ARE ALBUMS DEAD?
BY: XANDER
A major complain about a lot of artist is that they aren’t creating albums anymore. What I mean by that is that the project they release feel more like a playlist of singles rather than a cohesive project like a lot of artist used too, and what many attribute this change to, is the new streaming era. But did streaming really kill albums? In my opinion they did not. Lots of great legacy artists such as Kendrick, Kanye, Vince Staples continue to create bodies of work that are more “album feeling” because they didn’t let streaming change the way they approached music.
They were influence by a generation that all they knew was albums and a cohesive way to create a body of work. As the new generation came in, that influence changed and shifted to a more hit maker mentality and a more care free approach. While there are some new artist who are still following a more cohesive formula (JID, Denzel, 070Shake to name a few). The issue with this is that they only drop every now and then, creating a sort of “void” where in the time between, we do not see those cohesive projects in the main stream. Due to the easy accessibility of music creation nowadays, a lot of the music that you will hear is the “fast fashion” of the music world. So with the rapidly changing landscape combined with the time it takes to create great cohesive projects, we tend to get a lot of “filler” music.
Even in the underground scene, not many people are trying to put out full albums because they feel the need to tend to a more stream oriented style. A common theme I see is they will put out cohesive EPs that tend to follow a certain sound and/or story. This way many artist can still put out a “body of work” without making a 15 songs that album that only a couple songs will be picked from. I don’t think that streaming has “killed” the art of albums, I Just think that the influences that our artists are coming from, prioritize the music being released rather than a story being told, and as that tricked down we will see less and less cohesive projects, but at the same time, the ones that do deliver a story will become more special..
