![]() Jarvis says that while crowds tend to encourage what psychologists call ‘deindividuation’ – “losing your inhibitions as you become more anonymous” – he doesn’t observe the same effect in the context of a mosh pit, largely because deindividuation is more commonly associated with negative behaviours. Or, more simply, not just a bunch of kids kicking seven shades of shit out of each other. ![]() Lethal Bizzle, who was at the forefront of the short-lived mid-noughties “ grindie” gimmick, has been stirring pits since at least 2008 and the grime resurgence of this decade saw MCs become a big hit at once rock-orientated festivals like Reading and Leeds, full of teenagers happy to jump around to the sound of frenetic bars and hard-edged beats. ![]() “I want to have a moment with every single person individually,” he told me last year, “where we exchange some energy.” This year Octavian asked the crowd at Glastonbury to crown his debut appearance at the festival with “the biggest moshpit I’ve ever seen”, and the melodramatic strings of Giggs-featuring Drake track KMT demands the crowd opens up a circle as soon as it starts. slowthai spends the majority of his shows in his boxer shorts, writhing around in the front rows. In an effort to encourage their fans to open up a circle at their gigs, Mist and MoStack released a track called Mosh Pit. It’s a phenomenon that’s transferred to UK rap and grime acts too. And their third appearance at the festival was cut short after the group dashed their mics on the floor and stormed offstage. The following day, Tyler suffered his own nasal injury after a fan clocked him with a bottle of Mountain Dew. At one show, Hodgy threw himself from the roof of the venue and Tyler broke a fan’s nose after leaping from a speaker stack into the crowd. ![]() In their early years, the then-adolescent group were eager to disrespect the elder generation’s rules, and their skater-punk aesthetic swept up audiences at the 2011 outing of the SXSW industry showcase. This latest evolution of rap’s relationship with moshing and stage diving arguably began with Odd Future – the rebellious DIY rap crew that birthed Tyler, The Creator, Frank Ocean, Hodgy Beats, Earl Sweatshirt and Syd and Matt Martians of The Internet. While hip-hop gigs used to see fans casually nod their heads, in recent years acts like Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Danny Brown, A$AP Mob, and Migos have been at the vanguard of a cultural shift that’s seen rap acts adopting performance styles more commonly associated with punk and metal bands – and they’ve often embraced the rockstar aesthetic too. It’s probably no coincidence that the rise of moshpits at rap shows has coincided with the genre’s shift away from the slick boom-bap style beat that underpinned most hip-hop songs for decades, and towards the more intense, bass-driven trap sound. While the presence of moshpits at hip-hop gigs can be traced back as far as the late ’80s, with acts like Beastie Boys stage-diving while playing to crossover crowds of rap and rock fans, and Onyx celebrating slam dancing (an early name for moshing) back in ’93, it’s only in this decade that moshing has become a constituent part of nearly any rap event you go to. The film’s opening scenes are a seemingly endless reel of fans throwing themselves from the stage to the crowd, surfing on top of one another, and opening up circle pits before charging into each other at full pelt. It only takes a few minutes of Look Mom I Can Fly – the Travis Scott-produced documentary about his own rise to fame – to realise where the inspiration for the title came from.
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