For those unfamiliar, hexd is a relatively new genre in the "internet music" scene along with vapourwave, breakcore, and all their subgenres. The only prerequisite for something to be hexd is for it to be absolutely bitcrushed to the extreme until it sounds like its playing through a nokia speaker from 2005. I swear its actually good I promise. Hexd gained popularity almost entirely due to the cult following of internet label and youtube channel dismiss yourself, which made bootlegs and collaborated with some early artists to put their work on a single place for people to find. The first hexd was basically shitty autotune cloud rap but bitcrushed, and I'm sorry if this makes me a heretic but it kind of sucks ass in my opinion. From what I understand reptilian club boyz, hi-c, and yabujin made a few big albums and then a bunch of people got inspired by that and that's where we are today. The genre is very young, with the term coined by a few obscure artists in 2016 and only gaining any significant popularity in 2019, so the game is constantly being changed by new releases.
Now on to the good stuff. Nowadays hexd is basically anything bitcrushed. There is the original rap, bitcrushed EDM mixes, bitcrushed dnb, bitcrushed vapourwave, trance, pop, and what have you.
What I find interesting about hexd is that it is basically vaporwave in that instead of nostalgia for the 80s, its nostalgia for the late 90s to late 2000s, The age of toy phones with horrible speakers, bad quality music downloaded off of limewire and played off worse quality speakers, and insane video game soundtracks. Its nostalgia music like vapourwave, but for a new generation. Its expected to hear early 2000s pop vocalists to suddenly emerge from the noise, a soundtrack sample from a ps1 game, or better off alone yet again in a mix. Although, as with all music, that identity began to diverge as soon as it was created. In general though, hexd is fun and sometimes goofy and there is a lot of good stuff out there.
Why listen to "bad" quality music?, Hexd isn't about the quality of the sounds, its about the overall package. If they are good at it, artists can make it sound really cool, and you start to realize that the music just wouldn't work if it was better quality.
here are a few popular albums that I think are good:
Vapourwave hexd
If you're a little braver, this is what I think is good typical hexd:
pop
trance
trap (my favourite hexd album and it has only 500 views)
Finally, shout out to our very own @solarcorp who actually has already made a hexd vapourwave album which is pretty damn good!
https://cloudsource.bandcamp.com/album/augmented-forecast
Now on to the good stuff. Nowadays hexd is basically anything bitcrushed. There is the original rap, bitcrushed EDM mixes, bitcrushed dnb, bitcrushed vapourwave, trance, pop, and what have you.
What I find interesting about hexd is that it is basically vaporwave in that instead of nostalgia for the 80s, its nostalgia for the late 90s to late 2000s, The age of toy phones with horrible speakers, bad quality music downloaded off of limewire and played off worse quality speakers, and insane video game soundtracks. Its nostalgia music like vapourwave, but for a new generation. Its expected to hear early 2000s pop vocalists to suddenly emerge from the noise, a soundtrack sample from a ps1 game, or better off alone yet again in a mix. Although, as with all music, that identity began to diverge as soon as it was created. In general though, hexd is fun and sometimes goofy and there is a lot of good stuff out there.
Why listen to "bad" quality music?, Hexd isn't about the quality of the sounds, its about the overall package. If they are good at it, artists can make it sound really cool, and you start to realize that the music just wouldn't work if it was better quality.
here are a few popular albums that I think are good:
Vapourwave hexd
If you're a little braver, this is what I think is good typical hexd:
pop
trance
trap (my favourite hexd album and it has only 500 views)
Finally, shout out to our very own @solarcorp who actually has already made a hexd vapourwave album which is pretty damn good!
https://cloudsource.bandcamp.com/album/augmented-forecast
Virtual Cafe Awards
