Hip Hop: Keeping it REAL

The whole hiphop vs. "rap" thing has to be one of the lamer of recent musical arguments. On the one hand, pop hiphop has had some of the best *sounding* anything I've heard in the last couple years. On the other, the lyrics are trite and redundant (when not outright repellent.) Undie-hiphop's "beat-digger" mentality has produced a lot of samey music that reeks and creeks of musty attics, waterlogged record boxes and questionable flutes. But what are they "saying" that elevates them above, say, Cash Money? Absolutely nothing. "Real underground headz" dig it for the lyrical tongue twisters, the deeply encoded references, the lame-lefty politicking, the fetish for "skills." But aren't skills, not in the service of vision or content, just...prog? (Cough-turntablism-cough.)

I think you were bang on with the "golden age" thing; what was always exciting about hiphop to me was that it was constantly moving forward, evolving, shedding old sounds (and artists) like skins. But this fetish for 1988-1991 is nostalgia so blatant and reductive as to be pathetic. It completely ignores the fact that this supposed golden age of "sampladelic" (blech) hiphop may have just been a blip on the timeline. Timbaland and Swiz Beats have got much more to do with Run-DMC's age of drum machines than Prince Paul's age of samples. So are Tim and Swiz mutant abberations of hiphop's legacy or it's real inheritors? The beat-digger/backpacker party line completely severs electro from hiphop history, and therefore booty, bass, bounce, and other 808 led genres that don't begin with B.

The rest of it is merely our friend slumming-bohemian-fear-of-pop. Juvenile and Ludacris are not proper music for art students, music critics, and other walking human offal [warning: this was a joke] to like. But Jurrasic 5 are. They're for the hiphop tourists. Not the real undie kids who would be into Dilated Peoples, and not the kids boomin down the street listening to Jay-Z. The year before J5 it was Black Eyed Peas or what have you. This stretches back to Digable Planets. (And before that it wasn't hip to like hiphop period.) Music for Gaps. Like acid jazz.

I know a local hip-hop producer, immensely talented guy, who told me that when he goes used record shopping he won't buy any records made after 1972 (or maybe it was '73). "To sample, you mean?" I rather naively inquired. No, to bring into his house! Now *that's* keeping it real. It's also ridiculous--and possibly psychotic.

You want underground? You want street cred? Look for Edan. You want street cred and the new-hip-hop-prog movement? Look for Deltron 3030.

A) Diggable, J5, Black Eyed are all GOOD. B) KRS-One and Prince Paul's latest, whatever the label you smack on them, are GOOD. C) All major changes in hip-hop came from the "underground" first -- i.e. were not manufactured from above -- this includes gangsta, bling, et cet. D) The current "underground" [read: unsigned scene] includes many would-be hovas and nate doggs as well as future paradigm-shifters.

Bah. I have to drive up-country and outside the reach of the net for some days: I wanna get back at that "skillz = prog", cuz it's right AND wrong, and interesting both times. Part of what makes all music — from n'Sync to the Avalanches to Glitchcore (ie all that isn't "roots acoustic", or something equally lame, and involves IDM manufactury) so UTTERLY unlike music of the 80s or earlier is the sheer density of history-and-technique sedimented into it. 60s/70s Prog was two things: a will to drive beyond then-current conventions, formal and commercial (=good, more or less), welded into b. a Default Setting when panic struck, re inspiration- gap or structure-collapse, and everyone fell back on the all-too-trained fingers of eg Rick Wakeman and vamp in a Mendelssohn- stylee for 280 bars... (=bad)

Invocation of "skillz" sounds like Prog ("real musicians, maaan"), but the effect is quite difft. Idea that street-cool includes a vast self-gathered library of actual pre-dad history is — excuse me — ASTONISHING: unprecedented. Who will write the ARCADE PROJECT thingy of the 1990s? Who is our Benjamin? Tom? Josh? Sterling?

[Weex! It's 10 already — I'm flyin'!!]

I do like Prince Paul, and I do like KRS even if I find some of his views disagreeable. Whether KRS (Sneak Attack specifically) is good music or not wasnt my point so much as where people may stand on his ideals expressed (The 9 elements, the constant: You are not doing hip hop you are hip hop). Hip hop heads are expected to culturally "represent" in order to be accepted as real. What does this all mean though? Where's the line drawn as to what is representative and what is not? Should there even be a line?

Mark s, point taken about the new street-cool. It's phenomenal in its own right but when based upon an obligation to a cultural rulebook, aren't the results a bit contrived? I'm not trying to dismiss beatdigging. It's just that many young producers convince themselves that they must only sample certain material in certain ways in order to properly represent their realness to the culture. With such definitive do's and dont's the results can be narrow.

The underground can mean experimentalism and innovation but it often means formulaic purism as well. And I have a feeling that confused investments in "keeping it real" have something to do with this.

I think the funny thing is that people are going to read the above and think I listen to nothing but Ruff Ryders records. There are plenty of undie hiphop records I've enjoyed over the last couple of years (Mos Def, Blacklicious), but the stuff that's been the MOST interesting to me has been the stuff which sounded completely NEW (Co. Flow, Divine Stylers "Word Power 2" - which, yes I know, is nothing if not purposefully obscurant -, and Can Ox, which I guess should be grouped with Co. Flow because of El-P...did Dr. Octagonecologyst count as underground?) The Cannibal Ox record is nothing if not structurally dense, packed with incident, and culled from a massive history/sample library. But it also couldn't be mistaken for an old soul 45, except maybe on Venus.

Hiphop culture is built on skills; for me to denigrate the idea entirely would sort of be like refuting the entire concept. But even someone like Primo, who could be held up as the god of beat diggers, I mean, jesus has anyone here heard Jeru's "The Sun..."? The man was making samples from Stockhausen, not questionable chicken scratch guitar. The hiphop underground, in a non-street backpacker sense, fetishizes the old skool so much that they have no hope of moving the music forward. They're turning it into a museum piece. And as for turntablism, Peter Shapiro was dead on when he called scratching the guitar solo of hiphop; the Skratch Pilkz may have been jaw-drop the first couple times, but 8 minutes of abstract crabs and flares are just as pointless as any poofy haired guitar god running scales up and down the fret board.

So maybe what I'm really hoping for is something Simon Reynolds pointed at, that the best of the undie hiphop stuff could become the new art-rock/post-punk. But the greatest thing about the best post- punk was that it was nothing if not forward thinking. Looping old Jimmy Castor samples would have been like the Pop Group playing Carl Perkins riffs. I guess what really get's me about the whole beat digger mentality is that for all the effort involved (in finding and hoarding the breaks and samples), it's really so...easy. You put some lazy guitars over a laid back beat and BAM, "perfect" hiphop track. It's something that Primo, or the 45 King, or even Prince Paul (back when he was good and not courting the backpack crowd) would stoop to.

huey thinks keeping it real is the roots, gangstarr, and de la soul. riley thinks it's jay-z, wu-tang, and mobb deep. both are right.

Keepin' it REAL isn't a constant -- the real is a socially defined rough consensus, subject to ongoing contestation. KRS-One, don't forget, isn't just The Teacher, but also the Original Gangsta. Rock's appeals to authenticity tend to rest in the individual's psyche and direct expression of emotions -- Rap's appeals to authenticity tend to rest in the social character of the "black" experience.

Mark S: "the reach of the net" is universal but I now know you mean *personal access* to it ...

Very nearly everything Jess says is spot on. I've veered constantly through hip-hop in the last few years at one point becoming dangerously close to yer fetishistic crate-digger / J5 fan. FT- inspired shift towards Jay-Z and DMX last year totally shook up my tastes and moved me towards the streets: currently Cannibal Ox leading me back towards undie but specifically the NEW axis within it. Much more to say here, sometime soon.

head hip hop has had to do with prolonging the mainstream that ended in 1991. what they are doing sounds good a lot of the time, has produced innovation, and is real (despite the creation and explosion of "emo-hop"). at the same time, hip hop is progressing and producing new sounds that are not as intelligent but equally real. the people who copy and follow the artists are the college undie snobs and backpackers. they are mostly the fans and the only group in this equation that aren't real (and are also us), but who cares?

personally i find loop based music a bit boring after a while unless intelligence is applied. In other words I got bored of J5 real quick as oppossed to Cannibal Ox who at least mix up and fuck around with original sound. Incidently in Mr Bongos in London only a select few producers can visit the "the break lounge", and if this is true then maybe we should burn all the classic breaks before loop based production debases its self into an arcane game of pokemon

One of the most exciting things about C.Ox for me has been rediscovering hiphop lyrics I can project myself onto rather than experience vicariously i.e. these are sensitive fucked up boys as well as all sorts of other things. Hooray!

(Maybe this is nothing to celebrate)

Also - UK hip-hop - what happens to the underground when it is a) unreal by dint of birthplace, b) there is no comparable overground. Go and buy the Aspects album and find out.

Tom - are they the ones who've released the "Correct English" album? If so, I've heard very promising things, but would like more info (also if not, for that matter).

Yeah, "Correct English" - I enjoyed it first hearing and it's been bubbling under in my consciousness since, put it on last night and thought "Well, now isn't this an excellent record". West Country three-man crew - rhyming mostly about goofing about and/or the occult - a lot of good jokes. Production isn't world-changing but it does the job nicely. Out on Hombre records.

One of the annoying aspects of this sudden spate of great Brit hip hop albums is that they're tossed in the cd racks of the undie sections in stores and they have the exact same breathless superlatives* on stickers on the front (known well by lovers of post-rock and experimental techno also), so my first reaction is to say "oh, more kneejerk overhype for underground toss" and pass on. Of course, this is also the problem with finding the good undie albums, but I tend to find that the British stuff and the American underground stuff sound as far away from eachother as undie does from gangsta.

*example: "Hard-ass rhyming crew from Philly do battle against monstrous soundsystem furore!!! Sort of like J5, only not really!!! Once guested on an Anti-Con single!!! Allegedly influenced by Warp Records even if you can't hear it on the album!!! Sub-distribution in Sweden by Thrill Jockey!!! We've used fifteen exclamations marks so far, so you must buy this!!!"

Provide consumer advice for ignoramuses like me: what are the great British hip-hop records?

I assume that in a few years most of the great hip-hop will come from Scandinavia, but are there any, good or bad, from there so far?