Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472118922 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 07/25/2013 |
| Series: | Tracking Pop |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Rhymin' and Stealin'
Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop
By Justin A. Williams
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2013 University of MichiganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11892-2
CHAPTER 1
HISTORICIZING THE BREAKBEAT
Hip-Hop's Origins and Authenticity
Hip hop today thrives on a sense of its own past.
— BILL BREWSTER AND FRANK BROUGHTON, LAST NIGHT A DJ SAVED MY LIFE
Some say this is the first generation of black Americans to experience nostalgia. And it all showed up in the music.
— NELSON GEORGE, HIP-HOP AMERICA
With hip hop, born in the Bronx, these guys created something out of nothing. That's amazing. That's alchemy. That's magic.
— JOHAN KUGELBERG, BORN IN THE BRONX
The complex relationship between an artistic culture and its history can be investigated from two large-scale methodological angles. First, there is the "ancestral method" — the relationship between a culture and its historical influences and precedents, linking past to present to form a network of lineage or traditions. The second method ("intracultural hermeneutics") looks at the relationship between a self-conscious culture and its own internal history: its origins, development, or evolution and its defining features. Though elements of a culture shift over time, the importance of a culture's defining features (e.g., lifestyles, worldview, philosophies, images, objects, and products) is what keeps cultural objects bounded in an imagined community. While such objects and concepts are never fully bounded in actuality, these features are the crucial signifiers that form cultural identity and, to many, its essence. Despite the contestation that some of an art world's essentialism may invite, the truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt) of an artistic culture is of great importance for those who participate. In popular music cultures, this "truth content" is part of a larger issue, widely theorized in popular music scholarship, known as authenticity. This chapter, by way of the second method, explores the links between hip-hop's self-conscious cultural history and notions of authenticity through the variety of ways newer artists borrow and sample from their predecessors in the hip-hop world.
African American culture, and its reception, has had a unique and problematic relationship with history, exposed to interpretations ranging from praise of artistic lineages (Stuckey, Gates, Floyd, Demers, Cobb) to claims of having no history at all (Hegel's contention of African culture's "historylessness"/Gesehichtslosigkeit as antithetical to Europe's). In terms of culture produced from the African diaspora, there may exist what Lois Zamora calls an "anxiety of origins" within North American and Latin American (more specifically "New World") literary cultures. Zamora writes: "I consistently find that an anxiety about origins impels American writers to search for precursors (in the name of community) rather than escape from them (in the name of individuation); to connect to traditions and histories (in the name of a usable past) rather than dissociate from them (in the name of originality)." Zamora sees the use of traditions, clichés, interest in origins, and repetition as a result of this historical anxiety.
More specifically, links in scholarship between hip-hop and earlier forms of African or African American expression have been abundant. These include connections with griots, Jamaican toasting, jazz, blues, and 1970s blaxploitation film. While the connections with pre-hip-hop ancestry are useful and enlightening, this chapter analyzes hip-hop history and borrowing from within the "hip-hop world" or "Hip-Hop Nation." Rather than consider long-term or cross-generational links with earlier forms of African American arts, hip-hop can now be treated and discussed as its own cultural field for hermeneutical investigation. Hip-hop discourse acknowledges, and debates within, its own field with its own intracultural traditions, and this genre consciousness among fans, artists, and media is crucial both to identity and to understanding. Exploring these more internalized dynamics will help elucidate notions of cultural definition, canon formation, and authenticity. This investigation of borrowing from within the hip-hop world, focusing on the origins and romanticization of a "prerecording" hip-hop performance culture, demonstrates a pervasive source of hip-hop authenticity. A number of artists and groups borrow from the "old school" as representative of a historically authentic hip-hop identity. I call this concern with hip-hop history historical authenticity.
Rather than theorize answers as to why genre self-consciousness is so abundant in hip-hop, this chapter shows how the specific relationship between hip-hop and its own history is embedded within hip-hop music. Concern with hip-hop's internal history is more prominent with some artists than others; artists such as KRS-One, Common, and Nas comment on hip-hop as a larger culture and, as I will argue, borrow from the early period of hip-hop to signify authenticity. Artists who assert and invoke the past as the essence of true hip-hop demonstrate that knowledge in a number of ways. Historical authenticity in hip-hop becomes an extramusical and intramusical debate that contributes to construction of these genres and communities.
Historical Accounts of the Origins of Hip-Hop
While it is not the aim of this chapter to show how it really was ("Wie es eigentlich gewesen"), it is important to present some accounts of the origins of hip-hop music as a frame of reference. Many of these accounts have evolved from interviews over the years, and various anecdotes have become canonized through frequent citations in books, magazines, and documentary films. Since hip-hop's origins were largely unrecorded (which contributes to its mystique), we will never have an entirely accurate account of how it was, but these accounts are nonetheless important in forging a usable past for historical authenticity.
For certain hip-hop purists, the truest form of hip-hop culture existed from 1973 to 1979, before hip-hop was "commercialized" in the form of recordings. It was during this time period that what became known as the "four elements" of hip-hop arose in the South Bronx (graffiti, breakin', DJing, and MCing). These artistic movements were linked, all sharing the same urban space, with artists often engaging with more than one of these elements. The following will give an account of those early days, culled from various secondary sources.
Though graffiti and what became known as breakdancing emerged as early as the late 1960s, no specific date is associated with their birth. The origin of hip-hop music, however, can be traced back to a single time and place: 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in Morris Heights (in the Bronx) on August 11, 1973, when Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc threw his first party. What separated Herc from other DJs at the time was that he did something different with the records. First, he used two turntables (as contemporaneously used in disco to create a smooth flow from one song to another), and he began to monitor the crowd for responses. Second, he decided to use the instrumental break of records, since that was the part of the record that dancers seemed to like the most. The often quoted account is from David Toop's 1984 book The Rap Attack: "Initially, Herc was trying out his reggae records but since he failed to cut ice he switched to Latin-tinged funk, just playing the fragments that were popular with the dancers and ignoring the rest of the track. The most popular part was usually the percussion break." Herc developed a technique called the "merry-go-round" where he would play a continuous flow of breakbeats, one after the other. He was then able to use the same breakbeat on two copies of the same records, alternating the two to create a continuous instrumental flow. A number of breakbeats are mentioned in these accounts, most notably the middle section of James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit A Loose" and the Incredible Bongo Band's version of "Apache." Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton provide a quote from an interview with DJ Kool Herc:
Herc recalls the records he used that night. "There was the 'clap your hands, stomp your feet' part of James Brown's 'Give it up or Turnit a Loose,' 'Funky Music Is The Thing' by the Dynamic Corvettes, 'If You Want To Get Into Something' by the Isley Brothers and 'Bra' by Cymande." All this was topped off with the percussion frenzy of the Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," a record destined to become Herc's signature tune, a Bronx anthem, and one of the most sampled records in hip hop.
There is no debate within the hip-hop community as to the individual who most directly "invented" hip-hop music: DJ Kool Herc is universally recognized and respected. Accounts almost always note his unusually large sound speakers (a tradition brought with him from the Caribbean), as well as his own size (6'5" tall). As the story goes, after a few parties, Herc began to establish a reputation for himself in the Bronx.
DJ and former South Bronx gang member Afrika Bambaataa organized his first party in November 1976 at the Bronx River Community Center, inspired by Herc's break-centered style, as opposed to a song-centered DJ style. He founded an organization called the Zulu Nation to promote an end to gang warfare in the Bronx. He played a wide variety of records: in addition to funk music, he played instrumental portions of the Monkees, the Beatles, Aerosmith, and Kraftwerk. For Bambaataa, using the instrumental fragment eradicated an element of racial identity and genre categorization; artist and genre mattered less than sound and danceability. Bambaataa, in an oft-cited statement to David Toop in 1984, recalled:
I'd throw on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — just that drum part. One, two, three, BAM — and they'd be screaming and partying. I'd throw on the Monkees, "Mary, Mary, where are you going?" — and they'd start going crazy. I'd say, "You just danced to the Monkees." They'd say, "You liar. I didn't dance to no Monkees." I'd like to catch people who categorise records.
His individualism was rooted in leadership of a musical democracy. In other words, if the crowd had not responded favorably to the records, it would not have worked. The events became extremely popular, and partygoers went all over New York City to look for the eclectic records that Bambaataa played. The astounding variety of his records frequently became a metaphor for peace and coexistence in later reception.
As Joseph Schloss and others have stated, hip-hop represented a new way of thinking about records and, ultimately, a new way of making music. Rather than a linear harmonic progression in the Western art music sense, the looping repetition of dance music creates a pleasure arising from a process, rather than satiating a goal-oriented desire (what Luis Manuel Garcia calls "process pleasure"). Broadly speaking, the breakbeat was part of an artistic tradition of recontextualizing "found objects" (e.g., Duchamp's Fountain) and of Signifyin(g) on past styles, adapting and appropriating records to fit new contexts for collective enjoyment and active engagement. It was a form of musical fetishization, but unlike Adorno's criticisms of fragmented listening, I do not use the term in a pejorative sense. Dancers were now able to enjoy the pleasures of their musical fetishes to the fullest. Most important, this music culture began as a dance culture — it was about the energy of parties. The breakbeat involves a freedom, a freedom of the DJ as listener to foster creativity with the collage of cultural information he or she had available. The focus on the dancer and the community invokes what Herbert Gans calls the "user-orientation" of popular music as opposed to the "creator-orientation" of high art music and its canons. This early hip-hop focus on the party conjures up notions of the pleasure-field, as described and theorized by Richard Middleton, a "loss of the subject" in experiencing jouissance.
The importance of collectivity and audience to historical authenticity cannot be overstated. While the individual innovators are acknowledged and celebrated, the notion of the collective (crews, audience, battles, community, diversity) became intertwined with hip-hop. As was the case with many cultural births, the diverse mix of people found in an urban environment played a crucial role — what Robin Kelley calls "polyculturalism." Dancers and DJs mutually influenced each other, and it is safe to say that hip-hop music would not have formed and expanded in the Bronx without either's contributions.
Other DJs began to emerge and improve on the conceptual approach initiated by DJ Kool Herc, such as Grandmaster Flash, credited with advances in mixing, and Grand Wizzard Theodore, who is credited with inventing record scratching as a turntable technique. MCs arrived soon after, speaking over the instrumental tracks and forming groups and associations with certain DJs.
As time passed, parties grew, and reputations increased. In 1977, a blackout brought the opportunity for the looting of turntables and other equipment, increasing the number of DJs in the Bronx. By October 1979, hip-hop music reached a much greater audience with the release of the first hit rap single, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang. It received copious amounts of radio play and sold numerous units. This was the moment when hip-hop music reached a national audience and eventually the whole world.
The South Bronx and Wild Style (1982)
Hip-hop's origins in the South Bronx became the romantic mythology of an artistic culture born out of dismal socioeconomic conditions. City planner Robert Moses built the Cross Bronx Expressway in 1959, which went through working-class ethnic communities. Many middle-class families left the Bronx, and poorer groups were relocated into blue-collar housing units. The South Bronx became a symbol of ruin, poverty, and the apparent hopelessness of postindustrial abandonment. Afrika Bambaataa has said, "It was so bad in the South Bronx, they said it was the worst place in the United States. And there was the culture of hip hop, this music. We always had the musical aspect in the Bronx. And we had the drugs, the dope, the coke — that was plaguing the community." The energy of parties in the Bronx was created in isolation (away from any media coverage), as if the trope of the alienated, suffering artist could now be applied to an entire community.
Frequently cited as the most accurate representation of the early hip-hop period, the film Wild Style (1982) has had a colossal effect on hip-hop culture. The film depicts the urban landscape of the Bronx, along with the coexistence of these new artistic ideas in various party scenes. Melle Mel (of the Furious Five) said in an interview, "Wild Style, that was the one movie that captured more of the true essence of hip hop." Though filmed in 1981, Wild Style is considered the quintessential hip-hop film because it sought to capture the energy of prerecording, pre-1979 hip-hop.
Written, produced, and directed by Charlie Ahern, Wild Style was the brainchild of Frederick Braithwaite (Fab 5 Freddy), who contributed music and acted in the film. The plot centers on a young graffiti artist named Ray (painting under the name "Zoro" and played by real-life graffiti artist Lee Quinones) who isolates himself from the graffiti crews, though he becomes romantically involved with a graffiti crew leader named Rose (Sandra "Lady Pink" Fabra). The film includes a number of performers from the early hip-hop world, including MC Chief Rocker Busy Bee, Grandmaster Flash, the Treacherous 3, breakdancers the Rock Steady Crew, and a rap battle on a basketball court (the "basketball throwdown") between the Fantastic 5 and the Cold Crush Brothers. The climax of the film is the "jam" at the East River Park Amphitheatre. Set against a graffiti mural backdrop of two hands shooting lightning bolts toward a large blue star (painted by Quinones), this party/jam features the previously mentioned performers, as well as Lil' Rodney Cee and K. K. Rockwell, formerly of the Funky Four +1, now under the name Double Trouble, performing a rap entitled "Double Trouble." After their rap, Grandmaster Flash cuts and scratches Chic's "Good Times," as if to reterritorialize it for pre-1979 hip-hop. Flash's virtuosic DJ riffs on the song continue, with images of the outdoor party persisting through to the end credits sequence.
Many involved with the film attest to its importance as depicting authentic forms of early hip-hop. Ahern tellingly writes that "Wild Style was the first movie to capture hip-hop culture at its roots." Fab 5 Freddy said that the intention of the film was to portray the scene not as it was in 1982, but as it had been a few years before (pre-Rapper's Delight"). Fab 5 Freddy writes, "When we were making Wild Style, we wanted to set the movie in the 70s. Because 'Rappers Delight' had already come out, MCs were making records, so we wanted to go back a few years earlier, and set it at a point when hip hop was completely underground, when the form was raw and pure." Using real graffiti artists and musicians adds to the perceived realness of the film, as Quinones comments to Ahern in 2007: "You was in the moment. It was a magical, special moment. You captured an innocent moment, like, we weren't acting."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rhymin' and Stealin' by Justin A. Williams. Copyright © 2013 University of Michigan. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Historicizing the Breakbeat: Hip-Hop's Origins and Authenticity 20
Chapter 2 The Construction of Jazz Rap as High Art in Hip-Hop Music 47
Chapter 3 Dr. Dre's "Jeep Beats" and Musical Borrowing for the Automotive Space 73
Chapter 4 The Martyr Industry: Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G., and Postmortem Sampling 103
Chapter 5 Borrowing and Lineage in Eminem/2Pac's Loyal to the Game and 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Trying 140
Conclusion 167
Notes 173
Bibliography 225
Discography 249
Filmography 251
Index 253