Chapter 03
The Taste Drift
Genre is a blunt instrument, which is useful as a proxy for how someone changes over time.
The shape of it
As mentioned above, genres are blunt and crude classifiers and many artists would eschew being boxed in this way. However, they are useful ways to have shorthand ways of initiating certain types of conversation.
I tend to be meticulous in how I tag and describe things. I don't usually have a strong opinion on how to classify things except for two cases:
- World music is not a genre. See here for more thoughts on this.
- Danza Kuduro is NOT a kuduro song.
The electronic thread
Peak calendar year per artist (dot size = lifetime plays in the dataset).
The constant
Electronic music held at roughly 20–30% across almost every year from 2008 to 2023. Even as Hip-Hop grew and Metal faded, the Electronic share kept its floor.
Within that consistent block, a single subgenre runs the full 17-year thread: trip-hop.
Massive Attack, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Flying Lotus, Esthero, Gorillaz, The Avalanches. All these artists share a particular quality: downtempo, atmospheric, hip-hop adjacent without being hip-hop.
What changed without noticing
Year to year, the changes were invisible — a few more hip-hop albums, a few fewer metal ones, the same electronic artists at the same volume. Nothing that felt like a seismic shift.
Across 17 years: Hip-Hop consolidated its position at the top. Metal faded. Electronic held. The African genres — Kuduro from 2008, Gqom arriving in 2017, Kizomba never disappeared.