I’m going to start by laying all my cards on the table. I love the UK underground, the meteoric rise of its stars such as EsDeeKid, Fakemink and Feng is more than warranted, and their music is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly impoverished rap scene.
This rise is not only just due to the talent within the genre (although there is that in abundance), but in that the genre is perfectly matched to our chronically online, low-attention span, ADHD generation. Something striking about the UK underground is the brevity and the stimulation within the songs. Rebel, EsDeeKid’s breakout album, has 11 songs and comes in just under 21 minutes in runtime. Its longest song is less than two and a half minutes long and its briefest is just over half a minute long. Each song is punchy, bassy, and heavily produced.
Not every artist in the scene has such an overstimulating production style as EsDeeKid, but even those that don’t still keep the brevity seen elsewhere. Feng, who has a more subdued production style, rarely exceeds two minutes on his songs, and many of them even fall below the 90-second mark. Listening to one of these artists provides you with the frequent change in scene that one would experience scrolling videos online. This formatting doesn’t just help with the appeal of the underground, but also with its dissemination. EsDeeKid’s punchy beats and snarling lyrics fit perfectly with highly produced amateur viral edits on TikTok. From Formula 1 and combat sports, to the Timothée Chalamet film The King, you can’t escape him.
What this all means is that UK underground is not just music well-liked by our generation, it is the music of our generation. It’s perfectly suited to our fast-paced, technologically literate, attention-deficient, dopamine-overloaded minds. Subtlety is non-existent, but that’s not something Gen Z seems to care for anyways.
“ADHD Bubble and Brain” by amenclinics_photos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.