Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time to discuss a viral clip that has been going crazy on music social media. It involves one producer, Mr. soul-sampling, who was speaking off the cuff, maybe a bit too off the cuff, in an on-the-radar interview.

If you're unfamiliar with on-the-radar, they are a pretty cool platform that specializes in a lot of freestyle and studio performance content. I will say a lot of their most viral clips usually involve something a little polarizing, and that is most definitely the case for this Emerald Beats interview clip.

"What genre do I think is overrated? If you're sampling a soul record, get that bullshit out of here. No one's trying to hear that. I hate soul, anything, boom bap. Yeah, get that unc shit out of here, bro. I don't like any of that music."

Now, to a lot of you who just saw what was going on there, you might just react to that and think, so what? What's the big deal? This just seems like some random guy. Actually, believe it or not, this is not just some random guy. He's a somewhat established producer in the drill space of all places. He has credits both on the New York side and the UK side. He has worked with the likes of Dthang, Digga D, and even Lil Mabu, who we have talked about on this channel.

His talents aren't just limited to the front lines of drill music today either. He has also done tracks and collaborated with Trippie Redd as well as NLE Choppa. He even did that Fivio Foreign Donald Trump track that dropped earlier this year. He's really making a living off the hip hop music he's creating, or at least he wants to make it seem that way through the post he puts on social media.

Yeah, despite all that, he displays in this interview clip some serious animosity toward older shades of rap. I mean, we're not just simply talking a preference here. If you don't like boom bap music, I guess you don't have to. Nobody's going to force you to enjoy it if you're not into it. There's nothing inherently wrong with gravitating in a specific direction in terms of the music you want to hear and the music you want to make. There's plenty of different classic amazing styles of hip hop that are not soul-sampling records that are not boom bap.

But again, this guy says, If you're sampling a soul record, get that bullshit out of here. No one trying to hear that. And even goes on to call it "unc shit" – I really need white people to stop saying unc – I really truly do. From the deepest depths of my soul, stop.

The reason this clip is worth talking about is because the layers of irony and disappointment are impenetrable. And there are some reasons that are painfully obvious, but I'm going to go over them anyway. This guy is super young. He's white. He's obviously quite oblivious when it comes to the broader world of hip hop music. And he's obviously making a living participating in a genre he is openly disrespecting.

However, what irks me or worries me is that I don't think most people are going to look at this problem and dig any deeper than this, because really, at the end of the day, these are not the issues. These are the symptoms of the issue. Part of me even worries that there will be no worthwhile discourse coming out of the comment section of this video, too, because everyone will be quick to be like, 'Anthony, you're a symptom of the same thing because you're a white guy talking about hip hop music.' But even though that point will be deafening and everyone bringing it up will be acting like they're smart for doing so, let's try to dig a bit deeper than this anyway, because I don't think this guy becomes a professional producer and boom bap hater in a vacuum. This doesn't happen without hip hop music being commodified and stripped down to its most salacious and marketable characteristics.

Meanwhile, the message and esthetics of its past are just totally being thrown out because this guy came to a conclusion – a conclusion that's being incentivized by the success that he's seeing. Like, of course, EMRLD BEATS thinks nothing of vocally rejecting soul-sampling records and boom bap records. He's rejecting these genres artistically, too. And undoubtedly, this is a sentiment he has heard, voiced within the circles he's operating in, too. I mean, animosity toward Boom Bap records and '90s hip hop and golden age hip hop has been a pretty popular opinion to voice among a lot of young rappers out there starting back in the SoundCloud era, be it Lil Xan or Lil Yadi or whoever.

So of course, EMRLD BEATS also holds this opinion because this opinion is essentially the water that he's swimming in. And he feels comfortable voicing it because even if he does get a lot of people hating on him in the wake of this interview, he knows there are most likely a lot of artists he's worked with that more or less feel the same, or will just continue to work with him anyway. This is not something he would be putting out there if he actually felt like he was going to see repercussions for it, either personally or professionally.

On top of this, despite the very aggressive gatekeeping that some people may try to do around some genres and artists on social media, it's become increasingly clear that there are certain genres of rap music today where white people seemingly are totally, freely allowed to move about and operate without being confronted with their whiteness. Even the concept of Black struggle at all.

I mean, while it is true, that there's a lot to know about drill music and the culture that surrounds it, much of the content is removed from any systemic or historical context that might explain it. The way it's presented on the internet doesn't exactly push listeners to go do their own digging on that front. I think EMRLD BEATS would have more awareness around what he's saying and how it would come across if it was.

Unfortunately, as great as the internet and algorithms can be when it comes to spreading information and opening people up to things and types of art and sounds that they wouldn't have been introduced to otherwise – simultaneously, it allows for and I think incentivizes a type of art consumption that is just purely surface level, and that's it. As a result, every year, I feel like we are seeing more and more art created to appeal in that way.

Now, I think the music mainstream and record labels have always done that to underground styles of music. They have found ways to commercialize, and that's been the case for hip hop for decades now, from Vanilla Ice to the pretty boy studio gangsters of the bling era. But in a lot of ways, the internet and streaming platforms have really perfected the formula. We're now looking at the result here because, again, this problem is way bigger than one white guy or a group of other guys who are making his livelihood possible, or even the audience that is then after that, consuming what both parties are making together.

Really, the problem, to put it bluntly, is that the music market and capitalism has completely burnt to the ground anything that would incentivize the old way of doing things or maintaining any community around this stuff. To this day, I think one of the only elements of hip hop's original ethos that has stayed alive is its competitive spirit. But unfortunately, even that has been bastardized to be less about skill and technical ability and more about the commercial success you're seeing and the numbers you're doing, which there's nothing inherently wrong with deeming something important simply because it's popular.

There are certainly worse ways to gauge relevance, but in the Internet age, there's a disconnect, though, because there is so little transparency around what's actually hot and what's actually not. Very little of what becomes viral and what becomes popular does so purely by organic means. It's all done through algorithms and recommendations and content that whatever app you're on is put there because mathematically, the people who engineer these platforms have figured out what exactly to throw in front of your eyes in order to get you to stay on whatever app, whatever platform for as long as humanly possible. On top of that, you have record labels paying influencers, our streams around a given song or a music video or whatever piece of content bought it, who the hell knows?

As I wrap this video up, let me just remind you guys that I'm not trying to make a broad-stroke assessment of hip hop music here or talk about what's wrong with the genre or anything like that. It's obviously still a thriving genre with a lot of layers and a lot of versatility to its sound. And while it is true, the internet is most definitely a place where you can see a lot of artists and a lot of music fans thriving off a very niche, specific appeal where they're deep diving on one or two different things that they're totally in love with because, yeah, there are Swifties out there with an encyclopedic knowledge of her entire catalog. There are K-pop fans that can tell you every member of every group that's come out over the past six years.

With that being said, though, I think a lot of media consumption online these days is not happening that way because there is seriously a historical context to hip hop music that is really being lost in translation, even with it, ironically, being one of the biggest and most popular genres out there right now. Context is in a truly bad place if someone like EMRLD BEATS can say what he said in this interview, and will most likely get work after it.

Let me know what you think about any or all of this in the comments down below. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. EMRLD BEATS. Forever.