Week 7 Lecture notes: Hip Hop
Hip hop as a musical form
Simon Frith: too much emphasis on lyrics can get in way of understanding musical form
Funk: credited as formal basis of hip hop, but also ‘pre-encoded’ with political/social significance.
Mathew P. Brown: black empowerment embedded in funk
From funk to hip hop
Black music = communal artistic expression; thus funk ‘critically ghettoized’ as mere dance music, not art
African-American culture original postmodern art: repetition + rupture, techniques inherent in African formal techniques; surface in gospel, blues, jazz, funk…hip hop
Thus sense of community encoded into funk and its derivatives; overrides misogynistic/‘black-on-black violence’ rhetoric of rap lyrics
Common lyrical themes: urban decay/black under-class (Sly & the Family Stone/ Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)
Non-NY hip hop
(Murray Forman, ‘"Represent": race, space and place in rap music’)
Late 1980s regional rap - the South: 2 Live Crew (Miami), The Geto Boys (Houston); Northwest: Sir Mix-A-Lot (Seattle); California: Digital Underground, Tupac (San Francisco); Ice T, N.W.A. (LA)
Leads to East Coast/West Coast rivalry
Rap labels
Entrepreneurship: self-management; own record labels; talent scouting
Greater creative control/increased returns
Labels: Def Jam, Tommy Boy, Jive, Skyywalker (2 Live Crew), Ruthless (Easy E), Rhyme Syndicate (Ice T), Death Row
Majors launch rap labels
The 'posse' business model
Death Row Records, began in 1992 by Suge Knight & Dr Dre
Records: Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur
Organizational structure based localized ‘posses’
1996-1997: Suge arrested; Tupac killed; FBI investigation; Dre & Snoop leave
Chuck D: posse formations response to fragmenting effects of capitalism
Laurie Gunst: influence of Jamaican crime posses/musical traditions
Posses and musical style
Posse influential element in emergence of regional sounds
G-funk (LA) : Dr Dre’s The Chronic (1992), Boo Yaa Tribe, Above the Law, Compton’s Most Wanted etc.; ‘laid-back’ influence of George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Gap Band
Brian Cross: representative of late arrival of hip to West Coast; more smooth funk influence
Verses cacophonous East Coast jams (Bomb Squad/Public Enemy); no cars--'Walkman music', less bass
Miami: ‘booty bass’ from car culture
Simon Frith: too much emphasis on lyrics can get in way of understanding musical form
Funk: credited as formal basis of hip hop, but also ‘pre-encoded’ with political/social significance.
Mathew P. Brown: black empowerment embedded in funk
From funk to hip hop
Black music = communal artistic expression; thus funk ‘critically ghettoized’ as mere dance music, not art
African-American culture original postmodern art: repetition + rupture, techniques inherent in African formal techniques; surface in gospel, blues, jazz, funk…hip hop
Thus sense of community encoded into funk and its derivatives; overrides misogynistic/‘black-on-black violence’ rhetoric of rap lyrics
Common lyrical themes: urban decay/black under-class (Sly & the Family Stone/ Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)
Non-NY hip hop
(Murray Forman, ‘"Represent": race, space and place in rap music’)
Late 1980s regional rap - the South: 2 Live Crew (Miami), The Geto Boys (Houston); Northwest: Sir Mix-A-Lot (Seattle); California: Digital Underground, Tupac (San Francisco); Ice T, N.W.A. (LA)
Leads to East Coast/West Coast rivalry
Rap labels
Entrepreneurship: self-management; own record labels; talent scouting
Greater creative control/increased returns
Labels: Def Jam, Tommy Boy, Jive, Skyywalker (2 Live Crew), Ruthless (Easy E), Rhyme Syndicate (Ice T), Death Row
Majors launch rap labels
The 'posse' business model
Death Row Records, began in 1992 by Suge Knight & Dr Dre
Records: Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur
Organizational structure based localized ‘posses’
1996-1997: Suge arrested; Tupac killed; FBI investigation; Dre & Snoop leave
Chuck D: posse formations response to fragmenting effects of capitalism
Laurie Gunst: influence of Jamaican crime posses/musical traditions
Posses and musical style
Posse influential element in emergence of regional sounds
G-funk (LA) : Dr Dre’s The Chronic (1992), Boo Yaa Tribe, Above the Law, Compton’s Most Wanted etc.; ‘laid-back’ influence of George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Gap Band
Brian Cross: representative of late arrival of hip to West Coast; more smooth funk influence
Verses cacophonous East Coast jams (Bomb Squad/Public Enemy); no cars--'Walkman music', less bass
Miami: ‘booty bass’ from car culture
posted by Cory Messenger | 6:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home