‘Noisey’ is your guide to staying musically relevant

It's important to keep up and stay relevant to what people are listening to. Thankfully Noisey has its finger on the pulse.

Noisey visits Atlanta during season 2 Source: SBS VICELAND

It’s easy, especially once you reach a certain age, to get stuck listening to the same old stuff over and over again - telling people that music coincidentally peaked when you were 17 and nothing’s been as good as The Bloodhound Gang’s One Fierce Beer Coaster and Ginuwine’s “Pony”. That’s why it’s so important, if you want to be taken seriously, to expose yourself to new music. New as in “made this century” and new as in “I’ve never heard this before”. Noisey is the perfect vehicle for launching your Lauryn Hill-style miseducation. Here’s what’s coming up in season 2...

Police brutality in the Bay Area shapes rap culture

Our first stop is San Francisco, which has been undergoing some changes that combine overeager-to-get-physical police with the rapid gentrification that’s come with the new-ish tech industry. Whatever you think of these things in social terms, they have changed the Bay Area rap game, as E-40, Nef the Pharaoh and G-Eazy will politely tell you.

G-Eazy (Pictured right) Source: SBS VICELAND

Nashville country is about being an outsider

You might think you know Nashville – it’s where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman live, right? – but since it has the highest concentration of musos and music-related industries in America, it’s a bit more complicated than first glance suggests. Here, with the help of Kesha and Jellyroll, is an exploration of the huge range of underground happenings in a place that has always welcomed hustlers, rebels, and outsiders.

Zach Goldbaum goes country Source: SBS VICELAND

Hip-hop and Islamophobia are strange bedfellows in Paris

Back in 2015, there was a mass shooting in the Bataclan Theatre in Paris while Eagles of Death Metal were playing. Two years later, Niska, MHD, and Medine show there’s a thriving and diverse scene that combines rap de rue, afro-trap, and many stripes of hip-hop act with the almost omnipresent political forces that are shaping the modern French capital. With racial and religious issues at the forefront of everyone’s minds, how has music responded?

Je suis Noisey Source: SBS VICELAND

K-pop is Korea’s biggest musical export. Cue PSY traumatic flashbacks.

If you thought manufactured groups were all The Monkees and Backstreet Boys and the Sex Pistols, you’ll be surprised to learn the ins and outs of K-pop. Over in Seoul, they have training academies dedicated to turning teenagers into icons. It gets pretty complicated with all the groups and sub-units that swap members, but one of the biggest names – and not just for the caps – is BIGBANG, featuring Bieber-equivalent heart-throb Taeyang.

Noisey's Zach Goldbaum is the next next Justin Bieber. Source: SBS VICELAND

Trap music continues to evolve in Atlanta

If you’re new to Noisey, this sequel episode may feel a bit over your head. The gist is: in 2015 Viceland made a 10-part series called Noisey: Atlanta that looked at the local rap scene and how it had become so influential. Here, you can expect to learn how things have changed in such a short period, courtesy of performers like Migos, Young Thug, Killer Mike and T.I. (who claims to have coined the term “trap music” with 2003’s Trap Muzik).

Zach spends time with CEO Killer Mike Source: SBS VICELAND

Afropop is blowing up from Lagos

When Drake featured Wizkid on his massive hit “One Dance”, it brought the world’s attention to Afropop. Let’s just say there’s plenty more where that came from, as Noisey tracks down Wizkid and meets more legends-in-waiting along the way, like White Man, as well as learning more about how the genre developed over time.