Meg the stallion can do a song with dua lipa and it gets play on pop station. Now Meg the stallion can get play on pop stations. These examples used to be one offs. My point is before we even recognize it, it’s happening, our music will become pop.

It won’t be considered rap or it won’t have a label because everyone will be used to it in the future. With the way it’s become so easy to manufacture music, this will become even worse. It will be easy to copy and mass produce. Then someone of another group will do what we were originally doing but get assigned to that genre and be considered innovative while we are left out.

If you look at it, hip hop is following similar trajectories as rock music when it as once popular. If we aren’t careful history is going to repeat itself but in a worse way. How can we give our props to those who are do rock or those who do pop when in terms of categorization it’s thrown under the same umbrella? How can we give props to these individuals when even though it’s categorized as black music in terms of entertainment we are a culture don’t support them and mostly give accolades to hip hop?

My thoughts are all over the place with this post but hopefully what I’m getting at makes sense.

 

[Born Rich]

Awaken My Love is not a masterpiece

Donald Glover is a cover artist

Disagree

 

[THEREALBRAND]

Traditional “pop music” is dead. I can’t even think of one white American male pop star that’s under 25 off the top of my head. Hell the only young white male pop stars in general that I can think of are Shawn Mendes and those kids that were in One Direction. Most of the young major players in mainstream music are either rappers or they’re rap adjacent. The days of bubblegum pop dominating the charts are over.

 

[FluffyEyes]

Traditional “pop music” is dead. I can’t even think of one white American male pop star that’s under 25 off the top of my head. Hell the only young white male pop stars in general that I can think of are Shawn Mendes and those kids that were in One Direction. Most of the young major players in mainstream music are either rappers or they’re rap adjacent. The days of bubblegum pop dominating the charts are over.

This is just not accurate. Literally the #1 album and song in the country is from one of the guys from One Direction, Harry Styles. That dude is huge for his demo. One of the most successful albums of last year was a pop rock album by a Olivia Rodrigo not to mention Billie Eilish cleaning up every award season. So no "pop" music isn't dead.

 

[FluffyEyes]

The real question is why are Black artists looked at a certain way within the community if they do genres outside of R&B and Hip Hop?? From Whitney being booed at the Soul Train Awards back in the day to Lizzo being castigated for "making music for white women".

 

[Amo Husserl]

Truthfully speaking and it’s this is one man’s opinion it’s because of the internet and we black people don’t control our music in terms of where it goes. What I’m seeing that again is pure speculation is that the internet has made black culture into one “thing”. So everything we do is congealed and because we don’t have full control, the separation and the classifications are gone. Our genres become meshed under the guise of the “culture”. R&B and rap were once separated and I know the music industry started pushing rap into r&b but now the two are damn near synonymous in terms of mainstream. This is dangerous because they should be separate. But follow my thought process, there is something even worse at play, our music is slowing morphing into pop music but it’s disguised. Old town road was not a rap song but it fell under that category and we know why. Lil nas x is not a rapper, he’s a pop artist for all intensive purposes. Look at trippie reds or Iann Dior. It’s not traditional rap. It’s alternative rap but heavily influenced by rock. These artists are “barred” from being labeled rock acts but some of their songs play on pop stations. Meg the stallion can do a song with dua lipa and it gets play on pop station. Now Meg the stallion can get play on pop stations. These examples used to be one offs. My point is before we even recognize it, it’s happening, our music will become pop.

It won’t be considered rap or it won’t have a label because everyone will be used to it in the future. With the way it’s become so easy to manufacture music, this will become even worse. It will be easy to copy and mass produce. Then someone of another group will do what we were originally doing but get assigned to that genre and be considered innovative while we are left out.

If you look at it, hip hop is following similar trajectories as rock music when it as once popular. If we aren’t careful history is going to repeat itself but in a worse way. How can we give our props to those who are do rock or those who do pop when in terms of categorization it’s thrown under the same umbrella? How can we give props to these individuals when even though it’s categorized as black music in terms of entertainment we are a culture don’t support them and mostly give accolades to hip hop?

My thoughts are all over the place with this post but hopefully what I’m getting at makes sense.

Stereotype.