Photo by Laura June Kirsch

On “Where My Money,” Royce da 5’9 asks a provocative question: “Now who gives a fuck about who bars the hardest/When the DJs think they’re bigger stars than the artists?” There is no clear answer to this question, but its premises are useful. Royce thinks that DJs are stepping out of line and becoming too self-important. That might be true, but given the reception of TNGHT’s recent performance at Webster Hall, the recent growing popularity of DJs seems to be less of a collective shift in DJs’ egoism and more of a collective shift in what fans actually want to hear (and do) at concerts.

“Fans of what?” you may ask. This is precisely where TNGHT gets tricky. Though the duo is signed to Warp Records, the members – Lunice and Hudson Mohawke – have affiliations with LuckyMe, Night Slugs and G.O.O.D. Music. They also have roots in the underground scenes of Montreal and Glasglow, their respective cities of origin. Finally, making things even more complicated is their role in popularizing the revival of trap, the formerly waning and currently vibrant musical aesthetic of early 2000s Southern hip-hop. Because they sit at this peculiar intersection of disparate scenes and sounds, the only way to genuinely answer who their fans are is tautological:  fans of TNGHT are fans of TNGHT.

A woman next to me asked, “Is this hip-hop?” Yes, but it’s also something else. Lunice formerly claimed that the aim of TNGHT is to dive “straight into mainstream rap music,” but there’s no way to comfortably call what they’re doing just hip-hop. The fact that the question is even posed speaks volumes.

Their music speaks volumes as well. Many volumes, in fact. Their set is characterized purely by peaks and troughs. Dancing to their music is like interval training on a stationary bike. “ACRYLICS,” their latest single, embodies this mark most vividly. The song oscillates between dreamy twinkles and explosive synths and bass. “Explosive” is the key word here because there is no real build-up: the peaks just happen. The only thing that sustains you in between these highs and lows is pure anticipation. It’s interesting to see this play out live. Anticipating the highs, people stopped dancing and longingly stared at Lunice and Hudmo for direction. They really didn’t know what to do! Other people complained: they wanted to dance non-stop. (Translation: they wanted to hear what they wanted to hear)

Their complaints weren’t unheard. TNGHT loves to play with the audience’s expectations, but they were not authoritarian. If anything, they were fairly obliging. Although the songs they make embody the disparate traditions that they skillfully patch together – “Higher Ground” is the example par excellence –  they were willing to please their constituents one demographic at a time. While Lunice’s “Panera Bread” pleased the hip-hoppers at the expense of everyone else, it was balanced by a later nod to the EDMers, with “Treat Me Right” by Keys N Krates.

While the music spoke and the audience spoke back, the stars of the show were rather mute. Sure, Lunice occasionally got up from his swivel chair – yes, he had a chair – and madly directed the crowd like some sort of crazed classical conductor, but there was no further communication; Hudmo was behind his computer the entire time. They probably didn’t even have microphones. Still, they were the main attraction. This kind of self-effacement stands in direct opposition to the DJs that Royce mentions and perhaps that’s why TNGHT is so damn likeable: at the end of the day they’re all about the music. There were no audio watermarks saying, “TNGHT made it” or some other quickly annoying phrase. Their trademark is simply the music itself. And that’s precisely why TNGHT has made it.

The post Concert Review: TNGHT Perfects DJing at Webster Hall appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Lunice likes to start his sets on a somber note. At a recent show here in New York City, he opened with Chopin’s funeral march, sung by a computerized voice chanting “Swag” over each gloomy note. “I’m taming swag down,” he told me just before taking the stage. “I never actually put myself into the whole swag world.”

But the 24-year-old producer and DJ can’t escape the ubiquitous monosyllabic catchphrase – Mad Decent’s website proudly proclaims him “Montreal’s king of swag” – because he speaks its language fluently. He dresses like Odd Future’s lost member and has a habit of performing Lil B’s cooking dance on stage. His music takes its cues from popular American hip-hop, the sort that currently dominates urban radio, thumping at just the right tempo to seamlessly segue into any rap song of the moment. But so far, hip-hop hasn’t been showing love back.

At his New York gig, he was preceded by a surprise mix from Just Blaze and followed by the legendary dubstep DJ Kode9. Sonically, Lunice sits somewhere similar, part hip-hop and part underground electronic. When he spins, he’ll mix Jeezy with Rustie without hesitation. And his beats, backed by 808 kicks and whipcracking snares, can be both menacing and lush, synthesized arpeggios fluttering that much higher atop trembling low frequencies. The results have been dubbed ‘trap music’ – though Lunice vehemently rejects that title – based on their resemblance to what one might find on a Trap-a-Holics mixtape. Thanks to the borderless Internet, American electronic musicians like Flosstradamus and Baauer have also been adopting the trap style.

Yet despite their Southern roots, Lunice’s beats have found their greatest success on dance floors overseas. He is signed to the Glasgow-based LuckyMe record label, whose roster tends to dabble in the grey area between hip-hop and so-called bass music, its own proper scene and the U.K.’s signature sound for the past five-odd years. Somehow, good ole American trunk rattling has been outsourced.

“You know why?” Lunice asks rhetorically. “Because dudes in Atlanta are all caught up in Atlanta sound. But I get it – it’s the American vibe. It’s like, ‘Yo, I’m from New York, I got my N.Y. sound. I’m from Brooklyn, I got my own sound.’”

That doesn’t mean Lunice’s sights aren’t set on the American hip-hop industry, which has immovable borders despite its transnational reach. “You can’t come in in the States and be like, ‘Yeah, I’m producing, let’s do this.’ You cannot,” he says. “You have to come from somewhere. You have to introduce yourself from some platform before you can actually break [into] the whole game.”

And that’s exactly what Lunice aims to do with TNGHT, the duo he comprises with LuckyMe co-founder Hudson Mohawke. On their eponymous debut EP, they’ve created a unique breed of post-Lex Luger hip-hop and standalone U.K. bass instrumentals. “We’re not focused on the DJ route where we do a bunch of gigs,” says Lunice of their plans. “We’re mostly focusing on putting out tracks for rappers. That’s it.”

But it’s not like rappers haven’t had a go at their beats already. Childish Gambino, for instance, released a verse set to Hudson Mohawke’s “Twistclip Loop,” and Waka Flocka freestyled over Lunice’s “The Good Kids” for a Pitchfork video segment. Electronic music has always borrowed ideas from hip-hop, remixing and sampling with a nightclub mentality, but it operates on different terms. TNGHT’s formula is not a straightforward verse-hook arrangement. Instead, they focus on progression and build-up, creating self-sustainable songs that demand more out of a vocalist than just straight bars.

Hip-hop producers, on the other hand, have already shown signs of TNGHT’s influence. “It’s almost not even worth talking about unless it’s a complete, straight A-to-Z bite,” says Lunice. “Hit-Boy got on some shit, heard shit from me and HudMo, and [made] something that sounds sort of similar. We ain’t gonna complain, ‘cause it’s only three notes. We take it as a compliment.”

American hip-hop acts are increasingly turning to Europe for fresh ideas. The title track from Drake’s album Take Care is produced by Jamie xx, and Azealia Banks’s claim to fame, “212,” relies on a beat by Belgian producers Lazy Jay. (That’s Lunice dancing in the music video, by the way.) Most notably, Kanye West’s single “Mercy” credits Hudson Mohawke with additional instrumentation. West also lifted TNGHT’s song “R U Ready” from their hands, and Lunice says he doesn’t know when it will resurface. The duo was forced to create an alternative version, “Higher Ground,” which appears on their EP.

Despite such milestones, Lunice stays humble. He knows that TNGHT could pave the way for his peers to cross over to the mainstream they know so well. “The whole TNGHT thing, it feels like it’s the voice of all of us dudes,” says Lunice, citing the LuckyMe, Night Slugs, and Numbers crews as examples. “A lot of people you wouldn’t really think were all in the whole hip-hop culture in general. So it’s just like, why is it different?”

TNGHT – TNGHT is out July 24th in the U.S. via LuckyMe. Available on Bleep, iTunes, and other music retailers.

The post “Keeping It <em>One Hunned</em>” – With TNGHT, Lunice Sets His Sights on the States appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.