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

M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
stelfox said:
well, that's why i said that there's no problem with kraftwerk, but...

"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..."

perhaps it's not tenuous so much as a red herring.
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Although if Miles Davis was referencing Stockhausen in his interviews from On the Corner onwards, there's no reason to think that anyone brought up around that time who was into him ( and Bam's nooooo spring chicken, and musically omniverous ) wouldn't have heard of ole Karlheinz and checked him out; there's always some weird kid around who's going to be totally into records, in this case what was weird was that Bam became a cultural visionary, rather than being stuck in his bedroom.

Quote:
Originally Posted by corneilius
What I meant, and I hope this came through, was that they wanted to raise consciousness, to motivate people to take steps change, to reclaim their power as people
I'm not hugely versed in old school hiphop but I can't think of anything "conscious" prior to The Message. I understood what you wrote, but like I said, nothing I've read points to there being an overtly politicised movement in NYC around the early days of the block parties and such. It sounds like wishful revisionism to me... will have to read the book!

Chang's main point about early hiphop is it's framework - his delineation of bronx gang stuff is amazing - and where that framework comes from, the 'soul' lyricism came later, you're right about The Message I think. I liked Chang's book.
 
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SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
This thread is a bit too long, dense and fractious for me to do anything but close my eyes and spray a few points at it, innocent bystanders, watch out.

re: stockhausen, whether or not he actually influenced early hiphop artists, I find this whole looking for the european behind black avant garde innovation thing a bit annoying. People did the same thing to Timbaland when he came out saying that he obviously was listening to drum and bass etc even after he repeatedly, explicitly denied it. I'm not at all suggesting that this doesn't ever happen, I'm just sick of people suggesting that it must be the case when there is a total lack of evidence or even evidence directly contradicting it.

re: why hasn't hiphop been superceded? Clearly because as a format it has remained open enough for people to plug in new attitudes, new sonics, new rhythms and still call it the same thing. And yes, I think the fact that all the black people didn't have to jump ship as it was taken over by whites had a bit to do with it as well.

re: Buick, I'm surprised people are getting so hot and bothered and saying things like ban him. The only effective weapon against ignorant speech is intelligent speech. A lot more people said 'shut him up because I'm offended' than actually offering any coherent rebuttal (not that there was much to coherently rebut). If we can't deal with this stuff on an internet msg board called Dissensus...

re: why do we like ignorant music? I think it's because the rapper saying 'I'll shoot you if you fuck with me' is offering a much more focused and direct form of aggressive energy (that many of us can relate to, even if we are not thugs ourselves) than those who are saying 'I don't rap about shooting people, I'm conscious'. However, Dead Prez DO work after midnight, have you not heard 'bigger than hiphop', 'we need a revolution', 'I'm an african'? Very effective party tools, at least in New York.

And yes, I co-sign with Stelfox, the level of dismissive, ignorant and condescending chatter in this thread reminds me of something that Catchdubs once said to me when we were talking about Funkmaster Flex: "A lot of people don't really like hiphop, even when they think or say they do."
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
DavidD said:
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.
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well, Marlboro is the owner of one of the main labels for this sort of music. he's trying to sell it abroad. his marketing ploy is: this is the new hiphop. he would hardly say to the world press: nobody listens to this stuff here ...

it is heard in brazil. but it is not popular in my experience. when i was in rio last summer, i tried really hard to go to clubs that play this music, but i found it impossible, because no brazilian i asked would even contemplate consume this sound. shame cos i love this music.
 
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milkandhoney

Well-known member
vaguely related:

Count Bass D said:
I bought my son a Rubik's cube yesterday for $1.50 and as usual my mind is blown again. I don't know why I find such deep meanings in trival things in life, but it's just the way I am.

A) I was 6/7 when the Rubik's cube came out in 1980, my son turned 7 in January.
B) I was never able to get more than one color solved. Once I did solve two colors and felt really proud.
C) I remember the mystery of how do these guys solve this thing in seconds. Those who are around my age probably remember all the hype and competitions.
D) Hype and what it takes to make a phenomenon (Poker, Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kids, etc.)
E) How the Internet destroys most mystery - I can put words in a search engine and learn how it's done. It wasn't like that before.

Samples and records are very much like the Rubik's cube. It was a mystery that took me a long time to figure out on my own. The Internet is a wonderful tool. It's a shame that it destroy's personal discovery. I feel personal discovery is what expands civilization as each person's journey adds to our collective journey. Now I understand why my teacher did not want me to read Cliffnotes. It's great to find out what someone else feels about something, but it's better to discover something that NO ONE has discovered before. If I actually used my personal experiences as a filter to add to the class discussion of East of Eden or Macbeth, who knows what I would have been able to contribute to someone else's life. Who knows what I would have stumbled acrossed along the way.

Young producers, think of this when you are putting "Dilla samples" in Google, or reading these long lists of who used what and downloading the mp3's. It's a great idea, and there is no limit to the human mind. There are so many records in the record store and I think of Kirb & Chris who I met in SF in December. I love the way they are using records that no one else touches. That's what you should take from this. It's fine to get your CTI & Kudu collection in order, but it's all in how you discover it. It is very hard for me not to prejudge the work of an individual that asks "What did ____ sample for X, Y or Z" on a message board. No, it's not going to always be as popular as following what else is going on, but maybe people will come back later and recognize (e.g. Art For Sale).

Yes it's much easier to use technology to create music, but many of the musicians I speak with now are better with technology than they are with the music itself. To me, that means unless technology advances, that individual's music will not. Well of course technology will always advance, but music is music and technology is technology. I don't feel they should parallel.

I'm sure one can make Bluegrass music on a computer, but would it still be Bluegrass? How come Bob Dylan HAS NOT said, "Hey man, you don't need an acoustic guitar anymore. carrying it around started getting on my nerves...I've got all I need right here in my laptop!" How come Phase 2 IS NOT saying..."You don't need to rack paint or get your hands all dirty anymore. We've got these airbrush machines and that's what we do our burners with now!" I remember when drummers used to get so mad at drum machines and we in Hiphop used to have the attitude of "Get with the times or too bad." Now I hear DJ's bitching and complaining about how vinyl is fading out and new technology is ruining the art. Well, Hiphop doesn't have the attitude of "Get with the times...", business does. Now DJ's know how those drummers felt. BIG UP to Brian Cross and his photography! I'm such a fan of how you keep it real with your pics and how you still use your eye and skill to get good shots. Big UP's to all food companies who don't use technology to make make more money even though it costs more. Big up to all those thugs who can still whoop somebody's ass to be feared as opposed to shooting someone from a distance. Don't you assholes know that anyone can kill someone with a gun? A lot of these musicians are the same with their little studios, I want to see what happens when you and I sit behind a 9 foot grand piano, a real trap set or a bass guitar live on stage. Exactly.

DON'T YOU SEE WHAT'S GOING ON? Why are you acting so damn blind to how everything is lining up right now? I'm thinking this is the reason you keep going to the record store every Tuesday to replace that bullshit you bought the previous Tuesday.

So many engineers are out of work because today's musician has to be able to record themselves to some degree and music suffers as a result. You wonder why we don't have anything close to Earth Wind & Fire anymore? You wonder why the female presence in Rap is what it is now huh? How many females do you know that make beats and have their own studio set up? Exactly... Georgia at Stonesthrow & I think I've seen Jean Grae with some shit too. I'm sure there are many more, but not on the scale as the male. The struggling female in Hiphop is requiring them to spend her money to look good as opposed to buying gear.

Musically it's harder to go where no one has gone before because the technology is streamlining opinions & options.

"Crack Music" is exactly what it is. Any inexpensive way to make music for maximum profit.

Obviously I'm not anti-Internet, technology. Nor is anything I'm saying a knock against any person, any record company. It's just something to think about in the world we live in. I just am making myself aware of what it's doing and how I must remain myself in the midst of it.

"The more you know is the more you know that you don't know shit." I'm just thinking out loud, not preaching or even sure if my opinion is fully fact based.

Have a wonderful day. I've got to handle a few things.
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anyone else here like countbassd btw
 
S

stelfox

Beast of Burden
gumdrops said:
the vid for get your hustle on is good, dont get me wrong, and its quite sad to see all those images, but at the end, they tack on some other song of his, maybe to make it easier on anyone who was missing all the usual hip hop video cliches.
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i hardly think that was the motiation for "tacking on" another song. that's another example of wilful and deliberate slagging for the sake of it, reading a cynical, calculating kind of cowadice into an essentially innocuous act, considering that this happens with just about every other hip-hop video going. it's a bit of advance promotion for another track, as is exremely common in the industry. re reasons i think hip-hop is worth listening to, i'm doing a radio show on thursday night on resonance. listen to it if you can be bothered. you might enjoy it, and if not there's sure to be plenty to hate on.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
such anger, stelfox, such anger. i see you wont/cant really argue your point or counter any of my comments except to say im a hater blah blah blah or im 'wrong' without actually saying why. thats absolutely fine, but it does seem like an easy option to just dismiss everything ive posted here as simply 'hating', as if it couldnt possibly be anything more than just bitter cynicism/jealousy. i dont think i am a hater though (although of course, im bound to say that), im just not one for this 'if you criticise hip hop, you must not like it and therefore you shouldnt say anything about it or ever listen to it again' way of thinking. it seems almost facist. and weirdly for a music thats so dominant and global, over protective.

anyway, enough of this, i think this thread deserves to have more replies to do with the actual question being posed.
 
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mpc

wasteman
gumdrops said:
that juvenile song has nothing to do with the images in the video. and the lyrics have not one iota of consciousness. theyre totally unrelated.
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nothing to do with the images??

i guess what happened was juvenile had a song he was gonna put out, but then when katrina came, he wanted to talk about what was happening so re-wrote some of the verses. anyway, some quotes from song:

"fuck fox news, i don't listen to y'all / couldn't get a nigga off the roof when the storm pass" - that's a pretty strong reference to katrina, right?

"everybody need a cheque for fema" - fema are responsible for compensating people affected by katrina. it's a kind of in-joke that fema have been giving out cheques pretty randomly to people who were hardly affected and those guys have been spending the money on grills and clothes etc, while others have got nothing.

"i lost it all in katrina" - juvenile's house was destroyed in katrina, so showing the damage done by the hurricane in the video obviously makes sense.

"tried to drown a nigga on the east bank" - a lot of guys in new orleans' 9th ward believe the government blew the levee protecting their part of the city to keep the flood water away from the french quarter. although this isn't true, it's what lots of people believe. also, rescue teams weren't sent in for days after the city flooded, so bush obviously wasn't that keen on helping them.

the lyrics aren't too blatant and the song obviously isn't all about katrina, but the political theme isn't exactly tenuous.
 
P

Poisonous Dart

Lone Swordsman
Naaah, man.

Nothing has replaced Hip Hop because Hip Hop is a hybrid/end result music form created by OTHER GENRES/STYLES OF MUSIC. It's tofuish in the sense that it can be mixed, splashed in, or used in collaboration with other styles of music but it will STILL BE CONSIDERED RAP/HIP HOP (although purists will hate the hell out of it for the most part). OutKast can make "The Love Below/Speakerboxx" and it's a Hip Hop album. Lauryn Hill can make "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" and it's a Hip Hop album, as was The Fugees "The Score". RJD2, Prefuse 73, DJ Vadim, DJ Shadow, Koushik, Madlib and many other beatmakers can get as crazy as they can with their music and if you ask them what it is they'll respond with "Instrumental Hip Hop". You can LOVE classic rock and soul music. You can love Reggae, Soca and Calypso. You can love Garage, 2 Step and Drum N' Bass...guess what? IT ALL CAN BE INCORPORATED INTO HIP HOP SEAMLESSLY...AND BE MADE INTO POPULAR MUSIC!

People from every region or country put their OWN spin and flavor into the music, evolving it further and further and stretching it's boundaries more and more...it is the same animal in every region and country, yet it conforms to and evolves to thrive in whatever area or region it's in (Darwin's Theory?) at the time. That's why nothing has REPLACED hip hop...Plus the makers/founding fathers of the music/artform haven't COMPLETELY lost control or any say in what happens to/with it the way they did with Blues, Jazz, and Rock in years past. One.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
gumdrops said:
such anger, stelfox, such anger. i see you wont/cant really argue your point or counter any of my comments except to say im a hater blah blah blah or im 'wrong' without actually saying why.
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I always feel a bit weird stepping into what looks like a two-person chat, but I guess it's a public board, eh. I think Stelfox did make it really clear why he thought you were wrong here. It's really common to tack on part of another track at the end of a music video as a bit of a teaser. In all other cases I've seen it acts as a promotional tool, not some kind of pacifier. Critical thinking's all good, but isn't it standard practice to assume the norm until there's evidence to the contrary?

This is all from one false hip-hop fan to another, mind you. :)

Do you know Stelfox's blogs btw? He hasn't got them hooked up in his profile or anything (or didn't last time I looked).

http://breakingranks.blogspot.com/
http://dsworksamples.blogspot.com/
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
mpc, for some reason, i kept thinking of the old juvenille song get ya hustle on featuring the big tymers when i posted before but as far as the new one, yep, its loaded with post-katrina references (and 'interesting' ideas for what people should do with their fema cheque), which makes it inherently political. i stand corrected.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
michael said:
I always feel a bit weird stepping into what looks like a two-person chat, but I guess it's a public board, eh. I think Stelfox did make it really clear why he thought you were wrong here. It's really common to tack on part of another track at the end of a music video as a bit of a teaser. In all other cases I've seen it acts as a promotional tool, not some kind of pacifier. Critical thinking's all good, but isn't it standard practice to assume the norm until there's evidence to the contrary?
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true enough, i know everyone from missy to ruff sqwad does the 'two videos in one' thing and thats what juvenile was doing here. BUT i still thought it a little dissapointing/jarring that after something like get your hustle on - which as i said IS a moving video, and something like that means more coming from someone who you wouldnt expect it from like juvenille than it would if say, the roots made it - he put 'whats happenin' right after it.
but like i said earlier, maybe that makes it cleverer as where he 'challenges the norm' with the first video, he gives people what they might expect with the second one. ive read some articles where they say thats a cynical/apologist/incogruous move on juvenilles part, and maybe it is. or maybe he just didnt give a shit what the second song was.

i havent read stelfox's blogs, no, but ill check them out.
 
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stelfox

Beast of Burden
gumdrops said:
such anger, stelfox, such anger. i see you wont/cant really argue your point or counter any of my comments except to say im a hater blah blah blah or im 'wrong' without actually saying why. thats absolutely fine, but it does seem like an easy option to just dismiss everything ive posted here as simply 'hating', as if it couldnt possibly be anything more than just bitter cynicism/jealousy. i dont think i am a hater though (although of course, im bound to say that), im just not one for this 'if you criticise hip hop, you must not like it and therefore you shouldnt say anything about it or ever listen to it again' way of thinking. it seems almost facist. and weirdly for a music thats so dominant and global, over protective.

anyway, enough of this, i think this thread deserves to have more replies to do with the actual question being posed.
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that's hardly what i'm saying. you are categorically wrong about the juve video. you made the addition of another song at the end sound like a cynical ploy to add some kind of vulgarity to the program because a hip-hop audience cannot and will not digest anything but the very basest concepts and imagery (which actually smacks of at worst, racism/at best, rank snobbery to me, but i'll let that be seeing as how i don't know much about you).

this is not the case and this aspect of the video cannot be used to back that idea up in any way whatsoever, seeing as how dual videos are entirely standard. it's absolute nonsense and, worse still, i think you know it. as for the song itself, mpc has said it all, so i don't need to bother now.

i'm happy to engage in an argument with you, but not when you're reaching so damned hard to prove your "points". i do most of my posting at work and have a bit of a personal life, so i can't engage with every post you make as and when you make it. however, if you're going to throw up these incessant examples of hip-hop's irrelevance and moral decrepitude, please at least make them hold a little water, otherwise this is like some sam kinison shit, just a lot less funny.

(also, i don't blog any more. i make a point of stopping any blog i do as soon as it gets mentioned in the guardian. being serious, i actually don't have a lot of time for it, though i do update the cuttings blog occasionally, when there's anything worthwhile to put there.)
 
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DJ PIMP

Well-known member
confucius said:
sigh... ok I'll re-phrase:

what makes religious fundamentalism and backwards, intolerant, hateful, politically unaware, selfish, vain, and just plain ignorant attitudes so inducive to the making of wicked beats and party rockin' music?
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In regards to hiphop... its partly ghetto fabulousness. Being from the streets and being a king or queen... living large and having larger than life beats (I was serious with my previous comment). Rising from nothing to become glam, coupled with (working class) prejudices, and the combatitive mentality of "the battle" that pervades the genre... always asserting the self over someone else? Hip hop has that "me against the world" siege mentality in spades, which is a kind of means to the end mentality. What matters is making it, not how you get there... which isn't that different to the US administration? :)

I've also wondered if the hyper testosterone in hiphop is partly a reaction to the pc liberalism of the past decades. Reactionary toward the obvious target... i.e. "women are the niggers of the world".

Tangent: in another forum there was a discussion on something... I can't remember what, but some guy said "its funny how you euros get so upset about racism. here in the US we love the shit." which I thought was an interesting observation.

Also the tradition of getting stoopid or making something to bug out to... which I guess in part comes from the kind of musicality that arises using turntables and sampling the most hooky parts of old records. Creating something thats simultaneously sonically wacky and dope/funky enough to make people go nuts on the dancefloor.

I came to the conclusion a years ago that if Dre and Snoop weren't so misogynistic and into pimp/gangsta personas their music would never have the same swagger and groove. Bless them both :) Planning to go see Snoop and the Snoopadelics when they play here soon.

Its a big iceberg this one...
 
R

ripley

Well-known member
bleep said:
I've also wondered if the hyper testosterone in hiphop is partly a reaction to the pc liberalism of the past decades. Reactionary toward the obvious target... i.e. "women are the niggers of the world".
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since way before PC liberalism (did that occur outside small private liberal arts colleges which btw are not bastions of hyper-testosterone hiphop), women's bodies have always been a kind of symbolic territory for men to express their power, nationalism etc by trying to control/assert power over. For some reason, maybe to do with the babymaking potential for literally making/embodying a nation.

But also when people are devalued in society, usually at least one part of fighting back or asserting power is turning against someone lower on the totem pole. So part of how one demonstrates power is by showing who one can dominate. And of course it feeds neatly into the capitalist world (which also has gendered participation where sex sells is mostly women's sex sells) and gets rewarded. And then the broader hiphop market of consumers hype/lap it up (and it feeds their gendered fantasies about power, as well as other fantasies about women as sexual objects).

It is an expression of genuine power - the power over someone weaker in the system than you. But expressing power is something hiphop folks (and many folks) are usually striving for. Too bad its so hard to do it without getting sucked into that.
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
ripley said:
So part of how one demonstrates power is by showing who one can dominate.
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Yeah thats kinda what i meant with the Yoko Ono quote.

"Love a woman when she got a tight outfit...
Outfit meaning outlook and disposition." - Q-tip.

Always makes me smile.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
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.
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There was a time when this guy and Logan Sama were using dissensus together.
 
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