wow these responses are coming too fast to keep up with - i was in the middle of writing the below - some people have addressed this a bit already. but the point is that - given how mainstream, pop cultural music like lex luger's (the entire legacy of hip-hop, since it's mid-80's breakthrough really) is and has been for decades in the us - the audience for lex luger, bauuer, diplo and waka flocka can't be separated. much of the audience is the same, and that's not a new thing. before harlem shake was getting played at frat parties waka flocka was and before that jay-z was and the Beastie Boys and Eminem and Beck doing hip-hop and Dr Dre and NWA etc etc etc.
trap rap is already "populist", and lex luger has had multi-page spreads written about him in the new york times -http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/ma...anted=all&_r=0
definitely, lex luger's beats have been behind top 40 hits (and frequently played at frat houses, mainstream radio and vegas clubs) in the states for several years. there is nothing marginal about his music. so, although i don't particularly like this instrumental, edm-trap stuff, i think it's unfair to criticize artists of any stripe who choose to appropriate and twist music that's a fully established part of the popular cultural mainstream.
in fact, this whole narrative of supposedly white, middle-class appropriation of supposedly, authentically black, urban, lower-middle class music has been so ingrained in the history of hip-hop in the US for so long - and has been strategically deployed by artists, labels, advertising, movies and on and on for so long - that it's absurd to think of anybody coming from 'real' 'authentic' 'street' origin musically, culturally when making hip-hop
…
trap music while not new NOW is a pretty modern movement in hip hop.. obvs
i don't know - depends on what you mean. i've thought the reception of lex luger, drumma boy has been oddly decontextualized and de-historicized - this stuff's a new variation on a set of musical genres sure, but not radically different than say Shawty Redd productions like this from 2005:
and Three 6 Mafia tracks from even earlier.
on the other hand the edm-instrumental stuff is, of course, really new.