Jeff Chang: “Why has nothing replaced hip hop?”

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:

  • 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.
One could also talk about lyrical conservativsm, but i'll stop here.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i might be repeating myself here but anyway...

dominic said:
ALSO, and is this is to repeat a point made by Reynolds many times over, black artists from the inner city are HUNGRY for success and fame -- and this hunger is the motor of sonic innovation in hip hop

depends what sort of success youre talking about. hip hop wasnt exactly regular mainstream pop fare in the late 80s (occasional run dmc hits and pop-rappers like young mc, vanilla ice, mc hammer excepted). the idea of any hip hop groups winning an oscar with a song like its hard out here for a pimp was unheard of, even a few years ago. yes, PE, eric b and rakim et al might have been hungry for success, but they didnt expect to see themselves in the billboard top ten or get playlisted on commercial mainstream radio.
as for fame, apart from a few big names like dr dre/nwa and PE, most rappers' fame was relatively underground. it wasnt made (i mean literally, it wasnt produced and mixed and performed etc) like pop music.

dominic said:
but again, this raises questions like

(1) are white musicians in the rock'n'roll medium less hungry for fame? -- i.e., we all know about the small-scale ambition of indie artists, but is this true across the board for rock musicians, i.e., distrust of fame and success???

you must have missed all the years of rappers going on and on about not selling out, dissing anyone who did and admonishing anyone who even contemplated the notion of selling out or pandering to the demands of regular radio programmers. rappers have always wanted to be succesful of course, they conveniently dissed radio when they werent being accepted but now they have been accepted by mainstream outlets, that anger has vanished, but i cant imagine rock bands not being hungry for success. theyre just more low key and not so brazen about it. they dont talk about it as openly as its deemed 'not cool'.

dominic said:
(2) or does it have to do with audience expectations? -- i.e., maybe white rock'n'roll audience PREFERS sounds that are not obviously commercial -- and yet this disdain for the mainstream results in a conservative "indie" aesthetic, which has nonetheless been mainstreamed -- whereas black audiences, by contrast, have no such disdain for the commercial or mainstream b/c they already are and always have been at the social margins -- and so black audience by and large looks for fresh sounds that have open designs on market share

but by and large, hip hop wasnt sounding 'commercial' before 96 or so. even early def jam releases didnt sound like what was on the pop charts at the time. as for not having disdain for the mainstream, what about the traditionally reactionary inclinations of the black audience, eg - when roots reggae was embraced internationally and adopted by the white audience, the core JA audience effectively left it behind for rawer dancehall. when blues was adopted by white rock fans, the black american bulk of its listeners went somewhere else (ditto for early rock n roll). i mean, dyou think the black eyed peas are hugely popular with black listeners? its true that old styles are quickly left behind in favour of something new before they get remotely stale but i dont know if its that gone hand in hand with a total ambiguity towards commercialism. as jeff chang said (or implied), i think its weird that nothing new has sprung up cos hip hops been relatively stale for a while....
 

qwerty south

no use for a witticism
@ stelfox - the second wave of hip hop (electro funk) arguably came from stockhausen / kraftwerk.

you can say that techno existed independently of hip hop before they converged.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
DavidD said:
Guys

there are tons of white rappers. Many of whom are successful regionally. And I don't mean just the media-darling indie dudes - Paul Walls, Lil Wytes, Bubba Sparxx, Haystacks, Eminems, EC Illas, Tow Downs (heh well maybe not) etc.

glad you're here, mate. saved me having to point that out.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
the only people i can really think of are the anticon crew, the rappers on def jux and a few other little indie label-rosters, who arent selling huge numbers but do really well on the underground
 
I never heard anyone making rap records (electro funk whatever) say they were influenced by Stockhausen! I don't hear a lot of musique concrete or 12 tone influences. Of course Planet Rock & Egyptian Lover records are influenced by Kraftwerk's later (sequenced) records but largely the whole electro thing happened because affordable, usable, funky-sounding electronic instruments became available, not because everyone in the hood was checking out avant garde electronic music.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
@ DavidD and GumDrops = all points well taken

i have nothing to offer in rebuttal -- so i'll be quiet, at least for time being
 

mms

sometimes
gumdrops said:
the only people i can really think of are the anticon crew, the rappers on def jux and a few other little indie label-rosters, who arent selling huge numbers but do really well on the underground

i would never call anticon hip hop - they have been pitched wrong, they're should be indie rock, they should occupy the space that all those retro bands do, they've elements of hip hop in 'em but they are distanced by miles thru their attititude etc.

i'd ask him why he thinks hip hop should be replaced, and what his definition of hip hop is, i mean the music has developed and changed so much, thru local reversioning and also worldwide adaptations like baille funk and grime etc , i think it hasn't been replaced because its adaptable, it has always been adaptable too, variations on rap music were there right from the start all over the us, in one way you could argue there has never been one hip hop so replacing it would be futile and as soon as one area geographic or otherwise gets dull another adapts again.
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
borderpolice said:
Errr no! funk carioca is deeply unpopular in brazil, except for a small minority, of (usually male)
favela dwellers.
Really? Every article I've read has been accompanied by 1) pictures of women dancing and 2) talk with DJ Marlboro about how he's this hugely popular DJ there. Everything I heard suggested that this stuff is grassroots-popular. If its not, then the case for it 'taking over' rap music sounds even stupider than I'd been led to believe.
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
borderpolice said:
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:

  • 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.
One could also talk about lyrical conservativsm, but i'll stop here.

Lyrically rap seems to develop all the time in my mind, but I think you're confusing social and aesthetic conservatism in that regard. I think the other problem I have with yr take about it being 'static' is that - well, i think you might be kind of right! But not really. haha. to explain:
I don't see hip-hop as moving in a linear direction, although the discourse around it certainly wants it to.
 
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Melchior

Taking History Too Far
DavidD said:
there are tons of white rappers. Many of whom are successful regionally. And I don't mean just the media-darling indie dudes - Paul Walls, Lil Wytes, Bubba Sparxx, Haystacks, Eminems, EC Illas, Tow Downs (heh well maybe not) etc.

those are the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. Yes there are a number of white rappers who are successful. But there are successful black rock stars too, that doesn't make rock n roll anything but white dominated these days does it?
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
qwerty south said:
@ stelfox - the second wave of hip hop (electro funk) arguably came from stockhausen / kraftwerk.

you can say that techno existed independently of hip hop before they converged.

i'm glad you said "arguably", because it didn't really. i know dissensus likes to big up the avant garde's status wherever possible, but this this really is reaching. the stuff quoted had a much, much, much greater effect on the detroit belleville three axis than it did on soul sonic force.

i'll buy kraftwerk because they were part of the pop-cultural landscape at the time and i have no problem believeing that bambaata and co were fully aware of them. stockhausen, however, is really tenuous.

any effect he might have had on hip-hop was second and third-hand (and then it was only a very small aspect of his work - ie the fact that it was electronically produced), mediated via groups like kraftwerk, depeche mode and contemporary synth pop.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
yeah, kraftwerk's only real influence on hip hop is that bambaata liked their records, worked two of them into planet rock, then from there, the influence spread to other hip hop artists of the time.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Ok, now that the thread is into this territory ,
i'll weigh in a bit here on these specific points :

Agreed with Stelfox in that I have not ever seen or heard of instance
where Stockhausen has been cited in terms of electro or hiphop - by the artists .
Kraftwerk -well, it was impossible to avoid Computer World , it was all over NYC hiphop radio and Long Island college radio & pop radio stations.
On Planet Rock you have Africa B & crew rapping on top of a beat that was not hiphop until in the remaking it was perhaps claimed as such .

Also, agreed with Qwerty that 'techno' and hiphop existed independently ...

Sorry to bore , but to go bk and look at our own experience in those years to try to show how close some of these threads really were ...
The group we made in 1980 , Ike Yard was rooted in post -punk and also had 2 members who had studied & made electronic music in college , well schooled in der Stockhausen , Xennakis , Parmagiani and the others .
That changed the music we were making and we went totally electronic .
4 members playing synths all connected into a central module synth and drum machine -
what I would call 'electro' and even 'techno' of our own kind .
We did not really create while thinking about genres , we had not heard what was going on in Detroit .
Within a year or so , we were playing out live (not at all an easy thing to do),
had an EP on Crepescule and were opening for New Order .
Their Sound guy hated us we heard from the Factory America guy, so the guy didn't really help us in soundcheck and by the time we got on , it took Peter Hook jumping up to help us in a pinch (this was our CHANCE by god) , but there was resistance to 'electronic'.
You may hear the results on a New York Noise #3 soon enough.
After Ike , I went off to W Berlin and was lucky enough through my earlier group Futants connection to have some friends there like MALARIA! who knew everybody.
I came bk to NYC about 6 months later with my ideas for "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" and while we were recording it Arthur Baker knocked on the door and wanted in on it
(in retro , shouldn't have opened that door).
Soon , New Order was working with Arthur and I hope they didn't get ripped off like Dom did ,
matter of fact they made a record many rate as 'tops' , Blue Monday
(I learned to use a sequencer today, oh boy).
After "Sleeps" became a big hit and I got sick of hearing it everytime I went out ,
i wanted to make another music , make a left turn ,
and loving the stark beats of Sucka MC by Run DMC inspired me to made Death Comet Crew aka DCC.
I wanted to join what we knew with these beats and take it somewhere ... else.
In reviews for our rereleases" America" Ep in '03 and "This Is Riphop" Troubleman US ,
we kept rding that we were 'the template that Company Flow was based on' - forerunners of Def Jux and MF Doom' and that may be .
But the reason we got into hiphop was because bk then it was open and new and we saw it as mallable,
I mean if Africa B could rock Computer World , we could rock Sucka MC type beats into Exterior Street w/ The Rammellzee ...
Now that DCC has reformed and are finishing our new Ep and Album, we have gone bk into mutating hiphop & rok & Post -Miles electric jazz like we did bk in 1984 because of the threads we explored ,
some of them did not get explored.
Over the last 3 years or so since reforming DCC I also got into hiphop production for a spell ,
but I decided to stop going in that direction after J got out (liked his productions/what his guys did for him , even K-Rob worked with him) and Timbaland's quieted down (reloading , i hope) , tho' i like some crunk, Bounce , syrup music , Baltimore Breaks, etc.
And by now, DCC will prolly release the first new stuff ... on a German indie label.
Many strata , layers, kinds, mindsets in what we call 'hiphop' !


So, it all depends on what you do in the field - or I guess what you hear that you want to then write about.
I'd say the state of mind of openess that some artists and producer's see is what has helped allow hiphop
to stay around .
 

corneilius

Well-known member
Hip Hop? or reality Check~!

Hip Hop if ya read Changs book was in the beginning an expression, a protest, about a grim 'reality' that ghetto black/hispanic and white people in Kingston, Jamacia and NY and other huge US cities were subject to and it expressed an attempt to rally people to change that reality.

Then the money started to flow in from the corporations ........ and now

....... Hip Hop today and all its derivative styles, that you see in mainstream is mostly commercial pop shite, no better or worse than any other commercially based music.

The reality is that there are some musicians out there, in many different genres, who have honestly dealt with their conditioning, and have grown as human beings and that is reflected in their music, in how they bring their music to people and in how they live their lives, how they contribute to their communities - those are the ones that are the change that is possibly coming.

Everyone else is just looking to get a living, some attention or whatever ... and part of the problem.

If one is stuck on a genre, and NOT paying attention to what is really going on around one and in one's mind, that's where one is and no amount of "this is better than that" will change a thing.

Conditioning is as conditioning does.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
corneilius said:
To put it simply - content is far more important that genre or style! ;)
Style is content?

I was under the impression hiphop was originally about partying as an escape from the realities of ghetto life.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
bleep said:
Style is content?

I was under the impression hiphop was originally about partying as an escape from the realities of ghetto life.

Yes this is very true and what many bedsit-boy musical intellectual nerds seem to forget, especially when you look at the hiphop/breakdance music from the 80s.

Alot of the hiphop songs were about ghetto emancipation and tolernace - running paralell with the gay thing with house music - shit, even Prince did an album called 'emancipation'. The agro /street/projects thing prolly started with 'the message' but didn'treally break through until Cool J, RunDMC Public Enemy and NWA and Ice-T kicked the shit all over the place and then you had the film 'Colors' and the whole crips/bloods LA gang thing being exploited etc..etc..

It's funny coz everything is sorta hiphop now, and we're living in some of the most conservative times in history, I mean even hiphop is an extreme form of conservatism.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
Buick6 said:
It's funny coz everything is sorta hiphop now, and we're living in some of the most conservative times in history, I mean even hiphop is an extreme form of conservatism.

well, thank god for the bedsit intellectual nerds because this is about the laziest, most reductive view of a massively diverse and hugely important global culture possible. worst thing is that it keeps cropping up here all the time from a lot of people who really should know better. in general this is a pretty thoughtful board and it really frustrates me that the general tenor of hip-hop discussion in one of dismissive misunderstanding. sure, a lot of it's bollocks, but it's worth way more than sweeping statements like this.
 

qwerty south

no use for a witticism
i say stockhausen in the same breath as kraftwerk as the former influenced the latter and the former was one of the first to use loops in music.

kraftwerk have been sampled many many times over the years by hip hop artists. Ciara's "1, 2 Step" being a recent example.

"numbers" by kraftwerk is a pulse of hip hop - a breakbeat.
 
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