Minnesota and VCTRE have teamed up to remind their fans that life in the first quarter of the 21st century has often been punctuated with memes. While some are forgettable and pass quickly through the cultural wash, others come up again and again in parody, or simply because they retain resonance to time, place, or circumstance. Now, one of those timeless memes has been worked aptly into music, creating an anthem around defending an entire sub-culture from the specter of human judgment.

Listeners of the song will be reminded, through the samples used in the track, of the indignant rant of a young woman who apparently had come into a conversation where her cultural identity was questioned as a trend. The response falls into a spoken-word cadence, the meter being marked by emotional punctuation, which becomes more self-assured and relentless as it progresses. Her choices, many of those spiritual and characteristic of self-healing, are called into question for authenticity, presumably. Her justified defense is the meme. This, then, becomes the momentum for the music that follows in the track itself, where the emotion of the rant finds release through music. The spoken-word cadence becomes the kicks, complaints wubby distortions, and the melodic progression on the high end, for balance, supporting the indignation expressed in the meme. It is the music that completes the emotional journey that has been expressed, although we know the words by now.

By connecting a unifying theme to the music it represents, literally through the music, a rallying anthem has been created supporting the inherently open and original space of the bass music culture. Many of the ideas that encompass this culture however are misinterpreted through generalizations made by the culture-at-large, resulting in unfair judgments and assumptions. Though intrinsically unfair and problematic, creating generalizations and assumptions about others that we don’t know much about is, in fact, a very continuous and prominent aspect of being a homo-sapien. Conversely, however, having empathy for others no matter the construct of identity they choose to represent, and accepting oneself as human and therefore good, is also ‘not a trend’. Have a listen and celebrate those facts below!

Minnesota X VCTRE – “Not a Trend”

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