The Genre David Bowie Thought Created a New Force in Music

For several decades, rock was the genre of the progressive. Rockers were consistently rocking the boat, pushing sex or politically-charged ideas to the masses. It shocked parents and enthralled their kids. It even changed society, creating a landscape rife with free thought and big questions. However, over the last several decades, a different genre has picked up that mantle. David Bowie once spoke about the changing tides of the music industry around the ’90s, calling one genre a “new force” in the world. Find out which genre that was below.

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How David Bowie Saw the Tides of the Music Industry Changing in the ’90s

In the ’60s and ’70s, it was rockers who were pushing socially conscious material. While borrowed from many sources, white rockers had a lot to say about the world. It was this generation of artists that shaped the genre into the irreverent space we think of today.

According to Bowie, as time went on, those once counter-culture obsessed youths became “a part of the administration.” Some started to focus less on cultural change. In their absence, another group of artists from a burgeoning genre took their spot.

In Bowie’s mind, by the ’90s, the only artists who were doing anything remotely inventive were rappers. He found rock to be a placid genre that wasn’t moving the needle quite as much as their hip-hop counterparts.

“The white generation have come of age—they are part of the administration—the people that brought us rock in its white form,” Bowie once said. “The quality of the social message has moved very much to the black and Hispanic market, and that’s where the new force of music is coming from.”

The New Force of Rap Music

Rap music originated in the ’70s, came to the masses in the ’80s, and hit its stride in the ’90s. By the time of Bowie’s comments above, rap was a tried-and-true genre, primed to take over the world.

Early rap had a focus on pushing back against oppressive forces. Because it was primarily black artists who were pushing rap at the time, they tuned into their experience with race in America and used that to put a lens over their art. It produced many timeless, society-changing songs. What rock was to culture in the ’70s, rap was in the ’90s. Bowie was one of the classic rockers who recognized this shift in real time.

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