The Secret Origins Of Undie Hip-Hop

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When did "mainstream" and "undie"/'backpacker' hip-hop diverge?

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 10:47 (twenty-three years ago)

the chronic.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 10:51 (twenty-three years ago)

But all backpackers now wuv The Chronic!

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 10:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, wait until 2008 and everyone will be like, "man, this commercial rap sucks! Whatever happened to the combination of artistic integrity, authenticity and visceral intensity of Cash Money and Roc-A-Fella?"

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 10:55 (twenty-three years ago)

yes tom, but it began the cycle of modern HipPop (DO YOU SEE?!) that we're still in today. (which means in ten years time, the underground will finally be able to assimilate my hero juvenile.)

(haha tim got to the cash money joke a second before me.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 10:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Blimey maybe it's time I actually listened to it.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:00 (twenty-three years ago)

have majors stopped signing "underground" hiphop groups all together? (blackalicious aside, because they fuck my theory.) (also, it's hard now to remember a time when gangsta was a "difficult" choice for a major label.) or have these groups just stopped signing to majors? because an interesting "alternative theory" might be when organized konfusion got dropped: 1994 was the last time i can remember any "conscious" hiphop breaking through to any sort of wider recognition, "stress" is surely a signpost to the def jux sound, and it's fairly obvious people like el-p took this as a "sign." (also, pharoahe monch has to live with the fact that his best selling song is rawkus's cop to street rap.) ok is just the first band that came to mind, since the early 90s are littered with groups like this. (kmd, anyone?)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:10 (twenty-three years ago)

I think 88 is the key year with the Native Tongue movement and the rise of NWA.

― edward (big E.D), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Gawd what a chump I am for never listening to The Chronic until today!

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:28 (twenty-three years ago)

i'm amazed you could avoid it!!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Well I know the hits obviously.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:35 (twenty-three years ago)

The best hip-hop is continuing to shed the worst hip-hop's old materialist and self-assured skin, fermenting into a legitimate source of new kinds of information (perhaps this phenom is a reaction to the turn-back-the-clockness of having Bush Jr hogging the free world's mic).

well, thank god for that whatever it means!!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:56 (twenty-three years ago)

(that is seriously some of the worst writing i have ever read.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:57 (twenty-three years ago)

???

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 11:58 (twenty-three years ago)

The Chronic (or at least its hits cos i never heard it all either) kinda represents my least favourite mode/style of hip hop i guess...taggable as the definitive gangsta rap chronicle perhaps and the benchmark by which all else like it would be judged. i enjoy the Funkadelic samples but not much else. i understand the messages and what its about but it does nothing much else for me really probably because i cannot identify with it or have no desire to - despite still quite liking 'Black Sunday'. i know there's no point speculating on music like this and the fact that its just a great groove should be enough...anyone else feel like that about the genre? basically i've turned this into a 'explain just what is so great about The Chronic' question, but it could expanded to cover all gangsta rap, or G-funk if you like

― blueski, Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:00 (twenty-three years ago)

haha, tom it's from...wait for it...a PAPA M review. (guess who ran it)

i just felt it needed pointing out and i had no where else to do it.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:01 (twenty-three years ago)

I'd have said "Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde" by... well, see if you can guess. Surely that was the first major rap album that influenced one side of the video heavily but had no impact on the other? (Because, for instance, although "3 Feet High..." and "The Chronic" were heavily influential in their respective fields, there was some crossover of both a) appeal and b) influence).

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:27 (twenty-three years ago)

When did "mainstream" and "undie"/'backpacker' hip-hop diverge?
When one or two artists stop trying to mrket themselves as a union of badass, gangsta/pimp/player/OG and from the hood/projects/ghetto and just started rapping cause they were raised on it like some of us were raised on rock and roll.

I wonder whose the Fugazi of rap?
(on that note time to check who got named the Steve Forbes of rap)

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I wonder whose the Fugazi of rap?
Is there any possible answer other than The Roots?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:40 (twenty-three years ago)

since the roots are on a major label, yes.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 12:43 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it all depends on perspective. all the white college kids I knew loved the chronic when it came out, and NWA before that. that shit was all still considered equally underground by indie rockers to whom dag nasty were mainstream. it was all just "rap" which was cool for proto-backpackers to like as long as it wasn't full-on commercial like MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice. late80's rock-type people I knew liked BDP, digital underground, jungle brothers, Big Daddy Kane, poor righteous teachers, x-clan, queen latifah and monie love (Ha!) - kinda whatever was out there - without really making a judgement about what was MORE "indie" than anything else (all this shit was on majors anyway), though I guess the natives tongues stuff was considered more "positive" or OK to play around women's studies majors or something. I think that the current conception of "indie" hip hop came pretty late to white kids - with those "turntablist" records and all the indie rappers who tried to emulate the Wu "mathematics" style but make it "more abstract". And the hieroglyphics brought the noserings. new kingdom had something to with it too. anyway, this is a total college-rock view of it all - probably several million miles removed from reality.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Company Flow was the Fugazi of rap.

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess what I mean is indie kids mostly didn't start applying indie values to hiphop until the last few years (when they started making it), before that it was treated as kind of a seperate entity with its own logic that was not completely understood.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:15 (twenty-three years ago)

or maybe it's as simple as saying paul's boutique & 3 ft high started it, i dunno

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Eh, maybe De La Soul's Buhloone Mindstate - "it might blow up but it won't go pop" although Ice Cube's "Be True to the Game" pre-dates it with a 'don't crossover/go mainstream' vibe it wasn't nearly as elitist and, not coincidentally, actually sold. Native Tongues definitely lay the foundation for undie-roos.

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:21 (twenty-three years ago)

What exactly is backpacker hip hop and can we eat it?

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 13:25 (twenty-three years ago)

like james is otm. there was always an anti-pop keepin' it real "the only time i cross over's when i'm crossin the street" thing going on in hip hop... epmd "no crossover", all that. when and how that conflated with indie tweeness is the answer to tom's question.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:09 (twenty-three years ago)

and i guess the emergence of the pro-pop p-diddy "take hits from the eighties and make it sound so crazy" bling bling thing sparked a reaction too

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Somehow I think the rise of turntablism plays into it as well, at least in being a retro-reactionary movement a la punk -> indie. What was the DJ Shadow track - "why hip-hop sucks in 1996". Also maybe the rise of the Wu-Tang, although they weren't/aren't undie.

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:15 (twenty-three years ago)

when whitney was booed at the grammies and first met bobby brown = the FALL FROM GRACE

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:21 (twenty-three years ago)

But the sellout cries go back all the way to 'The Bridge Is Over'(which sold damm fine did it not?) at least when it was a time about who was keeping it 'real' and where was "the real birthplace of rap".

Rap had antisellout cries long before punk begot college begot alt begot indie. Yet no backpacker movement was noted then, whats different now?

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:31 (twenty-three years ago)

The sellout cries then were directed at individual artists - around 94, 95 it became directed toward the mainstream of hip-hop as a whole.

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:35 (twenty-three years ago)

"OK to play around women's studies majors"

!!!

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Right around the time the college rawk crowd split between alternative and indie.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 14:54 (twenty-three years ago)

"!!!"?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 15:02 (twenty-three years ago)

'OK to play around women's studies majors' - least effective hip-hop boast ever?

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 15:07 (twenty-three years ago)

"!!!"?

There wasn't the same series of bands playing the same tuneage with a few willing to jump through the hoops to wear rocker bling bling, date/snog other second/third level stars such as The Dandy Warhols (once again I point people in the direction of Treble Charger).

The time when bands went from 'selling out' (how ever it was imagined or viewed) too never buying anything in the first place.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 16:27 (twenty-three years ago)

was asking josh about his "!!!", noodles

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 16:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Sugarhill Gang.

― Kris (aqueduct), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 16:30 (twenty-three years ago)

kris is right, they didn't write their own rhymes!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 16:36 (twenty-three years ago)

teaches me to answer when Im on a help phone line.

Everything is my fault. Technology didn't screw up, I did.

I didnt see the original !!!

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 16:40 (twenty-three years ago)

dear god jess, i wasnt gonna even anything outta pfork but im now certain that is the final english test

― vic (vicc13), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 17:59 (twenty-three years ago)

since the roots are on a major label, yes.

But you're answering the question of who did what Fugazi do in rap (blah blah Herc blah blah), rather than who is the hip-hop Fugazi.

Ummm, yeah.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 18 September 2002 19:43 (twenty-three years ago)

About a year ago I bought the latest Dilated Peoples CD at a local chain store and noted to the cashier with mild startlement that it was a mere $10. "Yeah," he replied, "they're like the Fugazi of rap now or something." So that answers that.
(Note: I no longer have this CD)

― Nate Patrin, Wednesday, 18 September 2002 20:05 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

-- Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, September 18, 2002 10:55 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

― and what, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:18 (eighteen years ago)

<i>(which means in ten years time, the underground will finally be able to assimilate my hero juvenile.)</i>

jess shoulda said lil' wayne but damn it was close.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

"How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise," Brother D With Collective Effort

or maybe

"Beat Bop," Rammelzee vs K-Rob

But yeah, "Sugarhill Gang" is a good answer, too.

― xhuxk, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

To what extent is 'popism' borne out of the critic's fear of aging.

― mr x, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)

-- Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, September 18, 2002 10:55 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

-- and what, Friday, September 28, 2007 1:18 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

haha as soon as i caught this i scrolled down to post it

― deej, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, wait until 2014 and everyone will be like, "man, this commercial rap sucks! Whatever happened to the combination of artistic integrity, authenticity and visceral intensity of Hurricane Chris and Soulja Boy?"

― deej, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

so basically rap will get shittier and shittier.

― mr x, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

-- Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, September 18, 2002 10:55 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

-- and what, Friday, September 28, 2007 1:18 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

haha as soon as i caught this i scrolled down to post it

-- deej, Friday, September 28, 2007 11:32 AM (Friday, September 28, 2007 11:32 AM) Bookmark Link

Damn. Same here.

― The Reverend, Friday, 28 September 2007 19:27 (eighteen years ago)

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