Crunkcore and Zen

I discovered this new genre of music awhile ago called "crunkcore", which is, for those of you who don't know, a fusion of the crunk sub-genre of hip hop and hardcore punk. Let me say first of all that I'm not a fan of "fusion" styles in general. Not because I'm a purist but because they tend to sound forced. Now there are a lot of hip hop/rock fusion bands out these days, and although there are a few songs here and there that work, most are pretty awful.

Personally, I like both hip hop and rock. I remember when I first that a band was trying to blend the styles I thought it sounded great--until I heard it. It's one of those things that sound great on paper but are terrible when actually applied. I think the reason they're generally so crappy--and this goes for any fusion style--is that they are either a hardcore band that doesn't really listen to a lot of hip hop but tries to rap, or a hip hop band that really doesn't get hardcore. The musicians involved rarely understand both genres. And/or it is just tacked on--this is what happens with a lost of your new age/world music artists. Take Yanni. He gets all these different great musicians of varying styles and puts them together to form...the exact same song every time. All that he's doing is adding on a new instrument--nothing else has changed. The scales are the same, the rhythms are the same--now matter what the instrumentation the result is the same bland yet over-emotional style.

This brings me back to crunkcore. What it essentially is is crunk beats with someone screaming the lyrics rather than rapping--even the subject matter is the same, if anything more juvenile (not to say that all crunk lyrics are juvenile though). They are a bunch of kids who don't seem to understand hip hop trying to do hip hop. Or least I think that's what they are trying to do. I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure if they are sure.

Let me try to illustrate how terrible this music is. You know when you hear a bad song or movie that is so bad that it is somehow good? Ed Wood is a great example of this. Well crunkcore goes beyond this. There are not words in English, or any other language, that can describe how terrible it is. It goes off the scale of good and bad. It's kind of Zen in a way. It transcends the categories we use to judge things. I wonder... if I listen to it long enough, will I attain satori?

It really is fascinating though. No matter how much I complain I find myself back on YouTube searching for crunkcore again. Is it a joke? Do they really have fans? Are those fans zen monks? I suspect that these questions have no answer...