Alternative rap is at a crossroads, and if you ask anyone who knows the genre well, they’ll tell you that its future lies with underground artists – the best of whom, mind you, will go out of their way to deliver music free of labels altogether. daFinchi, an up and coming indie rapper whose new single “The Burbs” is scoring some attention thanks to its fun-loving music video, is exactly the type of player who could care less about the politics of the hip-hop genre in 2020, and in his debut release, he makes that very obvious to anyone listening.
The video for “The Burbs,” as basic in concept as it is, is actually a little more elaborate in structure than its source material is. There’s a layered feel to the visuals that makes the scenes feel more like excerpts from a flipbook than they do intricately-arranged images in a surreal scheme. There’s no frills in the mix period, and we’re never asked to look past a lot of stylistic fluff in order to appreciate the depth of the songcraft involved. That’s not always the case with alternative rap, and really western pop music in general nowadays.
When you’ve got a voice like daFinchi’s, big basslines aren’t something you really need when producing a groove like that in “The Burbs;” if anything, they would probably have got in the way. I really like the physicality of the melodies in this track, and while it’s not something you hear on a regular basis in hip-hop, it’s a feature I can see this artist manipulating into a signature in his future output. He’s still getting his feet wet and finding a trademark sound, but in this song, it’s clear he has the chops to do some amazing work if he continues to grow.
Debuts are hard no matter how much talent you’re bringing into the booth, but nevertheless daFinchi breaks off a killer introduction to his sound in the new single “The Burbs” as well as its companion music video. There’s a lot of ground to cover when you remove the very notion of limitations from your creative blueprint, and even though we don’t know much about daFinchi’s artistry just yet, there’s enough substance to this rookie release for me to assume he’s going to be sharing more provocative tunes in the near future. I like his style, and I think much of the college radio crowd will, too.
