Flying Lotus: The Creation of Musical Genre

Introduction

Genre is a term that allows people to categorize and distinguish music and other art forms from one another.  It is defined by many criteria, including its time period, the instruments and techniques used, the region where it arose, and its historical context.  It is always contemporarily static, that is, defined within a contemporary context, but at the same time continuously evolving and growing. At any given time, an individual cannot imagine a new genre, but they constantly arise.  Often a genre will gain recognition and a name due to the formation of a fan base around a branch of an accepted genre.  The broad genre rock, for example, has birthed hundreds of offshoot genres.  When a fan base builds around such an offshoot, its birth into genre depends heavily on the music media and business sectors, for often a genre is not fully accepted as singular until those sectors have “named” it. The birth of electronic production and distribution techniques have changed this process somewhat, as fan bases can form and expand at rapid speeds, and the music media has been democratized to include bloggers and niche publications which are often more open to providing a genre a name before it has reached commercial viability.  Some scholars believe that these changes can be attributed to “the rapidly evolving nature of the music [and] accelerated consumer culture1.”  Flying Lotus’ music has certainly evolved rapidly, and has seen almost all of its success through electronic online distribution.  It has been assigned names by the music “establishment”, by fans, and by the artist himself (he described one release as a “space opera”) So has FlyLo created a new genre?
            The simple answer is maybe, partially because the word genre may not really apply in this case.  Genre has a hegemony over musical distinction, but does music exist outside of genre?  I argue yes.  In 2010, FlyLo released Cosmogramma.  This most recent LP built on and borrowed from all of his previous work, but introduced novel sonic elements (read: sounds never before heard by human ears). Perhaps the new genre he has created is a fusion of others (Jazz, Hip Hop, Dub), but just because elements have been heard before does not preclude newness.  It is difficult to discuss new genres, because all available vocabularies reference established, describable media objects.  At some points, contemporary phrasing just doesn’t seem to do a new genre justice.  I suggest listening to some of the samples I have included on the site before continuing so that some of these linguistic difficulties will be more readily understandable.

Discussion

Ethnography:

Flying Lotus is best approached ethnographically through interviews he has given and fan commentary on his work.  He frames his music as an ever-evolving phenomenon without the constraints of time or place, but anchored by his personal creative touch.  “I didn’t want to get into a situation where I was just doing one thing,” he said in an interview with Daze magazine, “I wanted to mix up the sounds and textures so everything didn’t get too samey.  But hopefully you still get me in it.”  Such a comment is not necessarily rare in music, and many artists like to “mix things up” over time.  However, when applied to FlyLo, such a pursuit takes on a different meaning.  He is not trying to mix things up within a context, but instead to create a musical landscape sans boundaries that can be explored and redefined to infinity.  FlyLo addressed this pursuit in an interview with Earwaks.com, an urban music blog. “What I try to think about is creating a universe,” he says, “each tune is kind of a representation of that.  At the end of the career or whatever, you have this tangible universe you can go through.”  To create such a universe, an artist must shed the confines of genre because a genre defined universe is finite to the point of that genre’s accepted definition.  Flying Lotus stated just this in the same interview: “I notice that I get comfortable doing certain things and its like ‘OK fuck that, lets just stop right here and do something totally different,’ you know, and take it somewhere where I don’t know here it’s going.  That’s the only way it stays fun.  I don’t want to ever just, you know, get too comfortable, and the kids get too comfortable with my sound and they’re like, ‘oh ya it’s gonna sound like that.’  They don’t know what it’s gonna sound like.”  FlyLo takes pride in being ahead of his audience, and they love him for it.  He wants to make music that they will love even if it different from any music they have heard before.

  Such an attitude is rare in a business that has long been geared towards commercial success.  Most artists find a sound that they are good at and that their fans enjoy and work to perfect that sound.  FlyLo does not employ such a strategy, and instead trusts that his fans will appreciate his work for its newness and creative merit.  The powerful record companies like genre because it can be used as a marketing indicator, and have trouble with artists who vocally refuse genre.  Who is the market?  How will the market change with each release?  Markets are defined by age or gender or other such designators, and not by enjoyment of creativity or appreciation of art.  But here once again FlyLo breaks with past practices.  He does define markets in updated terms, and further questions the place of art in modernity.  In an interview with Apollo magazine, a widely respected fine arts publication, Flying Lotus offers his take on art, saying that he doesn’t believe artists are made: “You can’t learn art in art school.  They can make you a better artist, or a more commercial artist, but not an artist [if you aren’t one].” So instead of a fan base being built around the artist or the product, it is built around the process of artistic creation.  Flying Lotus’ fans look forward to new releases not because they are excited to hear the next installment of music, but because they are excited to examine and enjoy the process FlyLo took to reach the new place.  It is true that fans do not hear all of the small steps it takes to produce a finished album, but that void gives fans a chance to practice deep listening to discover all the hidden sonic treasures and imagine how in the world someone created them.  Youtube user kers1ecm left the following comment on the Daze interview: “telling all my lame friend[s] that lotus is our generations hendrix pushing the boundaries this is why i love hip hop !!!!!”  Another commenter, screwston4ever comments, “flylo is a effin genius...hes so humble about everything and his point of view on music isnt like the common population.”  Fans embrace the approach he takes to music, and rejoice in not assigning him a genre.  They desire difference, which they view as absent in the “common population.”  A community arises that centers on the rejection of convention and the embrace of fluid creativity, rather than the traditional centering on a specific approach to music.  Such a community could not have arisen before the advent of electronic music production, because prior musical production did not have the possibility that computers allow.  FlyLo recognizes this issue, and tells Apollo magazine, “As were approaching this new era, a lot of things are going to change, and though it’s a lot easier to make the music, I think the music’s going to get so crazy, and so musical too, that you’ll know when you hear it, you’ll know whose got the chops and whose in it to be cool, and whose in it because they’re just having fun, whose in it for spiritual reasons.” The infinite possibilities of computerization allows for the music to “get crazy” and head in previously untouched directions.  FlyLo and his fans share a belief that music and art in general is exciting and should not be bound by commercial interests.  But it is unclear whether he or his fans believe that he has “created” a new genre, specifically because his music is constantly changing.  It seems here that the word genre its self fails to address FlyLo’s music, as it is steeped in a static tradition.  So in the traditional sense, FlyLo has not created a new “genre,” but in the sense that he has created a totally new phenomenon in music, the word genre is unnecessary.  What is clear is that he has brought a new musical ideology into play that is calling even the idea of genre into question, let alone receiving a business-standard designation.

 

Analysis:

Flying Lotus, born Steven Ellison (29), is a solo producer from Southern California.  He grew up on “video game music” and Hip-Hop, and was especially inspired by beat makers like Dr. Dre and J. Dilla, some of the first producers to incorporate live and non-traditional instruments into Hip-Hop.  He had a rocky high school experience, getting kicked out for “weed related incidents” and winding up in a reform school.  It was there that Ellison started to discover his inner artist, initially focusing on writing and film.

Fast forward to the early Aughts.  Ellison released his first compilation tape, July Heat, in 2005 and his second, Raw Cartoons, in 2006.  These compilations were pure beats, and possibly made with hip-hop vocals in mind.  It was around this time that Adult Swim, the late night programming branch of Cartoon Network, chose Ellison’s music for their between show bumpers.  The crowd who watches Adult Swim is generally defined by themselves as such: teen-to-young adult male stoner.  The music was perfect for such an audience, with its chill, lo-fi sound and its floating, experimental melodies.  Later in 2006, FlyLo released his first album, 1983, which continued in the vein of beat but moved away from Hip-Hop and toward psychedelica.  This move marked an important shift in FlyLo’s music, as he took his art in a much more experimental and rule-reforming direction.
2008 saw the release of Los Angeles, the album that brought Flying Lotus forcefully onto the music scene radar.  The album drew rave, if confused reviews.  Pitchfork wrote that it had an “accomplished fusion of debris and warmth in a place somewhere between b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism” and Dusted Magazine compared it to “Pete Rock's stiff but soulful rap productions crossed paths with Aphex Twin's avant-garde electronica and Rob Mazurek's 21st century psychedelic fusion to birth Flying Lotus, a headphone producer who bridges the world of beat, blip and bop.”  These reviews use words and descriptions we can understand, but can you really imagine a mix between “b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism?”  Clearly, something was afoot.  The reviewers were using established, loaded vocabulary to describe a new phenomenon.  They could not accurately express what they were hearing with available language, ending in valiant failure to describe Los Angeles.  How can one blame them?  Listen to tracks such as Parisian Goldfish or GNG BNG or Golden Diva.  How would you describe them?
As reviewers and consumers tried to come to terms with his work, Flying Lotus continued working, and, in 2010, released the epic Cosmogramma.  The album incorporated a heavy jazz influence (Ellison is the nephew of Alice Coltrane) while still moving away from anything else you’ve ever heard.  In an interview with Pitchfork, FlyLo said, "I'm finally getting to the point where I can make the kind of records... that I wanted to make when I was younger, things that I dreamed about making," and described the album as a “space opera.”  He was not, however, giving name to a genre, this he makes clear.  He provided “space opera” as a description, but, once again, what is space opera?  How can one imagine such a thing?
            In his article on genre classification, Carlos Sancho proposes sorting genre’s by their tonal harmony and chord progressions: “The underlying hypothesis is that each musical genre makes use of different rules that allow or forbid specific chord progressions” (Sancho Pg. 1).  Flying Lotus would scoff at such a remark.  Desire to constrain music to genre’s dictated by chord progression seems a step backwards, while FlyLo pushes in the other direction.  Rarely, if ever, is academia on the cutting edge; it is always examining the past, and letting newness slip by.  The music industry is often looking forward, but with money in mind.  In his article on genre, Phillip Cunningham writes that “The underlying record company problem…how to turn music into a commodity, is solved in generic terms. Genre is a way of defining music in its market or, alternatively, the market in its music” (Cunningham Pg. 242).  The music distribution companies want a selling point, and want one that will be understood by people across the social spectrum.  The companies want newness, but fear indefinability.  Cunningham proceeds, writing against the music industry, claiming that “[W]hen you classify music, it becomes a fad, which tends to go away” (Cunningham Pg. 243)  Flying Lotus seems to recognize this logic, and actively steers clear of sameness.  If the music is always different, it is always fresh, and can become a fad over and over.
            I could go on for quite a long time, gushing over this or that tiny detail in any of FlyLo’s songs (listen close, there are many) but alas, I am constrained by the modern academic format.  Perhaps this too will change, as music genre has, with the advent of high-speed digital information transfer and increasing proficiency in emerging technology.  Flying Lotus exemplifies modern artistry, combining traditional practices with expertise in modern means.  He embodies the attitude of his generation, one wracked by confusion and a restless desire to break with convention.  As processes of globalization speed up, the future gets more and more cloudy.  Flying Lotus embraces the murk, and works within it, pushing and prodding to see what possibilities are out there, never satisfied that he has reached a destination.  So has Flying Lotus created a new genre?  The question is in fact flawed.  The term genre is outdated.  Flying Lotus has and is creating something new, sans name.  What will future scholars and listeners classify it as? As yet, no answer.  Hold on tight, and keep your arms and legs inside the car.  We are in for quite a ride.

 

 

Content

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from Warp Records on Vimeo.

Flying Lotus — MmmHmm from Special Problems on Vimeo.

Track 8 - Flying Lotus - Raw Cartoons

Flying Lotus - Computer Face, Pure Being by inertiamusic

flying lotus: golden Diva by muevelo

flying lotus: parisian goldfish by muevelo

Recoiled - Flying Lotus by CharlieOk

Flying Lotus - "Table Tennis" (Feat. Laura Darlington) by Speaker Snacks

Flying Lotus - Massage Situation by TheEargasm

 

Resources

 

NRDePaul 2010