TheTestOfTime

Quora Answer : Is any of the recent/current music memorable? Will we be listening to the current set of hit music decades from now, like we listen to "classic" music that was made pre 2000's?

Nov 14, 2019

Yes, of course.

You're starting to see, now the beginnings of people distilling the 90s, and deciding what are the classics.

So, in hip-hop, people are still talking about Nas's Illmatic. About A Tribe Called Quest. About Wu Tang. And Tupac. And Dre's Chronic.

These are now "classic" bands and albums. Not because "things were better in the past". But because we've had almost 30 years to figure out and filter this stuff out as "the good stuff". This is the stuff people ARE listening to, two or three decades later.

Of course, people won't always agree. I'm still going to say that Digable Planets' Blowout Comb is my favourite rap album. And that, to me, Black Ego has the greatest 30 seconds of hip-hop verse of all time. I'm still going to name-check Gang Starr and The Goats and Arrested Development etc. But then I'm more of a hipster / obscurantist.

But we are starting to get a feel for classic from the 90s.

We aren't yet, for the 2000s or 2010s. It's too close.

There's all kinds of interesting things going on today (eg. Phil Jones (He / Him)'s answer to Does anyone think that 2010s music and culture is bland, soulless and mediocre? ) but we won't really know what are the classic bands and albums until we see which ones get remembered in 20 years.

But it's almost certain that some of what's going on today WILL be remembered as classic.