Students discuss music industry

By Kennedy Warren

Editorial Assistant

CMHS students described their opinions on their favorite genres of music and their views on the music industry as a whole.

AJ Houston poses for a photo as he listens to music with his earbuds in. Students at Crete-Monee High School share their views on music artists, who they listen to and favor the most, and which artists they don’t like. Junior Marquise King starts with his opinion on who he thinks is the most controversial artist.

“Definitely Kanye West, he’s been saying many problematic things lately,” King said.

He further adds to his comment by stating who his favorite artist is.

“My favorite artist is probably James Arthur; I often listen to him on Spotify.”

In recent years, Spotify has been the most frequently used music app, beating Apple Music by having 427 million more users.

In addition to Spotify having a more significant following, many good artists on Spotify are getting more of a fan base than they would on other music apps and social media platforms.

Some are the favorites of juniors: Fatima Acosta, Ariel Glover, and Tania Strickland.

“My favorite artist is probably Tyler, the Creator; my favorite album of his is Igor,” Fatima Acosta said.

“I like Lil Durk,” Strickland said.

“My favorite is G Herbo,” Glover said.

However, there have been many artists with a big following, but they are also very problematic. Among these problematic artists are Blueface and Chrisean Rock, according to Davis. Strickland has his own point of view.

“For me, it’s between Chrisean Rock and Summer Walker.” Said Strickland.

In this new generation of rappers in the industry, many rappers have a lot of controversy surrounding them or the people they surround themselves with, making them even more popular and generally well-known. This way of gaining and maintaining fame dates back to the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, with Roxanne Wars starting this tactic by making diss tracks of other rappers in the 1980s.

However, this style of rapping dissipated in the mid-late 2000s, though in recent years, there has been an upward soar in diss tracks and rappers having ‘beef’ (animosity towards) other rappers; this way of gaining fame or popularity wasn’t only accessible to rappers and people in the music industry, lots of personalities outside of the music industry, especially YouTubuers, began releasing diss tracks.

Y ouTubers worldwide had started to ‘beef’ with each other and make diss tracks about them. These diss tracks performed exceptionally well on YouTube and, in turn, launched the careers of many big YouTubers, such as The Paul Brothers, RiceGum, KSI, etc.

As generations continue, things will change and adapt, especially things involving the music industry, as we’ve seen before.