Prior to this, the group of artists known as Keats Collective would play around with proto-future funk tunes, though a good chunk of their work falls into vaporwave. This is where the aesthetics of the genre start to solidify, not only in its music elements and composition but in the way the genre becomes disseminated online.

The album most often described as the first album of future funk is Saint Pepsi’s Hit Vibes from 2013. In tracing the origins of future funk proper, the backbone of the genre-French House-styled sampling of funk and disco songs from the ’70s and ’80s-is prevalent in a number of established artists’ work from Daft Punk to Louis La Roche, but what you notice in a track like La Roche’s “Peach” is that there is still a strong presence of house, which is softened greatly in future funk. As we dig into the genre, we begin to see how online algorithmic culture begins to define future funk as well, and how the genre evolves over the years. Unlike its dour sibling micro-genre, vaporwave, future funk is a celebration of the aesthetic excesses of consumption culture. It brings together remix culture, nostalgia, and fandom aesthetics in one genre that is both niche and accessible to all. If you were looking for something that epitomizes this remix-heavy online world, future funk is front and center as the genre of the internet in both construction and presentation a highly stylized, postmodern artform. So much so that remix, ultimately, defines the digital experience. We are constantly churning ideas, information, and media through countless cut/ paste/ edit cycles. It takes on new life, as a post starving for upvotes on Reddit or a quote retweet sent out to followers in search of likes. Think about meme construction, or the way quote retweets work: an image or piece of information comes in, someone adds to it with either a joke or their own pithy take, and releases that new remixed item into the world. Pulling a mediocre, though pleasant, Christmas-themed track-from an album that only charted as high as #46 on Japan’s Oricon chart-and infusing it with elements of funk, disco, and French house, yields a new media object for a new generation of consumers to enjoy. Media scholar Lev Manovich, who wrote the seminal The Language of New Media, says that cultural communication in the digital era is one of remixing. By pumping up the beats per minute and throwing some extra drum kits and synths into Ito’s original, the result is a song that gets you up and groovin’.įuture funk lives almost exclusively in the world of remix. A fanmade video featuring the song boasts over 10 million views and for good reason, as the track is a certified banger. Her song “Merry Christmas” is sampled in the Future Funk hit “ SUPER RISER!“, by Nanidato (ナニダト).

But to listeners of the internet micro genre future funk, Ito is a legend. Ito achieved only modest success with a few hits and acting roles. This is a name that likely eludes all but the most studious of ’80s Japanese pop aficionados, as Ito had a relatively short-lived career. What you might not know about this woman at first glance, is that she is in fact Chieri Ito, a pop idol from the 1980s. She is a stylish woman, though she will modestly claim that she’s nothing special, just a housewife. In an Italian restaurant on a side street in Yokohama, a woman in her early 50s helps her husband balance the books and keep customers happy.

Simply being loved remix