Actor and film producer Donald Glover named the at the Golden Globes awards ceremony Migos, the hip-hop trio from Atlanta, “the Beatles This generation “. He giggled. He was aware of the provocation. The Beatles are the most important band in music history. And the Migos? They rap about their” bad bitches “, scantily clad women with relevant qualities, about favorite submachine guns and about the best way to cook crack. And of course about their luxury brand “Saatshi”, which means: Versace. In short: The Migos make exactly the music that the cultural establishment has problems with. And then their new album is called the one on first place in the American charts is also “Culture”.
But a lot of the tracks on “Culture” are actually breathtakingly good. For example the number 1 hit “Bad and Boujee”. The three Migos rap over a very slow, melancholic, heavy beat – all more or less at the same time. Maybe you would have to do them with the instead of the Beatles Beach Boys to compare. Because just like this, the three rappers are currently revolutionizing the principle of polyphony in pop. Incredibly artful they interweave different vowel tracks. While one is rapping, another is repeating passages of the same text at a different speed, the third is responsible for the so-called ad libs, for imitated pistol shots, animal sounds or cryptic abbreviations. Language is broken down into abstract material, the voices become rhythm machines. All of this has been around for several years, but the Migos have perfected it. And so “Culture” is a completely original product from Atlanta. This big city in sultry Georgia is the greenhouse that grows a very special kind of hip-hop: trap.
