A Meg Theory | What Is Gummy Worm Rap, and Why We Need to Abolish Catch-All Genres

Part I: What Is Gummy Worm Rap?

When Coloring Book, the third mixtape by Chance the Rapper came out in 2016 I was seeing a lot of people criticizing its style or saying it wasn't hard enough. Those same people looked at the seventh track, Mixtape, and were like, “yes, that's what I was looking for, this is a real rap song.” Looking back I feel that was the reaction because the song was just very of that time. Low-fi, SoundCloud vibes, with features from the two biggest names in “mumble rap” at the time, Lil Yachty and Young Thug. It was the song that strayed from the then-current popular trends of the rap genre the least. Chance himself is mumbling on the track. 

So we have a rap mixtape that people were complaining wasn’t a rap mixtape because it didn’t sound like “mumble rap” which some people who call themselves true rap fans say is not real rap? Sounds a little like it's not the music that’s the problem, but rather the boxes we’re trying to shove the music into. What are those boxes called? 

Genres. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of music genres. Are they still accurate? Useful? Relevant? Realistic? I don’t particularly like the restriction of categorizing music into specific genres, though I am conditioned to consider them when I think of music. It’s hard to get rid of genres because they can be useful in discussion and description. Yet, in this age of information, an age with accessibility for emerging artists to every type of music spanning years, genres, languages, and cultures, the lines separating genres are blurring and fading. In light of this, rigid genre separations feel arbitrary.

For part I of this discourse, I have been ruminating over an aspect of a certain type of music shoved into the microgenre: “mumble rap”. According to the esteemed Wikipedia, “the term was first used to describe rappers whose lyrics were unclear, but the use of the term has expanded to include rappers that generally put little emphasis on lyricism or lyrical quality. ... "Mumble rap" is often used as a derogatory term in reference to a perceived incoherence of the artist's lyrics.” “Mumble rap” puts “little emphasis on lyricism” and that is because the emphasis is on the melody and the sound of the song as a whole. I will add too because it is important that this was a genre that grew out of trap and was made viral largely by SoundCloud, for this reason, the term is often used interchangeably with “SoundCloud rap.”

Who comes to mind when we hear the term “mumble rap”? How about the aforementioned Lil Yachty. What interests me in terms of the music of rappers like Lil Yachty is something that is lacking when mumble rap is defined: the beat. Music like this deserves its own discussion or at least shouldn't be just called “mumble rap.” Walk with me. Let's look at the song Broccoli by Shelley FKA DRAM featuring Lil Yachty. Let’s literally look at it with the music video. You have Yachty with his bright red braids playing the recorder next to Shelley (DRAM) whose entire face is a smile. It epitomizes the beat of this song, many Lil Yachty songs, and many songs that are typically deemed “mumble rap.” Yet, what I’m talking about has nothing to do with the rapping. I’m talking about how when mumble rapping became the thing, we didn't just get mumbling we got these beats that sound like you're in a deep pink video game or a sparkly hello kitty themed insta filter, and I love it.

So what is this sound? Bubblegum came to mind but it's not like bubble gum pop, it’s ice pops, gummies, gummy worm rap. Like those gummies with rainbows of colors in them all morphed together. It's juvenile, it's nursery rhymes, it’s Fruit by the Foots, and it's personified in the music videos. Beyond “Broccoli,” there’s the video for iSpy by KYLE featuring Lil Yachty in which they are sitting in a sandbox surrounded by primary colors and candy with their bodies and heads distorted so they look like toddlers. 

Yet, what categorizes these beats besides what they make me picture in my head? That piano and video game noises was all I had to offer so I sat down with my brother, Kevin Maldjian, iOS engineer, and music producer to play some of these songs for him and discuss the instruments he heard. We started with Broccoli followed by iSpy then went to two other songs with these gummy worm fairytale beats. Kevin layed out a formula that all four songs followed. First, he pointed out they all have a piano loop melody that stays consistent throughout the entire song whether it be a stabbing piano or a 1973 Rhodes piano. Then you have the video game samples that are probably just ripped straight from their favorite games. They act as percs or foley, Kevin explained, and further amplify the jovial tone of the track. The last element is the rhythm section, composed of classic 808s and 909s used to move the sample along and give it energy. These aspects all lay the simple groundwork for the main instrument: the voice. Kind of like a jazz solo. 

So “mumble rap”, as we’ve mentioned, is focused on the vocal melodies, not so much the lyrics. As a result, this aspect of mumble rap shaped these gummy worm beats. Kevin agreed with this adding that it's a very basic beat, “you have this really basic piano melody, with basic percs, and then your most basic forms of electronic music: drums, 808s and 909s, and then you set the scene for what's considered a jazz solo which is the vocal melody.”

A second thought I pulled from this discussion was that because mumble rap was made primarily by SoundCloud users, online, with no formal training, or resources, it led them to all find these same timeless kits online, and generate the same sort of sound with their beats. Further, they started experimenting with these classic 808s. Kevin’s response was that where mumble rap differs is in its tone color. In the mid to late 2010s, the iconic rap production of that time was largely created using something similar in the vein of an “audio crack dealer” pack of drums, percs, samples, etc curated and passed around by producers such as Lex Luger. In this mumble rap/SoundCloud era we have this electronic meets analog side of beat making with the simple 808 hit and rolling sample. Yet, what they are doing with those 808s to create this kind of video game-esque noise is called pitch bending. Pitch bending is when you take an 808 and then you bend it downwards or upwards, the result being that rumbly 808.  “I think every rap has had strong booming bass but this is the first time it sounds like a frog,” Kevin explained, adding that pitch bending had also been seen on songs such as Adamn Killa’s Adman Superstar (2016). 

Focusing on that tone that sets “mumble rap” apart, Kevin said, in reference to the piano stabs, that stabs have been used all the way back since classical music and then more recently in the 90s to create feelings of impulse and energy, yet “it's interesting to see bright piano stabs take on a more jovial welcoming tone.” The gummy worm fairytale tone. The firetruck red braids, recorders, sandboxes, and ice pops tone. This time, let’s say between 2016-2017, of mumble rap, was a time when nobody was taken seriously, and they weren’t taking themselves seriously either. It was light hearted and silly. Features were from rappers with names like Young Scooter, Skippa Da Flippa, and Big Brutha Chubba, and the beats of that time reflected this upbeat, smiley vibe. 
This sound, born on SoundCloud by rappers aiming to spotlight their vocal melodies, didn’t just stay on SoundCloud, and despite the belittling, and questioning of its validity it has reached far places. 

And yeah the domination of this lighthearted sound may be over. Lil Yachty may not still reign supreme and “mumble rappers” may sound more like DaBaby now. But one of those beats made it on a Drake album.“Whatever's good is gonna get mainstream eventually, if it's good more people are gonna wanna listen to it,” said Kevin when I spoke of the spreading of this sound. I’ve talked a lot about Lil Yachty but there’s another important name who tapped into these fairytale gummy worm mumble SoundCloud beats, and that is Young Thug. 

“I just wanna know shit/Well, we all love Young Thug” sings Kevin Abstract on Miserable America in 2016.  And we did all love Young Thug because he was making that music that we were all craving at that time. Young Thug rapping on one of these gummy worm beats made it onto a Drake album, with Ice Melts (featuring Young Thug) on More Life (2017). Which was the third song that I played for Kevin in our discussion. “Ice Melts” stood out to me when that album came out, I used to always throw it in my playlists, it was addicting. 

And then on the last day of February of this year (2020), Bad Bunny dropped YHLQMDLG which historically debuted at no. 2 on the Billboard 200. The fourth and final song I played for Kevin was Pero Ya No off this album. From the very beginning of the track it is obvious that it has that fairytale magical gummy ice pop-ness typical of these 2016-2017 songs deemed “mumble rap,” but again I’m not talking at all about how he's singing I'm talking about the beat, following the formula down to the pitch bent 808s.  The presence of this beat on this album shows the oozing of this sound into the growing Latin Trap scene, standing testament to its influence and formation (Bad Bunny also started out on SoundCloud).  

In the Chicago era of jazz in the 1920s, people were criticizing the music saying that it was not jazz, and then in the transition from that to bebop people were saying, “that’s not jazz that's just noise.” According to Kevin, “you’re always gonna have people that are in the current scene fighting a new wave of something ‘cause they just don’t understand it...you even have some of the great jazz players never wanting to embrace bebop because it doesn't sound like jazz, because we have certain rules of it, but really what the real definition of jazz is just like the pushing the boundaries of your genre, and it's the same thing with rap, you're gonna have to push the boundaries or else it's just gonna be boring.”

Yeah there’s some terrible things about “mumble rap” as there are some terrible “mumble rappers” but there is also a lot of movement and progression driven by that carefree gummy worm haze. Yet, we would never get this essential innovation and growth if we succumbed to the gatekeeping and rule enforcement that often accompanies genres, and those who want to keep them in their purest forms. 

So is it the music that’s the problem or the restrictions put in place by genres and their gatekeepers? This restriction to growth and innovation is often felt the hardest by BIPOC especially when their music is put into catch-all genres such as urban or latin, which leads us to Part II: Why We Need to Abolish Catch-All Genres, coming out whenever my thoughts are in order.