Great article. FlyLo is one of the more important artists to me, I remember first listening to You're Dead a couple years ago and being completely blown away, I mean it felt transported to us from like a different world. As time goes on, I've rotated more to Los Angeles as being the FlyLo album that's ended up in my musical rotation the most, but Cosmogramma is definitely his masterpiece imo.
As you mention in the article, his music, at least in the early days, really did defy genre labels. You could call it IDM, but it really wasn't because the percussion was too hip-hop, you could then call it instrumental hip-hop but it was doing something pretty different than a Donuts or ...Endtroducing, just by virtue of its production. By Cosmogramma and You're Dead, you even start to get some jazz going there.
The thing with FlyLo is that he's making beats as primarily art and to rap with secondarily. Hip-hop is an art-form, and a lot of people want to recognize it as such, but we never really let it breathe like true art, we never really let the beats stand on their own, and recognize that not all beats necessarily need rappers to begin with. In terms of art, It's pretty telling to me that Ellison identifies quite a bit with David Lynch, who passed away recently, as an artist. Lynch's work has a lot of that similar eclectism that categorizes FlyLo's, and the two have a similar way to cultivate a really strong atmosphere.
Anyways, sorry to get a bit rambly. I hope to get some long form work done about Flying Lotus myself in the near-to-distant future, so thanks for the inspiration!
Agree with you on all counts - it was this weird instrumental hip-hop meets IDM but at the time you couldn't imagine rapping to it, so was it really instrumental hip-hop? Los Angeles was a huge grower for me.
Great article. FlyLo is one of the more important artists to me, I remember first listening to You're Dead a couple years ago and being completely blown away, I mean it felt transported to us from like a different world. As time goes on, I've rotated more to Los Angeles as being the FlyLo album that's ended up in my musical rotation the most, but Cosmogramma is definitely his masterpiece imo.
As you mention in the article, his music, at least in the early days, really did defy genre labels. You could call it IDM, but it really wasn't because the percussion was too hip-hop, you could then call it instrumental hip-hop but it was doing something pretty different than a Donuts or ...Endtroducing, just by virtue of its production. By Cosmogramma and You're Dead, you even start to get some jazz going there.
The thing with FlyLo is that he's making beats as primarily art and to rap with secondarily. Hip-hop is an art-form, and a lot of people want to recognize it as such, but we never really let it breathe like true art, we never really let the beats stand on their own, and recognize that not all beats necessarily need rappers to begin with. In terms of art, It's pretty telling to me that Ellison identifies quite a bit with David Lynch, who passed away recently, as an artist. Lynch's work has a lot of that similar eclectism that categorizes FlyLo's, and the two have a similar way to cultivate a really strong atmosphere.
Anyways, sorry to get a bit rambly. I hope to get some long form work done about Flying Lotus myself in the near-to-distant future, so thanks for the inspiration!
Agree with you on all counts - it was this weird instrumental hip-hop meets IDM but at the time you couldn't imagine rapping to it, so was it really instrumental hip-hop? Los Angeles was a huge grower for me.