I have decided to do my Aural studies audio paper on the sub-genre of called ‘splayed’, which is type of abstract, left-field hip hop, which comes from lofi and the lofi way of thinking about hip hop (which of course came from figures such as Pete Rock, Rza, Madlib, Dilla & more). The splayed genre was significantly impacted by the sLUms collective from New York, most notably Ade Hakim (aka 6ixpress) who is a producer & rapper who was the first to use a unique style of production that utilises the warp settings of Ableton (in particular, the beats option) in a way that was not done before (to my knowledge), and which was a big part of the sLUms sound. This innovation and sound was a big inspiration in the creation of Earl Sweatshirt’s project ‘Some rap songs”, and the group had some input production wise too.
This album, along with the movement sLUms had already built before that, created a very big shift in hip hop, which changed the way a lot of people thought about music. In particular, it impacted the production styles of many producers (especially across the US and UK). Production styles of many producers started to push a bit more experimental and abstract, and this started to birth new scenes of this kind of abstract hip hip, with people connecting online based on a shared love of this music.
The members of label/ collective ‘Everything is perfect’ (which includes myself) were also inspired by this music and way of thinking about hip hop, and it spurred many new ideas since and has developed into its/ their/ our own sound since. Tony Bontana (co-founder of Everything is Perfect, also producer & rapper) had been using the word ‘splayed’ to describe his beats in the past like the samples are splayed because they’re stretched and manipulated. In reflection of the lack of a name for this sub-genre/ idea, Tony put forward the idea of using splayed to describe the genre, since it fit by his use of it before and made sense to us too. Since that decision we started using it to describe our music (or certain ones which fall within that kind of idea), and it had been adopted by some of the associated artists with the label.