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Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

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Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#91

Post by cookie_monsta »

10729287 wrote: post #6

A little off topic but funny enough to mention. Here in France, Skyblog.com is closing its doors in the next days. It was a blog platform ran by the #1 hiphop radio. It's not related to hip hop at all, even the radio only play crappy mainstream rap since 30 years ago, but back in the days, it was an easy way for a lot of teens to have a voice on the Internet. It wasn't deep at all, often really dumb, and it was mocke…

For the record (ha!), French hip hop is my favourite of all the "international" flavours. Some excellent DJs and producers and there's something about the smoothness of the accent that coincides very well with my tastes. Not understanding French and so not having to worry about problematic lyrics may add to the appeal;)

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#92

Post by jrm4 »

jl6 wrote: post #68
jrm4 wrote: post #65

A 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…

What does it mean for hip-hop to be culturally owned by black folks? What does it mean for non-black hip-hop artists?

It means that you should acknowledge the culture of the people who started it, not too much more than that?

It can get dicey and weird at times, and there's a lot of details that one could get into, and that's good homework to do -- but I definitely find that the vast majority of popular white rappers do a good job of this, e.g. Eminem.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#93

Post by jrm4 »

qntty wrote: post #69
jrm4 wrote: post #65

A 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…

A piece of culture is important in proportion to the reluctance of people to assign an owner to it, whether legal or otherwise. No one would criticize a Frenchman for using Newton's Laws because it belongs to the British. Someone who is really enthusiastic about something will emphasize that it is universally appreciated. E.g., Shakespeare being put on by diverse cultures, Islam trying to spread itself to every corne…

Would you really make this argument with any other cultural contribution? Come on.

You think it's insulting to assign the Hula to Hawaiians? This makes NO sense.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#94

Post by [deleted] »

nsajko wrote: post #87
jrm4 wrote: post #65

A 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…

[deleted]

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#95

Post by aesch »

jrm4 wrote: post #65

A 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…

Look at the influence of sampling in hip hop. Sampling is literally taking music from different time periods, genres, cultures and making something new from it. If the mothers and fathers of hip hop had respected cultural ownership hip hop would never have been born in the first place.

For any piece of culture to stay culturally relevant it must be "taken" and "used" and evolve.

I agree that we should respect and acknowledge the founders of the culture, but once it is set free in the world it has to be shared to grow and thrive.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#96

Post by qntty »

jrm4 wrote: post #93
qntty wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A piece of culture is important in proportion to the reluctance of people to assign an owner to it, whether legal or otherwise. No one would criticize a Frenchman for using Newton's Laws because it belongs to the British. Someone who is really enthusiastic about something will emphasize that it is universally appreciated. E.g., Shakespeare being put on by diverse cultures, Islam trying to spread itself to every corne…

Would you really make this argument with any other cultural contribution? Come on. You think it's insulting to assign the Hula to Hawaiians? This makes NO sense.

I don't know the significance of hula, but if it doesn't aspire to be something great, then assigning it to Hawaiians wouldn't be an insult, since it doesn't contradict their own view of it.

People will often times contextualize things to downplay it's importance. For example, if I think it's disrespectful to talk about hip hop in a certain way, you can contextualize my view by saying it's an outgrowth of early 21st century American progressive legitimation narratives. I want my views to be universal, but by placing them in the context of a certain country, time, and ideology, they are downplayed.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#97

Post by harrylove »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #60
harrylove wrote: post #56

Earlier 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).

Agree on all fronts. Would also add Oh My God just for the Busta Rhymes inclusion.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#98

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lostlogin wrote: post #82
giantrobot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Noise levels in contemporary audio is vanishingly small, and has not really been the target of any audio technology for quite a long time.

Of course, restoration of older recordings is a separate issue, and that technology is 20-30 years old, at least (and very, very good).

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#99

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jrm4 wrote: post #92
jl6 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean for hip-hop to be culturally owned by black folks? What does it mean for non-black hip-hop artists?

It means that you should acknowledge the culture of the people who started it, not too much more than that? It can get dicey and weird at times, and there's a lot of details that one could get into, and that's good homework to do -- but I definitely find that the vast majority of popular white rappers do a good job of this, e.g. Eminem.

> the people who started it

what constitutes the start? DJ Kool Herc? If you asked him, he would list his influences and predecessors... do they not count ? If you try to demarcate some sort of cultural "break" where X becomes Y, how do you do that? And how do you handle subsequent cultural "breaks" that presumably, by the same logic, create something new. How do you handle parallel flows that then converge (such as electro-funk evolving under the influence of kraftwerk, and then becoming the first thing actually named "hip-hop") ?

This is all nonsense. Culture is not "owned".

Almost all the best culture in the world is mongrel culture that arose from someone who grew up in one culture(s) being exposed to other cultures and mixing them together in a way that generally reflects as much upon the individual as or more than the source cultures.

Hip-hop is no different in this respect to any other form of human expression. If there's an art form that seems "pure" to you, the most likely explanation is that you haven't gone far enough into the past to understand how it is also just another mongrel form.

Re: Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story

#100

Post by chiefalchemist »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #36
chiefalchemist wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which in the context of this thread / OP is proof that the history must not only be preserved, but must be promoted, honored, etc. I could of year ago I work at an agency and one of the new dev starter and said something about being into hip hop. I mentioned Rakim and the reply was, "Who?" Don't get me wrong, I respect Nas, Eminem, etc. (i.e., all the lyrical magicians) but they stand on the shoulders of The R.

Not knowing Rakim would be fighting talk round my way. A friend asked me a while ago to give him a list of the top ten (or fifteen) hip hop tracks that are important to me or the development of hip hop. I wasn't sure whether to include Last Poets as one of the first "rap" groups or whether Gil Scott-Heron should be considered the jazz ancestor. However, I then got stuck around the Tribe Called Quest and Busta Rhymes…

Because it samples Grace Jones' "Slave to the Rhythm", I would have to go with "Bonita Applebum" (UK Remix). OK, maybe there are better ATCQ efforts but the vibe, sample and length (9+ minutes) make it a gem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXeJA5plkD8

p.s. While there are so many memorable Rakim tracks and lyrics, I always like to point out the overlooked "What's on Your Mind". It's fookin' poetic genius. The images so vivid.

The line about Liz Claiborne...you can smell it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlm2E4fb7E

Edit: Video w/ lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ENkIho8m4

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