Peanut butter and fish sandwich, fire and ice, some things that just don’t go together. But then there are those random combinations that sometimes just work. It could be stripes and polka dots or chocolate-covered potato chips. Just like indie and rap, who would’ve thought that pair would be amazing? Never in the 90s would a DJ think of pairing up Mazzy Star and Biggie Smalls on a mixtape. But that’s just what social media is doing, creating something we may have yet to think about but are now coming to yearn for.
Indie which is short for independent, is music that was originally created with pure and total creative freedom. There’s such a variety of indie music now such as indie pop, indie folk, and dream pop. As we know social media, but specifically TikTok, is the place you can go to to find random mashups you may not have thought about, or just random sounds. There are over 500K sounds on TikTok which means that of that number a majority of those are artists getting recognition. This is just what TikTok is helping to do as independent DJs create more mashups using a mix of rap and indie.
The way that this works is by using algorithms. If you have ever ventured onto social media specifically TikTok, you would know that you have a totally different “ForYouPage” than the person next to you. Their page may consist of painting videos, cooking videos, and holiday decor. But yours may consist of funny videos and beauty influencers, whatever you both interact with more will alter the algorithm of your own “ForYouPage.” But the type of videos that you are surfing through also changes the type of sounds you will hear. This is where the gap is being closed. There is a TikTok account named “Djhaylz” that currently has a sound posted which is a mash-up between Tay-K’s song “The Race” and Grimes’ song “Oblivion”. The specific mashup has over 2700 videos posted under it and the original video has nearly 165k views. Another mix is by user “Ooslomusic” who created a mash-up between Ken Carson’s “Fighting My Demons” and Clairo’s “Terrapin”. The sound has almost 2,000 videos under it and the original sound now has over 550k views. But currently, the largest mashup between rap and indie comes from TikTok creator “Ankithwoods” who created a track mixing Kodak Black’s “Skrilla” and Faye Webster’s “Kingston”. The sound has almost 70k posts under it and the original sound now has 3.8 million views. One video under the sound is by Kodak Black himself. Now seeing as how this trend just started I think we can be sure that more mashups will come along. And one day it might even just be that mashup between Biggie Smalls and Mazzy Star. But what we do know for sure is these mashups are bringing together two very opposite sides of TikTok and bringing light to songs that each side may have never thought to put on.
