Trap’s triplet flow made prior hip-hop styles sound outdated

Evidence

The Atlanta trio Migos became synonymous with trap’s ascent, popularizing the triplet flow, a rapid-fire delivery that quickly made older “boom bap” styles of hip-hop sound outdated. In rap, the paradigm most certainly shifted. Trap was hardly obsessed with compositional experimentation (the labels culled backtracks from an endless number of anonymous grunts who pumped out commodity beats), but its immediacy made it feel more authentic than rival sounds. Sharing a spirit with punk rock, songs were often created in twenty minutes. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 392

Categorization

• QUESTION: Trap’s immediacy felt ‘more authentic’ despite commodity beats — worth interrogating what authenticity means in a flattened-omnivore frame.
• DEEPTHINKING: The tension here is sharp: a genre born of immediacy, even improvisatory commodity production, nonetheless catalyzed a paradigm shift — complicating Marx’s claim that commodified, industrial culture can’t generate genuine novelty.