When the 2010s started I was excited and optimistic. It seemed like things were more experimental than ever before. The 00s had this depressing revivalist feel. Scene emo sucked, the garage rock revival was fun but those bands were just pretending to be in the 60s/70s, and the most interesting thing going was these wimpy indie bands.
In the 10s there were all these great noisy bands. When the decade started, pop music was actually really decent for going out because they were all experimenting with EDM. Odd Future was never that great, but for a second they felt as revolutionary as the Sex Pistols, because they were making taboo humor mainstream, and there was something revolutionary and validating about that.
Unfortunately, that meme rap thing degenerated into emo and trap, which are awful and worthless, and it's turned into the worst era for mainstream hip hop.
Rock is dying. There's lots of interesting noisy underground groups going right now, like Algiers, Death Grips, black midi, EMA, etc. There are also other good underground genres emerging like neocrust, oogle folk punk, and a lot of experimental metal. Maybe because the entire rock genre has gone niche, that seems to help more extreme genres, as bands like Behemoth reach near-rock star status.
Idk what the fuck's happening with EDM right now. It seems like it should be huge, but for some reason it's underground again. It'd be nice if DnB, house, and genres like that took the mainstream again.
So yeah, I feel like this era is muddled. Lots of promise at the beginning, none of it really panned out. Maybe because of the nature of the internet, everything's niche and specialized now. Trap rappers like Lil Peep will be remembered, but I doubt fondly because it's all such low quality. Maybe we'll look at it like the 80s. People say the 80s sucked because of hair metal, but people interested in underground music think of it for the hardcore punk, extreme metal, hip hop, electronic music, etc.
