🎶 Ringtone this, then blog post that / Is what comes next labelled web3 rap 🎶
As hip-hop and streetwear communities evolved online, many names at the forefront were soon forgotten. What does this mean for the most popular NFT projects?
Ringtones → Blogs → Soundcloud → Streaming → Dance/Tiktok challenges → web3
Hip-hop and streetwear dominate the sound and style of current trends, but not all who contributed to the shift reap the benefits of their mass adoption. An assortment of popular NFTs (usually in collections up to 10K) have been trending in web3, pioneered by Cryptopunks in 2017. Over the last six months it has spilled into mainstream awareness following the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
The interest and innovation driving momentum in web3 is often compared to the dawn of the dot-com era. This may be true for the shift in technology, but culturally the movement towards web3 is more reminiscent of the blog era, which still has fingerprints all over popular music and fashion of today.
Relics of a recent era
This online shift in hip-hop is often first attributed to Soulja Boy, who famously uploaded his songs to Limewire under other artists’ names, which were promoted with easy-to-learn dances to go viral. Followed by the mid-to-late 2000s rise of blogs like 2dopeboyz, Nahright and user-created content on Tumblr, it forever changed the journey for fan discovery and community building. The same drivers of hip-hop trends were influencing streetwear and fashion. Hypebeast and Highsnobiety launched in 2005 and a few years later at Tumblr’s peak, it was difficult to scroll through without seeing Supreme box logos. Supreme was bubbling without the internet, but it was during this time at the turn of the 2010s that hip-hop, streetwear and online youth collided to give birth to hype (c. 2000s to present). Odd Future are the best representation of this - a group of artists who independently built a devoted, online community around their brand, image and music while dressed head-to-toe in Supreme.
Before Odd Future and Supreme, there were many other popular artists and brands who were at the forefront with hype and/or co-signs but weren’t able to hold on. Some of these collaborated, like Donnis and 10.DEEP or B.o.B and L-R-G (people also forget B.o.B was the first rapper to feature Taylor Swift). The list goes on, but these have become relics at the intersection of peak blog era trends.
Perhaps there will be a boom-and-bust-and-boom as in the dot-com era for those benefiting from the tailwinds of web3, metaverse and NFT buzzwords. Culturally the landscape will appear closer to the aftermath of the blog era. Some of these projects will remain but many in the NFT space will be forgotten, no matter how valuable they are now.
Incentive to Stan
The difference between musicians, fashion labels and NFTs is the latter provides an incentive to remain part of a project’s community. If the quality of output declines for conventional music artists and fashion designers, fans will listen or purchase less over time. With NFTs, irrespective of artistic quality, it is community sentiment that drives financial value and returns for its members. Despite being decentralised, this correlation between social engagement and financial return leads to an interdependence between members that can be visible through monitoring Discord and Twitter. In comparison, streetwear resale markets rely on largely uncoordinated and competing solo actors. Owners of early archive pieces from leading streetwear brands also tend to despise the resale market and hype. NFTs are not immune from these challenges, but increasing value of an NFT is a fundamental to the trend.
It highlights the untapped potential for NFTs in creative industries beyond “art” to strengthen communities of up-and-coming artists across any medium. Unlike the blog era where magazines such as XXL or the aforementioned blogs were still gatekeepers of attention, web3 should provide platforms to break free of these limitations for the next generation of talent.
web3 arbiters of cool
When you look back at the quality of streetwear brands that exploded during the blog era, many lacked originality. Similarly with NFTs, many projects are derivative. There are copies (phunks, zunks), unauthorised mergers (Noundles, Society of Derivative Apes) and collections of interchangeable animals. While BAYC may be popular now, the animations aren’t sophisticated or appealing. They don’t have to be, but there will eventually be a project that brings its own innovation to the space with higher quality art. While artists like Lil Yachty or streetwear brands like Been Trill were once “cool” largely due to hype, this ultimately worked against them and they became tacky.
Finder recently published a survey on NFTs, which found 90% of Japanese adults have never heard of them. Japanese youth are well known for being taste makers across collectibles and fashion. They were one of the original drivers of increased demand for Supreme. Japan is a technologically advanced country, pioneering across industries including video games - one of the industries that should benefit most from NFTs! The results below are difficult to believe. Assuming the sample size is representative, many tweeters have used it to argue NFTs will blow up further with increased adoption in Japan. The low awareness could instead be a reflection that existing NFT projects, majority of which are the 10K collections, are not cool enough to resonate with this audience.
Cryptopunks and BAYC will likely be resilient. The former is the origin of the NFT trend and the latter is the first to execute on a roadmap with tangible utility across online and offline experiences. They’re also both being purchased by celebrities and major brands (which may or may not translate to sustained “cool”). But the rest will likely go the way of L-R-G, 10.DEEP, Pink Dolphin, Crooks & Castles and others. They’re not worthless, but you can find them at Macy’s, PacSun and Culture Kings.