Lo-fi has been gradually getting more and more attention lately, especially when it comes to music on social media. Somehow this genre exists for a pretty long time, yet to this day it wasn’t visible and appreciated enough which is quite sad and discouraging. This music still gets to be called the “underground” genre, even though there are thousands of people who’re hooked on lo-fi radio and even find their new friends here, sharing passion for this music and a certain lifestyle even.
But to be completely honest, no matter how popular it gets, lo-fi will probably never leave the Internet and won’t go beyond it. Right now almost each blogger who’s trying to go with the tendencies knows about it: they use lo-fi as music in their videos, buy TikTok followers, try to stay in touch with the audience — you know, the essentials to keep their popularity growing. Yet this music is not only about social media, it gets lots of support from it for sure.
Lo-fi was born on the Internet somewhere around 2005-2007, but its first appearance might be tracked in the 60-s, when rock musicians recorded their tracks using low quality equipment and created a certain style out of nowhere — it was filled with artificial noises coming through the general sound. Don’t get mistaken though, as rock and lo-fi are two completely different genres and the true inception of this musical direction came at the beginning of the 2000s.
To this day there are no popular musicians who would glorify this genre and would take it to the worldwide music arena — well, Joji kind of tried to do so, but he’s using way too many musical directions to say that he’s creating in lo-fi genre exclusively. The founder of this genre is considered to be the Japanese musician Jun Seba, known under the pseudonym Nujabes, who unfortunately died in a car accident on February 26, 2010 at the age of 36. He however has left behind an amazing legacy and pushed his fans to continue the work and create new compositions.
The starting point of “lo-fi hip-hop” as a separate genre with its own specificity and various styles can be considered from the beginning of Nujabes’ activity. Before that there was just a glimpse of something that will be further considered a full-on separate genre — it was him who first began to make such music and together with it found a huge positive audience response in Japan. Further lo-fi has grown into a small culture that still exists today.
Lo-fi is a synthesis of different musical views and approaches to creativity. Serene and soothing hip-hop-based music was created in such an amazing place as the Internet, which is the perfect place for Lo-Fi to exist. The comfort and tranquility that lo-fi music gives is appreciated by very different circles of people, yet it would be great if somebody could take it to the wider audience. We’re sure that everybody could find something for them in this genre: it can literally erase time, tension and all the heavy thoughts with some nice beats changing one another during hours of various playlists.
