Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 1/30/08 Section: Mixed Plate

Media Credit: Courtesy of daftpunk.com Kanye's sample of Daft Punk's late 90's hit "Harder, Faster, Stronger" proves that

Media Credit: Courtesy of hiphopvideogirls Video girls like the Glenn twins and

T-Pain hiding that beautiful soprano behind layers of digital cover-up.

Music is always changing, mixing and developing. Musicians who seem to have been around forever are always looking for new ways to appeal to audiences and get their creative juices flowing.

The music industry goes through fads each year, and sometimes decades. For example, the '70s was all about disco and the '90s was all about imaging with teen pop. In today's world of music, the trends just keep changing. These are the current five trends in music for 2007-08:

DJ or producer-turned-artist: Some of the best songs from last year and now are done by artists who usually just have producer or DJ credits to their name. Timbaland had a big year with his album "Timbaland Presents Shock Value," and producing Justin Timberlake's album "Future Sex/LoveSounds."

DJ Khaled also hit gold by producing and rapping on his album "We The Best," with the radio-dominating single "We Takin' Over" featuring everyone and their mother.

Video girls: Videos are important to an artist's career, so why not make it entertaining? Male artists usually have attractive female dancers as eye candy to spice up their videos. The video girls sometimes make the song sound good, even if it's not something you would normally listen to.

Ok, so some videos make the girls do crazy things or look a certain way, but if they didn't have that, the video wouldn't be interesting.

Dance-themed songs: So many dances to learn, so few songs to teach us. The biggest song of course was "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" by Soulja Boy Tell'em. A couple of other big dances with songs that came out taught us how to "walk it out" and "pop, lock and drop it."

In the past, dancing seemed easy - the electric slide or cha-cha slide; but nowadays we have the "drink & two-step" followed by the "Spiderman." Whoever thought "super-soaking a ho" would be a hit?

Same old song: Remaking old songs has always been around, but not as much as in recent years. One artist definitely uses it to his advantage: Kanye West. He used samples from major artists and made hits out of them all.

Other artists who have used older songs include Mariah Carey, Mandy Moore, Jay-Z, Madonna and Justin Timberlake.

Singing with synthesizers: The biggest trend to date has to be singing with some kind of electronic device to help the voice sound good or weird. Everyone has gotten hooked on it, but T-Pain uses it so much, he probably needs a new machine. The synthesizer used to be for covering up a not-so-great vocalist, but now it is used for creative and different ways to spruce up a song. Anyone who has heard T-Pain or Britney Spears definitely knows what a synthesized voice sounds like.

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