how lofi hip-hop took over youtube

I read through a lot of the comments on my videos. I'll usually heart the ones that make me laugh or just stick out to me in some way. A lot of them are really nice and thoughtful; others are just weird. But whether it's good or bad, insightful or just a meme, there's always someone asking, "What's the song?" or "Where do you get your music?"

And almost all of the time, it's a Lo-fi hip-hop song. Songs that have no lyrics, very few instruments, and a drum pattern that repeats for minutes on end. I have a TV in my bedroom; I bought it like a year ago, and I honestly don't even use it that much. You'd probably expect me to be watching movies or Netflix shows or anything else on it, and I do sometimes, but most of the time, I'm one of those 21,000 people listening in whenever I'm working, gaming, or just relaxing. It's on in the background.

Once I get out of the zone and quit focusing on whatever it is I'm doing, Lo-fi is there. People remix quite literally anything they want and turn it into Lo-fi. It can completely switch up the vibe of any music track. I mean, it's as you would expect: slowed down, repetitive, but unique in a way. It can turn music that you hate into music that you love.

So what is it about this kind of music that grabs so much attention but seemingly blends into the background of any situation? What is it about these repetitive beats that have introduced millions of people to a new genre of music they didn't even know existed in the first place? This is how Lo-fi hip-hop took over in the 1980s. People started using the word Lo-fi to describe the style of music: Low Fidelity, a style that's lower in quality than the mainstream music you'd more often hear. Music that is degraded, damaged, scratched—music that is perfectly imperfect.

Now, whether or not this is on purpose depends on the artist. Compare this to today's music or Hi-Fi, which is expertly mixed and mastered to produce the best sound imaginable. It doesn't matter if you recorded it in a million-dollar studio or just in your bedroom on a rainy day; no one is expecting Lo-fi to sound professional. It's supposed to sound raw.

Lo-fi hip-hop sound stems from the '90s when artists tended to rely heavily on samples from even earlier music. Sampling is basically just taking a small snippet of a song from another artist and using it in your own way. It sounds like stealing, but it isn't. Okay, it really is, but people take samples all the time and flip them in ways that don't even sound remotely like the original. It all depends on how you slice them. It depends on which pieces you take and rearrange to create a completely different sound.

A lot of modern songs are filled with samples. Juice WRLD's "Lucid Dreams" was produced by Nick Mira and actually sampled Sting's "Shape of My Heart" from 1993, and then they got sued. But it shows that sampling is still very relevant today. You'll usually find any Lo-fi song, stream, or mix accompanied by some depressing looping anime GIF with a VHS overlay. It's as if they're trying to invoke some kind of nostalgia in you.

But this makes sense. Most people tend to have some feelings of nostalgia while listening to Lo-fi, and it's hard to explain. It's like your brain is putting you into a trance and forcing you to live a non-existent memory, but at the same time giving you a sense of a future that hasn't happened yet.

I actually asked a bunch of my friends and just random people if they listen to Lo-fi, and surprisingly, most of them actually did. But when I ask them why or what they like about it, they couldn't really tell me. And that's pretty cool. See, with most genres, you can point out the lyrics or certain instruments or something, but here, it's different. I found that people that are into heavy metal, rap, rock—people that are interested in basically every genre there is—can somehow find an interest in this.

Whether you're young or old, it fits somehow. In Lo-fi, there's tons of references and samples from jazz and soul artists. That's the basis of most songs you'll hear today. It encompasses and forms the sound of Lo-fi. It's meant to sound like you're listening to a hip-hop instrumental through an old speaker. The samples come from all around the world; it isn't just stuck to one country or region. The influence is taken from a global viewpoint.

A lot of Lo-fi tends to be situated around Japanese culture. I mean, come on, just look at it: anime clips everywhere you go, titles in half English, half Japanese that were probably ripped straight from Google Translate, movie quotes taken straight from the film and slapped on over the beginning of the beat to give it some kind of meaning.

And you know, this is wonderful and all, but where did this even come from? Anime wasn't really even around in the '90s for the early hip-hop scene, at least not in the United States. I can tell you one thing, and that it's not just purely for aesthetic. Japanese pianists and jazz artists formed the groundwork for the entire genre. You can't really talk about the current state of Lo-fi without mentioning Nujabes. I mean, he's a huge reason why this whole current aesthetic exists.

He worked on the OST for Samurai Champloo, and it's honestly hard to click through a few Lo-fi songs without finding some kind of reference to it. It's everywhere, right in front of your eyes. There are more examples than just this: Studio Ghibli movies, Cowboy Bebop—the list goes on and on. But something seems to stay the same regardless; something seems to tie it all together. It's perfect for what it's marketed as.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Their beats are perfect for relaxing, studying, sleeping, or just existing to. It's a distraction that helps you concentrate. It's like having your own background theme in life. I use it for that exact reason, and it's kind of weird saying I have a reason to use music. Usually with other music, I'll just put it on because I want something to listen to, or there's a certain vibe I'm going for or something. But with Lo-fi, I just put on a mix or a 24/7 stream and just leave it. It blends into the background, but you'd notice it if it wasn't there.

But for some people, Lo-fi doesn't give those melancholic vibes; it's more annoying than anything else, and that makes sense when you think about it. I mean, when I hear someone singing the same line from a song over and over and over again, it gets annoying after a while. When you hear the same looping parts of a song for minutes on end without anything changing, it could get annoying. There's a gray zone between something creative and something just flat-out frustrating.

In a way, the genre has become a parody of itself. People don't really even take it seriously at this point; it's just become a meme more than anything else. Sure, the genre is wide and full of different types of sounds, but that doesn't mean that any song with an old sample, vinyl scratches, and rain lightly playing in the background is creative. It's a broad genre, which has its ups and downs. But for me, as Reddit user chrismac said, the feeling of Lo-fi hip-hop is similar to watching people walking on the street, cars going back and forth, and so on.

Although the world is on fire with a bunch of things happening at once, you're safe just looking at it out the window. After reading this, I kind of realized I couldn't have explained it better myself. It's passive. It's not reaching out for anything too much, but rather is the result of you just living in the moment, taking everything around you in.

This loop is just a tired girl studying, sitting in a bedroom much nicer than my own, writing down notes with headphones on, listening to music, just as so many of us do every day. It's relatable somehow. Now, don't get me wrong: rap music and other genres find their ways into my playlist almost every day as well. But I really can't relate to having $100,000 rings and selling crack to my grandma.

I just make YouTube videos. But with Lo-fi, there's not much to it—just something to get you through the day; something to live in the moment with; something that can accompany you in situations you find yourself in every day. And I think that's reason enough to solidify its place in the current scene.

Some of the larger Lo-fi channels on YouTube are now becoming actual record labels and are signing some of the fan-favorite artists and putting them on Spotify and iTunes. Read the comments on any Lo-fi mix, and you'll find different kinds of people—the same kind I mentioned earlier: fans of different genres of music, from different places in the world, of different ages, in different situations. But regardless of all that, they ended up in the same place to share their stories, and that's why I love Lo-fi hip-hop.

Wait, before you click off this video, I promise that this isn't a sponsored message. Alright, cool, thanks! I enjoy making these videos a lot, and the payoff for many of them is hard to fully appreciate. The thing is, though, they take a long time. Some videos take me a week; others can take me months to fully put together and produce.

And this is really hard when you want to put out more content but just can't. So because of this, I'm making a second channel. Now, I'll be honest; I don't know what exactly I'm going to upload here. All I know is that I want to make more videos—ones that I can just think of on the spot, as opposed to researching, writing, gathering the right clips for weeks on end. You get me?

Now this could end up being more personal content. Maybe I'll be playing games with friends or something; I really don't know right now. But when I figure it out, it'll be uploaded there. Now, don't worry; I'm not going to stop making videos here. It's just a place where I can do things a bit differently without worrying about what over 600,000 people think.

If you like me or just want to support somehow, it'd be nice if you could drop a sub on that channel. Let me know what you'd want to see; I'm interested in hearing it. Alright, later.