borderpolice
Well-known member
I take issue with the often repeated claim that HipHop changes much, mutates and so on, heard on this thread, too.
on the contrary, hip hop has been rather static, as befits a popular genre, which needs recognition of a familiar musical ideom to function as a community soundtrack.
i propose to distinguish the following two dimensions in HipHop:
on the contrary, hip hop has been rather static, as befits a popular genre, which needs recognition of a familiar musical ideom to function as a community soundtrack.
i propose to distinguish the following two dimensions in HipHop:
- vocal style. here we have two paradigms: rhythmic and melodic. hiphop was born and bread rhythmic. by this i mean that rappers didnt do much with pitch. typical examples are "superrappin" by what later became know as "Grandmaster flash & the furious 5" (1978) and "rapper's delight" by the "Sugarhill gang". the rhythmic paradigm also features little variation in the rapped rhythm. almost all foreign rapping still follows this pattern, as does grime (which is why i don't like most grime vocals). the rhythmic paradigm has two subparadigms: smooth and shouty, with the former being the norm and the latter the exception. this paradigm ruled supreme, but was eventually challenged. maybe the early snoop/dr dre stuff may have been among the first to introduce more melody into the rapping and also a bit more rhythmic variety. in the late 90s and realy 00s this became much more dominant through crunk/dirty south and the fusions with RnB (traditionally more melody oriented). recently vocal style has also been shifted a bit due to jamaican and latin influences.
- background rhythm and harmonisation. HipHop comes from Disco/Funk mostly, and this is still the dominant mode of HipHop's instrumentation. But there was an alternative more noisy mode, for example when the rock crossover was attempted, or Public Enemy. Sounds have changed, partly due to legal issues (changes in the sampling legislation) and also due to progressing music technology.