Seapunk

Seapunk is a subculture that originated on Tumblr in 2011. It is associated with an aquatic-themed style of fashion, 3D net art, iconography, and allusions to popular culture of the 1990s. The advent of seapunk also spawned its own electronic music microgenre, featuring elements of Southern hip hop and pop music and R&B music of the 1990s. Seapunk gained limited popularity as it spread through the Internet, although it was said to have developed a Chicago club scene. Originally, seapunk started as a trend and an Internet meme on Tumblr in 2011. The term "seapunk" was coined by DJ Lil Internet in 2011, when he humorously wrote in a tweet on Twitter saying, "Seapunk leather jacket with barnacles where the studs used to be." In December 2011, Cluster Mag reported on the emergence of seapunk in electronic media and quoted Pictureplane, who described seapunk as "a mostly Internet-based phenomenon birthed out of the Tumblr and Twitter universes as a means to describe a lifestyle aesthetic that is all things oceanic and of the sea." Musician Ultrademon is also credited with originating the short-lived movement. She released an album titled Seapunk in 2012. Miles Raymer of the Chicago Reader described seapunk music as "a style of music that incorporates bits of 90s house, the past 15 years or so of pop and R&B and the latest in southern trap rap—all overlaid with a twinkly, narcotic energy that recalls new-age music and chopped and screwed hip hop mix tapes in roughly equal measure." According to The New York Times, seapunk music "constitutes a tiny music subgenre" that contains elements of witch house, chiptune, drum and bass and Southern rap. The New York Times also noted that some seapunk tracks remix songs from R&B acts such as Beyoncé and Aaliyah. In January 2012, an article about seapunk music was featured in the Dazed & Confused magazine. Katia Ganfield interviewed Lilium Kobayashi (a.k.a. Ultrademon) in the article, titled "Seapunk: A new club scene intent on riding sub-bass sound waves into the future".