also more or less correct: but that is to say the Kraftwerk the vast majority of the world knows and loves, the electro-pop Kraftwerk, was heavily influenced by all those 4 minute love songs from across the atlantic.
I'm not sure I agree here either, what people "know" and what is true are two very different things. You seem to be side stepping actual documented history to make your arguement work Zhao
They (Kraftwerk) had already started to condense their music after Autobahn and added even more lyrics to all future releases, I think I mentioned that last time
If anyone was a big influence then I'd say it was James Brown, the never ending groove was a big influence (Karl has stated this many times) but they always did things their way and had very strong ideas about how "music werkers" do and present things. The big thing for a lot of Krautrockers was that you must be doing and have something original, it must be your own.
You'll find this attitude in Cluster, Neu!, Pop and Faust etc. This is what Kraftwerk did, they made their own thing and that which influenced also became their own because they did little to copy anyone, look at The Model for example, it doesn't even have a chorus! If they'd be copying or been influenced that strongly by pop music as you suggest it would have one.
But the fact remains that what you're saying doesn't really stack up, Autobahn wasn't pop music and it was this track that broke them to the world, OK it had the humourous reference to The Beach Boys but this piece of work is anything but pop music, plus it's very much the work of the studio and Conny Plank, you have to look at the whole history and not select just the parts that work
and so my thesis remains: without Kraftwerk hiphop would have surely been born and thrived as a natural extension of all the Black American music which came before. albeit may be via a slightly different route -- but with funk and jazz artists of the 70s already enthusiastically experimenting with electronics, this different route in our alternate universe would have been only very slightly different.
The DJ, decks and drum machines played a massive part, I'd say that the fact that Kraftwerk drums where always on time was one of the reasons their tracks got picked up and used because they are easy to mix, plus lets not forget the instrumental B-Side that also appeared in the 80s. I don't remember saying that they invented Hip Hop anyway
and I don't know anything about Hip Hop to chat about it really as I lost interest in it very quickly.
