In Praise of Hip Hop
Perhaps it should surprise no one that this middle-aged white woman with no formal musical education enjoys hip hop so much. My daughter works for an indie record label and her boyfriend is a hip hop deejay and producer. Consider, though, that I loved listening to hip hop back when both it and I were just getting started.
Of course, I don’t enjoy all rap and/or hip hop music but then I don’t enjoy all of any kind of music. Certain songs and musicians, though, inform my whole life, and some play through all my dreams, waking and sleeping.
A few of them belong within the hip hop tradition, which has influenced popular music widely enough over more than enough years to rank among this country’s great musical traditions. Hip hop springs directly from funk, jazz, soul, rock, blues, and some would argue, bluegrass and country. This music is both proliferating and accelerating. So it pains me when otherwise knowledgeable people, some of them musicians no less, define hip hop solely as angry young men ranting and cussing about how violent and misogynistic they are. This portrayal fits only certain rap songs, and happens to land quite close to punk rock and shock rock, which, while not especially lauded, are not derided nearly as frequently.
Some of this is plain racism, but some of it may spring from the age-old pattern where an older generation strives to hang on to the music filling the air waves when it was young. But the need to hang on to great music, historic or current, is very much the point. To each his own: no one’s favorites are likely to disappear before civilization itself does. Meanwhile, one older generation’s complaints are the same as their parents’, saying the new music is nothing but “noise,†and bemoaning that “they just don’t make music like they used to.â€Â
Of course, that’s another stereotype. Generations do not divide into distinct time frames, no matter what the demographers decide. When my children discovered Grand Master Flash’s rap, The Message, I recall feeling astonished that the song came out before they were born. And that back when I was first hearing this new music, the deejay, who changed familiar songs by “scratching†records, was the master. Grand Master Flash was among the first, back when hip hop was all about starting a party. Rappers were extras until records were released and videos appeared on MTV. The commercial presentation put the deejays in the background, making the rappers the stars.
Now if the pendulum isn’t swinging back, at least equilibrium has developed. The deejay and producers of hip hop are full fledged artists, steeped in an encyclopedic familiarity with U.S. popular music going back fifty or sixty years. And their favorite samples often come from obscure recordingsâ€â€or at least ones unknown to me.
In any case, take a minute and let Mtume ya Salaam explain how to listen to hip hop as bona fide art:
“To fully understand and enjoy modern music, you have to learn to recognize the sonic fingerprint of entire songs. And not just songs as in four or five minute collections of rhythm, harmony and melody. If you’d like to consider yourself a knowledgeable fan of modern music, you’ll have to learn to recognize bits, snippets, fragments and pieces of songs. You’ll have to retune your ears so that you can pick out tiny slices of one song spliced into another. You’ll have to develop the ability to recognize a drum pattern even after it’s been slowed down or sped up; a string melody that’s been replayed on a keyboard then sampled and placed over or under something else; sounds stretched into words; words taken out of context; contexts shifted, so that the singer or rapper says things they never intended. You’ll have to develop the patience to track down this sample or that one, playing detective for nothing more than the fun of hearing a sound you’ve grown accustomed to coming from a place you never imagined it.” - Mtume ya Salaam
In Breath of Life, a blog about black music, which Mtume shares with Kalamu ya Salaam, you can find unparalleled insight and elegant writing about black music by both black musical scholars once a week. A jukebox offers three MP3 picks, which you can download the week they’re posted. The write-ups , of course, remain available in a Breath of Life’s archives.
More and more, the favored beats and phrases among deejays depends on obscure sources. The death of two huge influences in 2006, however, has set off tributes to both men and their related styles. It’s Dilla’s World is intended as a tribute both to the original artist, James Brown, and to the hugely influential hip hop deejay/producer Dilla (aka J Dilla, aka James Lancey). Dilla, at age 32, died of a blood disease complicated by lupus on February 10, 2006. James Brown, as probably more people remember, died on December 25, 2006, at age 73, while hospitalized for pneumonia.
My musical inadequacies make it impossible for me to listen the way Mtume ya Salaam suggests. I get a fraction of what’s going on. But that fraction is both breathtaking and haunting.
(Thanks to a Lily Kane for assistance.)
- Let's Keep Our American History Interesting For Everybody
- Hip Hop To the Alphabet
- From Beat Boxes to Beethoven
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It's my understanding that "the kids" who make up the bulk of the music's fanbase are moving on and that hip hop's place at the top of current music styles is drawing to a close. As you note, however, that does not mean hip hop will disappear, any more than earlier forms of music.
I once had a conversation with a family member who said emphatically, "Rap is not music." I'm sure I disagreed but I'm also sure I did not say out loud what I thought: "What an ignorant statement."
When I lived in NYC in the early 80s, I enjoyed the exposure to rap and hip hop and still have some of the old records. Favorites include Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" and the incredible first few singles by Afrika Bambaataa.
I also enjoyed the hip hop/pop hybrids, like the Force MDs' "Let Me Love You" and was very interested to see how the whole 12" remix format was even picked up by rock music for a time. (I still have my Bruce Springsteen remixes.) People now seem to forget the hip hop impact then.
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Personally, I like where some jazz musicians are taking hip hop. Roy Hargrove's RH Factor is incredible--the most vital of any new jazz I am listening to. And I read in the NY Times this morning (maybe yesterday) that Robert Glauber, who is a fine young jazz pianist, was riffing on a Dilla beat at the Bonnaroo Festival.
(But "White Lines" is one of my favorites too.)
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If you want to learn about black music, click on the link to the Breath of Life blog.
And you say you love ballads? I can't imagine the world without them. If no one had composed ballads yet, we'd all hurt so much, missing them so much, someone overflowing with soul would just start singing, low and soft, "Hey baby, what about ballads? The world's no good without them." Or something like that.
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And Kevin, no, we young people have not forgotten about the hip hop impact from back then. Even if we weren't alive back then, it's been explained to us MANY times. The best artists pay respect to those original hip hop creators in full, but they are also not commercial enough to make their way into your spectrum of listening. Actually it sounds like nothing past 1990 makes it into your spectrum of listening, and that's a little sad.