Hype Williams not Xerox Teens Untitled hop Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite And Start Getting Reel

Anyway, the reason I’m called Hype Williams–aside from the fact it makes everyone actually pay attention to my emails for the first time in my life–is that I’m big into taking commercial hip-hop from the 90s and deconstructing it by feeding it through some default Fruity Loops patches. It’s a recent-past nostalgia thing? Like what Burial did with UK garage, except that silly mug spent literally hours on the stuff! Me? I do all mine on my DS while I’m waiting to sign on (the dole). Think of it as sorta like in 2007, when teenagers used to run around telling each other they “only listened to 90s R&B” for weird kudos points. Anyway, the business plan I drafted in Powerpoint posits the following: Those teenagers have grown up. They are at the early-20s anxiety pinch-point, slap-bang in the demand-saddle. They need aural comfort food, a recent past to idealize. They are, in other words, nostalgic for 2007, when they used to go around telling each other they were nostalgic for 90s R&B. Ergo, Hype Williams is their collective attempt to relive 1998 via 2007. Weird, or what? Anyway, projected net income: $4 million. Some people insist that this is exactly what’s wrong with music today–everyone seems to be jizzing on each other beneath a meta-ironical riotshield of artistic anonymity and contrived lo-fidelity, thus keeping us safe from the hurled billiard balls of genuine critical analysis. And you’d be right. But who am I to piss against the wind? Like Murdoch or Cowell or your local drug pusher, I can say with good conscience: “I’m only giving people what they want. If it wasn’t me servicing these needs, someone else would be…” It is the Nuremberg Defense of our days. I’ma sit tight, obey the market’s orders and hope to God that the wind doesn’t change. AS RELAYED TO GAVIN HAYNES