Urban Vine Media

Let’s be honest about what’s happening to music.

The beats slap. The mixing is clean. AI can write you a hook in 10 seconds. You can drop a song tonight and be in 50 countries by morning.

But the writing? The musicianship? The words? They’re getting weaker.

And it’s not one thing. It’s everything.

English grades have been falling for years. Reading down. Writing down. Vocabulary shrinking. They even removed phonics from basic and primary school. So now we have kids who can scroll but can’t sound out a word, much less write a verse.

Then look at the music side. Less producers are playing instruments. Less artists are playing instruments. Which means less composition. Less reading notes. Less theory.

We used to learn music by doing it. By feeling it. Now we click loops. We drag and drop. We let AI finish the sentence for us.

But here’s the problem: if your comprehension skill is still low, AI can’t save you. It’ll just give you faster, emptier songs.

Songwriting IS poetry with a beat. Bob was a poet. Buju was a poet. Lauryn was a poet. They learned how to bend language before they ever bent a note. They played instruments. They read music. They studied.

We cut poetry out of school and called it dead. We cut instruments out of studios and called it progress. Now we’re surprised the songs feel like they have no bones.

That’s why the marketplace is slim. Everybody can record. Few people can write a line that lasts 15 years instead of 15 seconds.

But poetry is coming back. “Chan. Simone Fruittree Dewar, Arthur. OJ Tha Great. All these acts are wordsmiths and Reggae acts.  Words are pushing to the front again. Intelligent wordplay from Junior Gong and acts as such should always be used as a benchmark. Sit with Christopher Martin and watch the team put together a great composed songs.

And people are teaching it. “Mikey Bennett”. Push A Yute has been doing programs related to writing and composition for years. Vivian Thomas. Tandra Jhagroo. Workshops on songwriting. On literacy. On strengthening every department of your IP.

That’s the fix.
Because if we don’t invest in writers and musicians, we won’t get classics. So lets look at the A&R and who is letting these people through the door. We’ll just get content.
We don’t need more songs. We need better songs.
You think it’s a drought, or is the comeback starting?