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By now we all know about the /mu-core of the 2000s-2010s and the rym-core memes. But now with the growth of Algorhitm Fed Knowledge as a flex, everyone on instagram would gouge their eyes out just to have a stranger compliment their "taste", the hot new social currency, substituting being fun or having a personality just by nonshalantly showing an everlasting allegiance to music that you swear youve always listened to, and absolutely didnt find out about last week through a guy in an Arc'teryx beanie giving out music recomendations. In an ecosystem that lives on meta-irony, you gotta show that you are able to unironically, "genuinely" enjoy the arts, but are not as much of a stuck-up elitist, as to listen to stuff like Pink Floyd or classical music. No one wants to be the called out as the faux-intellectual. Stuff that is fun, but not for "the dumb people". Also everyone on there is kinda depressed so Radiohead reigns so supreme, i dont even mention it in the list.
Thus the mythological EliteBallKnowledge-havers arose, and music is, once again, being canonized into recognized unchallengeable gold standards. (by the way this is all good music and i also listen to half of this, im just joking im not as much of an asshole as i seem)
My picks for this new canon of underground algorhitm classics for seventeen year olds trying to be the new intellectual caste are
IGOR - Tyler the creator, an album they often now reject, but that has been the most important one in their development and more likely than not, their first "favourite" album.
Madvillainy - MFDOOM and Madlib, has a really cool cover art and the songs are a two minutes each with a very overstimulating vibe to them, perfect for the average short form content consumer. Plus its not as mainstream as a tyler album, making anyone who talks about it an immediate in-the-know intellectual!
Deftones - they made that one song with the guitar you know the one jesus i fucking love deftones yeah
Sade - is a staple of the "performative guy" meme from last year. together with Jeff Buckley, theyre the perfect story post to let all the girls in your follower list know you are a sensitive young man ("the hoes love that shit", as the kids say). Also they are from the 90s which were cool as fuck anway. Not that i was there but still.
Japanese Fusion - and city pop, blew up the last couple years between Casiopea, Takanaka (which you might know from hidden.ny as "the guy that has that big red guitar shaped like a surfboard, which really looks good in small-screen videos"), and anime soundtracks such as Cowboy Bebop's. It's light, its breezy, its summer-y, it's exotic, it's considered jazz (and we all know jazz is the coolest anything can be, everyone wants to be a jazz expert apparently) but most of all, it's Vintage!
Selected Ambient Works 8592 - Aphex Twin, and lastly, we couldnt miss the guy with the logo that literally anyone cant get enough of apparently. Go to any "inspo page" and see this mysterious, underground, barely known to the public, music ghost being revered like a god among men! Truly shows you are a wizard-like master of the dark arts!
what else makes up this exciting new pantheon for conosseurs? (the way i see it its mostly rym/nerd/critic-approved music, so no taylor swift, but that is also a mainstay in the collective conscious of the reels-hivemind, which might disagree with rym (on stuff like jamiroquai). stuff that people actually listen to outside of the reels, so no songs that went viral for a couple weeks or even staple songs that are just reel background noise)