By Alex Thornton
No matter who becomes President, this election year is sure to bring change in Washington. Both parties are presenting candidates who want to learn from the mistakes of the Bush years and regain America’s standing throughout the world. Today, the Hip-Hop community represents an ever expanding range of backgrounds, ethnicities and experiences, so we have a responsibility to combine our vast resources to correct what may be the biggest tragedy of the last several years: the resurgence of the Vocoder.
To be fair, the worst offenders actually use variations on the device like the Sonovox and Autotuner, but all of them are children of this mighty beast. Once an innocent vocal effect to help sing a song of love between a boy and his computer, the Vocoder family has since become a studio trick to cover up the fact that many of today’s Pop singers can’t actually sing (like, at all). Ever heard T-Pain live with the effects turned off? Yuck. Britney? Even worse. Rihanna’s dead, soulless eyes already scream “femmebot,” so adding a cold, mechanical tone to her naturally flat one-octave range seemingly only makes things worse.
It would be a shame, however, to eliminate the Vocoder from the planet altogether since its powers can be used for good. Snoop Dogg’s “Sexual Eruption” is perhaps the most fun integration of man and machine since The Huxtables met Stevie Wonder*.