In the world of music, the popular tunes that play on radios typically include catchy hooks and soft melodies, but underground music scenes take a different direction in what musical expression should contain. Musicians out of the limelight have the freedom to take time to craft their eclectic pieces, and make records that obviously do not appeal to the more mainstream music masses.

These bands and artists experiment with music and, in an indirect way, can completely change the music scene. The focus of rock music in the latter half of the 1900s engendered an insane amount of rock subgenres—one for each specific preference. Metal music, a subgenre of rock music itself, famously contains hundreds of subgenres and even sub-subgenres. This level of experimentation led to odd rock bands that made it to the mainstream, and a select handful of bands which made the more extreme elements of rock popular.

One of the most famous examples in the 1990s of punk music’s influence comes from Nirvana. Kurt Cobain and company made music that almost exclusively highlighted mental illness and depression and featured abrasive guitar melodies with hard drums banging listeners’ ears. All of this would seem to turn most people off from their music, as aggression in tunes definitely does not suit everyone, but Nirvana ended up becoming one of the most world-famous bands in their short lifespan. This caused several offshoots to appear, attempting to copy them, with bands like Radiohead trying their hand at it in their debut record Pablo Honey. In Nirvana’s last album, In Utero, the band took their artistic freedom gained from the commercial success of Nevermind and ran with it by creating acerbic and emotionally raw songs that battered the listener, and yet it still made an incredible amount of sales and turned Nirvana into legends of the rock world.

Rock, however, does not hold the title of most popular music genre any longer, as hip-hop overtook it in 2017. Extreme versions of hip-hop now pop up all over the Internet, particularly on the platform Soundcloud. With typically young kids rapping over loud beats and yelling their lyrics, caustic hip-hop influences larger artists, such as extreme rapper XXXTENTACION calling out pop-rap artist Drake on using his lyrical delivery style in his songs. The development of aggressive, faster rap styles mirrors the development of punk music in the 1980s, with the 80s punk movement largely allowing young kids to express their discontent with societal and political decisions. This punk attitude once again shows up in the legendary underground experimental hip-hop trio Death Grips’s music, whose blend of industrial and hip-hop music revolutionized more extreme forms of rap.

Experimental and extreme music does not only apply to this underbelly of pop music. Music that completely disregards all contemporary ideas of the mainstream, typically called Avant-Garde music, can even influence artists. Genres like noise, which literally features ‘melodies’ of static and similar sounds, developed a large underground following of fans. This influenced death metal bands like Sunn O))), who incorporates noise and drone styles into their typical 30-minute songs and long albums. Avant-Garde typically pushes any boundary it can find and tries to challenge or alienate their audience as much as possible. The experimental rock record Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart in 1969 exemplifies this perfectly, as Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band consciously try to stray from any consistent melody or sensible lyrics. Nevertheless, the styles included in Beefheart’s music influenced rock music as a whole.

In general, no musical exploration wastes an artist’s time. Dedicating oneself to a craft and trying new styles and rhythms in music, while it may not appeal to all, can push the boundaries of contemporary music and maybe hit that gold mine of a new genre. In the same way Jimi Hendrix’s style of playing guitar shaped music in the 1960s and 70s, new flows and beats in hip-hop can shape modern tunes. Artists who incorporated jazz into their hip-hop records such as Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole caused a large amount of popular artists to take another look at the jazz genre, and the cycle continues to reinvent music in new and exciting ways, and whatever the listener’s preference, someone most likely makes a tune to scratch that itch.