Out of Left Field...

Here's something I've been thinking about the past couple of days. I had a conversation with my go-to beatmaker Meetro this past Thursday, as fallout from Tyler, the Creator and Hodgy Beats of Odd Future performing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He had never really heard of Odd Future, so I had him check out the Fallon performance due to it being buzzed about that day. After watching it, he made a really great point about Hip Hop. There will be an artist that comes out of nowhere that you may have never heard of, but they managed to build up an incredible following out of left field, and manage to make an impact all in one fell swoop. It might not be of your particular preference, but you remember them.

It had me thinking back over the course of at least the past 2-3 years. Really thinking back to when Drake got big thanks to So Far Gone, and became the biggest new star in the rap game due to sounding like nobody else at the time. How when Jay Electronica shut down Hip Hop with "Exhibit C," a song that sounded like a throwback to the 90's and managed to sum up everything in one song what makes Hip Hop sound classic. How Slaughterhouse showed that there's such a thing as a second chance in the rap game, and also single-handedly making the concept of a group cool again (in addition to showing people still pay attention to bars and punchlines). How Lil' B managed to overwhelm the Internet with songs and videos all by himself after being written off as a one-hit wonder in his teens. And finally, how when the mainstream finally discovered Tech N9ne after all these years and gave him his recognition as the hardest-working MC in the game.

With all due respect to rock fans and whatnot, I don't get that feeling whenever someone brings up bands like The Arcade Fire or The Decemberists. I can respect good songwriting and whatnot, but there isn't really anything outside of Hip Hop that I can say has caught me offguard in a very long time. And for me, I get the same thing from catching onto Odd Future a few months before they started to blow up. They sound like nothing else out, they managed to build a following out of nowhere, and the music is actually really fucking good. In a time when Hip Hop has gotten safe and predictable at times, you need that one thing that knocks you on your ass, and reminds you why you fell in love with it in the first place to begin with. It's that sense of urgency I love having, and want to continue to have for years to come. There's no other feeling I can compare it to. Just when you think there's nothing that can surprise you and that you've seen it all, it always has something new up its sleeve.

-Michael (Hellboy) Marshall