Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Teacher!
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Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
81–90 of 128 posts
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unfortunately, most of this material was only released in unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s I know nothing about audio - is it possible to upscale the quality somehow? Improve the quality via some process?
Audio compression literally throws out data. It's audio the human ear isn't likely/able to hear but it's still gone. Different codecs and even different implementations of codecs throw out different audio data. Any sort of upscaling is going to involve a lot of guesses about what was thrown out. For every codec and implementation there will be a lot of possibilities of what the original data might have looked like. A…
I work with a system which extrapolates data in the frequency domain to reduce noise in medical images and then doubles the images resolution in the x and y direction (so 4x the pixels). It’s absolutely amazing.
It’ll be interesting to see if audio ever gets a similar treatment and in what areas it can be applied.
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#83Also its 50 year anniversary according to the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66471617
The 50 year anniversary hype is everywhere.I personally agree with the last paragraph of the article: 'He also mentions that he finds the 50th anniversary of hip hop mile-marker a bit disingenuous. The birth of an entire movement can’t be attributed to one act. “I’m definitely not a person to shit on hip hop’s anniversary, or its founders,” he says. “These influential figures are extremely important. They changed the…
There's certainly precedents in terms of black political poetry in music (The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron) and there was clearly a need for the disenfranchised to have a voice, but there's the other aspects such as graffiti, dancing and DJing that all came together over time.
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#84Back when I first started listening to hip hop music (around 1982; i'm old), it wasn't easy to get your hands on it if you lived in the suburbs. Record stores in the suburbs didn't stock hip hop until the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" and Run DMC's "Raising Hell". I had a circle of friends that could get me bootlegs - basically, mixtapes from people with hip hop records. I threw all of them away years ago. And I've…
I think people often recorded off the radio on to cassettes. Local stations played local artists. Or your friends would drive in to the city and you could come across the music.
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I had to pick one ATCQ track that satisfies the condition, I'd pick "Jazz (We've Got)" which has a couple of samples from "Green Dolphin Street" plus the drums from "Don't Change Your Love".
I was more thinking of choosing between Check The Rhime (Grover Washington Jr. and a sublime use of Minnie Ripperton) as it's got such a kicking beat or Scenario (Brother Jack McDuff and a bit of Hendrix) due to its influence and being such a stand-out introduction to Busta Rhymes. Or Award Tour (Charles Earland, Weldon Irvine) or maybe just cheat and go for Excursions and Buggin Out (what a way to start an album).
Fuck. You guys made me want to grab my ATCQ albums out of the garage. My ears will be far happier than my lower back.
*shakes fist*
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#86Back when I first started listening to hip hop music (around 1982; i'm old), it wasn't easy to get your hands on it if you lived in the suburbs. Record stores in the suburbs didn't stock hip hop until the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" and Run DMC's "Raising Hell". I had a circle of friends that could get me bootlegs - basically, mixtapes from people with hip hop records. I threw all of them away years ago. And I've…
Roxanne - that name takes me back.
I taped a pirate radio Tim Westwood show that was wholly dedicated to the Roxanne saga.
Found this example of his show: https://archive.org/details/TheHipHopShow-19850917
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#87A big thing in the background of all of this; America, perhaps the world, myself included, really hasn't come to properly reckon with the extent to which we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans. The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to get into Irish step-dancing…
> we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans
It's a bit silly to try to prescribe or restrict "ownership" of culture. Culture is and always has been a product of sharing and mixing of existing traditions.
EDIT: I think there's also some hidden issues at play here. You basically want people across the world to directly acknowledge "black citizens of USA" as an ethnicity (to protect "your" culture). Some problems with this:
* You don't straight out say this, probably because skin-color-based ethnicity/nationalism is a touchy subject (e.g., white nationalism is basically taboo). But then how can you expect your request to be taken in good faith?
* Your request is somewhat US-centric, as a "Black American" ethnicity would after all be just a US minority, presumably not even independent from the mainstream to the degree that, e.g., many European minorities are in their countries.
I'll admit I'm putting words into your mouth, but clearly there's lots of things being left unsaid every time these discussions come up, so I don't feel too bad.
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#88Back when I first started listening to hip hop music (around 1982; i'm old), it wasn't easy to get your hands on it if you lived in the suburbs. Record stores in the suburbs didn't stock hip hop until the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" and Run DMC's "Raising Hell". I had a circle of friends that could get me bootlegs - basically, mixtapes from people with hip hop records. I threw all of them away years ago. And I've…
I think people often recorded off the radio on to cassettes. Local stations played local artists. Or your friends would drive in to the city and you could come across the music.
For me, it was Magic 108 in St. Louis, Missouri. However, I was so far out in the suburbs, Magic didn't always tune-in very well. I had lots of tapes with static. Also, in the early days, they played rap only late at nights, for a few hours before the "quiet storm".
There was another AM radio station in St. Louis, a city college station, that used to have a segment called "The Rappin' Hour", where dudes would call-in and rap about their high school or whatever. I used to write rhymes in class, dreaming about calling into "The Rappin' Hour." LOL
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of these tracks were also recorded over unlicensed beats/samples That's the killer, right there. For example, the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique probably could not be released today as it samples an incredible number of other artists.[0] [0] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kI8XoDoiHcrG0aGmtvq1g
A lot of hip hop still has unlicensed samples in it but the slices just keep getting smaller and less recognizable. And believe it or not a lot of the samples in Paul’s Boutique were licensed. I do agree with you though that (maybe until recently as I think the price of sampling is softening somewhat with sites like tracklib) Paul’s Boutique would be expensive to release today. Then there are stories like the Mark Ro…
Just to note for the two posters above, and anyone else, Paul's Boutique is now on Spotify :)
(So is three feet high and rising by De La Soul)
Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
#90A big thing in the background of all of this; America, perhaps the world, myself included, really hasn't come to properly reckon with the extent to which we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans. The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to get into Irish step-dancing…
> we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans It's a bit silly to try to prescribe or restrict "ownership" of culture. Culture is and always has been a product of sharing and mixing of existing traditions. EDIT: I think there's also some hidden issues at play here. You basically want peop…
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