What Music Means to Me

What Music Means To Me

I start and end every day listening to music, I use it to wake up in the morning and fall asleep in the evening. As I listen to multiple genres of music, I have music that I would consider more suitable at different times of the day. My favourite genres are Hip-Hop/Rap & House, so I tend to listen to them through the majority of the day (including mornings). When at night time I would tend to listen to either a slow rap song or electronic, indie rock, or rock. I love going to watch my favourite artists live at gigs, I have attended many this year as well as several festivals, I love the atmosphere when watching live music as everyone is as passionate about that artist as you are. I tend to listen to most of my music on my iPhone using either the music app or Soundcloud. 
Soundcloud is a great format as it lets me explore artists that I wouldn't otherwise listen to as new music is constantly shared onto my timeline which I look at every day. It is completely free to listen, and it means you don't have to download anything, you can just sign into your account on any device and it loads all your previously saved music for you to listen anywhere. 

It's hard to put into words what music makes you feel, from my perspective it can be a form of relaxation, getting hyped before or at a party, a way of relieving stress and even keeping concentrated. When i listen to music on my own, usually through earphones i tend to zone out of reality and just become focused on what i'm doing, which i've found to be an effective way of doing school work. As i've got older my music taste has developed it's only been the past 3 years that I have really found my taste, as before it was a bit scattered - listening to a bit of this and that, not really having a favourite artist etc. I got into Hip-Hop through an American artist called 'Logic', from then I quickly began to find more and more artists associated and similar to him and as I listened to more and more different varieties of Hip-Hop my taste grew and started to develop. When I saw Logic live in March 2013, it was a big thing for me as he was the reason that i listened to the music that i did. 

There hasn't been any major influences on my music taste, I found out about Logic through one of my best friends, but from then on I began to develop my music taste on my own. I got into House music at a later stage, there was always a need to listen to it as my brother was a successful House DJ in the 1990's. I use Soundcloud as my House music source where i can very easily explore different DJ sets and artists. 

Photo taken at Danny Brown's Rough Trade show, (i'm bottom right).

Chuck Berry (Mos Def) in
Cadillac Records.

When I think to the music played during my childhood, I think how musically influential my parents were during my upbringing. I was raised on a vast mixture of genres, with artists such as Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones.  I was shown the film 'Cadillac Records' by my father shortly after it came out in 2008, and I completely loved the music and the era's aesthetic quality and vibe. Set in 1950's Chicago, the film shows the lives of some of America's musical legends such as Etta James, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. The film featured a lot of the music recorded by the artists on the label, the one that stuck for me was 'Maybellene' by Chuck Berry. I remember being on holiday in southern Italy, driving through the countryside, listening to Chuck Berry's albums and the Cadillac Records Soundtrack in the back of the car with my best friend Gabriel. I later found out that Chuck Berry in the film was played by one of my all time favourite rappers, Mos Def.

Image shows how Numbers samples
Paramore.

There is a song by Logic that i could say could possibly be my favourite song. The song 'Numbers' off his 4th mixtape 'Young Sinatra: Undeniable', gets to me in a way i don't completely understand. Honestly after looking deeper into the lyrics i can say that they aren't particularly deep and meaningful as some of his other tracks, yet he does cover how his sudden fame has caused problems in his love life as he says "the girl I love, the one i call my honey, now i'm wondering if she love me for me or my f*****g money". As i thought deeper about why this song truly does appeal to me I concluded that it's not just the lyricism but the instrumental that i really love. After doing further research on 'WhoSampled.com' I found that the instrumental (Produced by one of Logic's sound engineers - 6ix) sampled the guitar from Paramore's song 'Decode'. I'm not sure what about the guitar riff i like so much, but i could listen to this on repeat forever and still love it.