Which Music Genres Will Die Out within 20 years?

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I can only hope rap and hip hop fade away in the next twenty years or so. Maybe pop, as well, but I don't find it quite as irritating as the other two genres.

They said rap was going to fade out 20 years ago. Back then, for every Vanilla Ice, you had a Tribe Called Quest. Just like these days, for every Lil Wayne, you have a Lupe Fiasco. Rap isn't going to fade because artists both underground and popular are actually putting out good music. What you mostly hear on the radios and see on the TV are the wannabes, and the easy money-making tunes by MCs that've proven themselves like Kanye and Jay-Z. 20 years ago, you had crap from all those dance MCs, 10 years ago you had crap from those wannabe gangsters. Now we have all those corny post-modern autotune electro-rappers. But underneath that surface, rap has a solid foundation. Even if it did die -which it won't- eventually someone would dig it up from undeneath the dust and make a rap revolution.

I actually watched an interview with ICP and when the interviewer asked them about certain lyrics that made no sense, they were actually acting prideful about being uneducated. This kind of attitude already sets themselves up for failure in the future.

I also think all of this "scream at the top of your lungs" style of music will die out one of these days. It's one thing to make your voice sound raspy while singing, but the screaming stuff gets old quick. I used to love it when I was a teenager, but now it's just noise to me.

I beg to differ. Rap has run its course and I daresay that by 2020 it will be completely gone.

I agree/hope so. Rock lasted about 50 years in the mainstream, I would say from 1955-2005 though its roots go back to about the 1930s and it's still not completely obsolete, just hasn't really been mainstream music since Green Day's American Idiot was still charting singles or so. Hip hop has been mainstream for about 25 years or half that long, I'd say since around 1987 or so, but imo it's not nearly as versatile as rock. The main difference between hip hop subgenres is lyrical, not musical and I think its gimmicks are so entrenched that you can't really consider it 'cool' anymore, just kind of 'there'. American speech and even the speech of other Anglophone countries to some extent has permanently had an Ebonic twist on it due to the popularity of rap, and pop music has been permanently stamped by its influence, but you rarely hear songs that are purely rhymes and chorus anymore, mostly just guest rappers. I would say hip hop will have some mainstream presence for the rest of the '10s but will be totally melted into the musical landscape by 2020 and new rappers will no longer become popular.

Dubstep. It's just screams "fad genre." Don't get me wrong, there's dubstep I like, but even dubstep in the short amount of time it's gotten popular has redefined itself, with most dubstep losing the "filthy" sound to get more mass appeal. Dubstep certainly has left a mark on music, but the problem with it is, there's nothing in dubstep that makes it inherently dubstep, you can simply just put random dubstep influences into any song ever, so that alone will make it die.

As far as juggalo music, well, it's run it's mainstream success through in the 90s. The big problem isn't so much the actual music, it's the "culture" of juggalos, and even if the numbers are few (like they are now) there's going to be social misfit people who join that group of people, just for having the social group, since music is closely intertwined with social groups/status, especially here in the States. So in most ways, juggalo music has died out completely, you'll never hear ICP on the radio nowadays. Just the group remains, and sometimes gets stronger even, just because it appeals to...how do I put this nicely...idiots. Yeah.

As far as rap, I don't think it'll die. It'll evolve certainly, just as rock and pop does, but not die out completely, just rap of 20 years from now will be vastly different from rap of now. The other thing you gotta consider with rap, even if it dies amongst white people, black people and other minorities still love it regardless, and it's apart of their culture, for better or worse.

Last edited by 1000Knives on 29 Feb 2012, 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Even that Selena Gomez song 'Love You Like a Love Song' has a dubstep influence to it.

It borrows a lot but so does drum n bass, techno, trance, garage, house, etc.. all of which are either pushing 20 years or past it and still seem very much alive and well with even more terrain to push. I really think it will exist for a long time albeit the really BIG tear-the-roof-off industrial-strength wobbles will get old and likely you'll hear a lot more rhythmic and textural exploration instead. As for what dubstep 'is' in and of itself - its a compromise between two-step garage and dnb where they tried to take the dnb sounds, swagger, etc. and overhaul them for the 140ish range. In a lot of ways it feels nothing like dnb (at least the Skrillex and Flux Pavilion type stuff) but it does have more in common in terms of synchopation and swagger than any other style.

On a side note though I think the futures of dnb and dubstep are partially tied since they share a lot of common fanbase and I get the impression that you'll even see more of a push toward exploration of superhuman moods and atmospheres which will get more and more acute with time.

With the advent of the internet, I don't think any genre will die unless the internet does. Access to every genre that's ever been recorded, is easier that it ever has been in history. It's too easy for too many people to expose themselves to practically any genre their heart desires today. Ease of access, as long as it exists, means that every genre now has nearly equal chance of gaining a large enough audience to survive.

One massive solar flare though (or some other equally catastrophic cosmic event), and that could change in a heartbeat.

Rap and dubstep hopefully.

At this point, saying that rap is a genre, is like saying guitar is a genre.

I find it silly how so many people HOPE that rap dies out... I especially find it funny how there wishes won't come true.

That MTV Gangsta Glamour Rap BS on the other hand will die out, but I think it will be replaced by something equally or more pathetic.

Harsh vocals; like any other vocal technique are a form of emotional expression, weather or not you fancy yourself as muture for listening to them. To me, saying no one should ever scream in music is like saying no one should ever scream in plays. Some emotions are better to express through harsh vocals. Extreme metal isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Good riddance when it does.

Leave music for those with talent, and the boring technological creations of jumbled noise to please drugged up teenagers to the rest..

There is another genre I definitely want to vanish out of this world, it's called hardstyle. Every track really has this horrible sounding anthem trance lead in it that makes me want to kick myself in the nuts. The audience consists out of troublemakers only.

Actually I would say it's already dying out quite rapidly. Back in 2004, 60-80% of the pop chart was actually rap or at least hip hop influenced R&B. Now it's more like 15-20% of the chart. Still a lot, but declining quickly.