After turning on the radio and hearing "Womanizer" by Britney Spears one day, I suddenly understood that you couldn’t take such dense, deep music at face value. You have to sniff in between the lines to understand "Womanizer’s" underlying message: traditional instrumentals and beats are out, and techno is in.

Hip hop beats were traditionally a sampling of various kinds of music. Beats isolated from funk, soul, and even rock became the basis of hip-hop. Drum and bass elements of music became instrumental in the development of rap.

Emcees like Biggie Smalls would not only contradict themselves, but also had acoustic beats that attracted a diverse audience. Today, most hip hop beats have deteriorated into synthesizers and electronic bass beats without a rhythm, narrowing the audience down to hipsters like me. Human sensation has been replaced by machines and a shout-along chorus.

At least producers like Timbaland have retained aspects of hip hop in their music, learning from rapper 50 Cent’s single, "How to Rob," by incorporating European techno into beats. In 2007, Timbaland was sued for plagiarizing, allegedly taking a demo called "Azidjazzed Evening" by Finnish musician Janne Suni to make a beat. This was a bit more than borrowing aspects of European techno.

I’m not loving vocals the way I wanted to. Kanye "George Bush doesn’t care about black people" West has adopted the Cher—I mean T-Pain—effect, a technique where artists can make up for their lack of vocal talent with auto-tune by electronically injecting skill into heaping piles of Grammy Awards.

The vocal aspect of today’s music could have been saved by a powerful underlying voice addressing issues like hunger, war, or the lack of good music, but ever since Three-Six Mafia said "I stay fly," the focus has instead been on partying, getting money, and debauchery. (Disclaimer: I am not at all opposed to the aforementioned activities).

It is regrettably understandable why hip hop and pop music must mimic techno features. Techno was developed in order to achieve what humans could not do alone; you will be hard pressed trying to find anyone capable of 1000 beats per minute on any instrument. However, with a little more collaboration between genres, music may one day be harder, better, faster, and stronger.