Biggie is disco. Tupac is folk.
That statement is probably enough to start an argument, so let me make it worse.
Rush is folk. Iron Maiden is folk. A metal riff that makes you headbang is disco. Daft Punk is about as disco as it gets.
There are only two genres of music: folk and disco.
That’s my theory, anyway.
I’m using those words pretty loosely. I know where you’d actually find these artists in a record store. But underneath all the genres and subgenres, I hear two basic pulls: cerebral and physical. Music that engages what’s happening inside your head, and music that gets into your body.
Almost everything draws from both. The interesting part is the proportion.
Biggie and Pac
Biggie and Tupac are where this idea becomes easy to explain.
When I hear Biggie, a huge part of the appeal is the pocket. His delivery has weight, rhythm, swagger. There’s pleasure in the way the words sit against the beat before you’ve even unpacked what he’s saying. That’s disco.
With Pac, I’m more immediately pulled into his perspective. The conviction, the anger, the vulnerability. I’m listening to what he’s trying to communicate, and the feeling behind it. That’s folk.
Of course Biggie tells stories. Of course Pac can make you move. These are proportions, and they can change between songs, verses, or listeners.
A lot of rap lands heavily on my folk side. Immortal Technique. Eminem when the writing and construction demand your attention. You’re following an argument, a narrative, a chain of rhymes. The words themselves give you something to work through.
And “cerebral” includes emotion here. Sometimes you’re thinking through an idea. Sometimes a song is putting a feeling into words that you couldn’t quite find yourself.
Headbanging Is Dancing
Metal makes this theory especially fun.
Take a riff that makes an entire room start moving its heads together. That is a physical response to rhythm. Call it a pit, a dance floor, whatever you want. The music has given your body instructions, and your body understands them.
That’s disco.
The distortion doesn’t change the job the riff is doing. Neither does the screaming.
Static-X lands almost entirely on that side for me. They actually call their music “evil disco,” which makes them a suspiciously convenient example. But it fits: repetition, groove, impact. Music you feel in your neck the next morning.
Tool has a good amount of disco too. You can get physically locked into that music while your attention follows the arrangement somewhere much stranger.
And that’s where the other side comes in.
The Math of It Is Folk
Rush and Iron Maiden sit on the folk side for me. There’s movement there, obviously, but a major part of the attraction is following the music: where it goes, how it develops, how the pieces fit.
Technical metal can work the same way. Your brain gets involved in tracing the pattern, anticipating a change, or figuring out what the hell just happened.
The math of it is folk.
That expands the definition beyond lyrics. An instrumental passage can be deeply cerebral. A voice can also function almost entirely as rhythm.
Chelsea Wolfe and A Perfect Circle can pull me inward through atmosphere, tension, emotion. I don’t need an acoustic guitar or a plainly stated story to hear folk in that.
And none of this makes folk the smarter or more valuable ingredient. Getting a room full of bodies to respond to a groove is an accomplishment. I’m a DJ. I have considerable professional interest in that accomplishment.
Aphex Twin and The Prodigy
Here’s the comparison that really makes it click for me.
Aphex Twin and The Prodigy are close in conventional genre terms. In mine, they’re solar opposites.
Aphex Twin pulls me toward the details. The patterns, textures, disruptions. I want to listen into it and follow what’s happening. Folk.
The Prodigy makes me want to physically participate. That music has somewhere to be, and apparently I’m going with it. Disco.
Daft Punk is the epitome of the disco side for me. There’s plenty to appreciate intellectually in the production, but the physical invitation is fundamental to the experience.
So electronic music can sit at either end of this. A guitar band can too. The instrument doesn’t decide the proportion.
Both, at the Same Time
The important part is that these two things can happen in the exact same moment.
You can be absorbed in the mathematics of a passage while headbanging to it. A lyric can hit something personal while the groove keeps your feet moving. You don’t have to pause one experience to have the other.
That’s why I find this useful. Traditional genres tell me roughly what a song might sound like. Folk and disco help me think about what I’m responding to once it starts.
As a DJ, that matters. People can connect deeply with music while standing still. They can also lose themselves in a rhythm without following a single word. Both are real engagement, and a song can invite both.
I’m sure you can find exceptions to every artist I’ve put on either side. I can too. Start naming individual songs and the proportions will move all over the place.
That’s part of the fun.
But play me something, and somewhere underneath the genre label, I’m going to hear those two ingredients.
Folk and disco.
Sometimes I’m following the math. Sometimes my neck hurts.
