As someone who is aging. Late thirties. How can I keep my finger on the pulse of current trends, particularly in music? - eviltoast

As an example. I grew up in hip-hop but at a certain point I stopped listening to new people and realised recently that I’d slept on some bangers. Like Kendrick particularly, but even people like Juice WRLD and Xxxtentacion.

The same for the Kendrick and Drake (the nonce) beef which has given some rabbit holes to go down.

So I’m wondering what I can do to keep in the loop with my younger brothers and sisters?

Is it something as simple as watching trending videos on YouTube (somtheing I’ve never done) or are there people to follow etc. I don’t like Twitter though so hopefully it’s not that.

Edit: Man I got so many replies. You guys are awesome. I am going to work my way through them all today, but I’m hella tired and off to work so may take a while. I will reply to you all.

Edit part deux: God damn I think I got all the replies.

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
    3·
    6 months ago

    I’d say what you’re (possibly) describing is something that’s less specific to it’s writer’s time/age/moment, giving it broader appeal. If someone is 17 and writing classical style music, I’d expect most who appreciates classical to take an interest. That’s just looking for new music, not a focus on staying “hip”, which, again, isn’t really an effective approach.

    This fits with the reasons media/arts appeal the way they do - the more “base” it’s appeal, the broader that appeal will be, because more/most people understand it.

    These aren’t my ideas - ask a professor of music (especially music history) the difference between the different classifications of music, and why they’re defined the way they are.

    One great example: today most people would consider Opera to be “high-falutin classical stuff that us regular folks can’t grok cause we don’t know Italian”, when the reality is it was the popular music of it’s day, with Opera performances being a rough equivalent to TV shows today. Some Opera composers knocked out 200 operas, per year.

    Check out any lectures by Prof Robert Greenburg, especially “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” or “Music as a Mirror of History”, he explains these ideas very well.