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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

#111

Post by hluska »

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…

You managed to take a simple statement and twist it into something ugly. In doing so, all you did was prove their point.

Finally, your finale about how you don’t feel too bad was in unbelievably bad taste. Social skills don’t seem to be your forte.

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

#112

Post by mmx4332 »

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 doesn't mean anything. Nobody can "own" something like that. And nobody "owes" anything either to anyone else.

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

#113

Post by cheekibreeki2 »

I found a bunch of someone's abandoned belongings which included a number of vhs tapes. Some were hours of hip-hop TV recordings from those dial-your-favorite-song channels. It's crazy how the whole mainstream genre was full of positivity and peace and now it's been reduced to genocide and drugs.

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

#114

Post by waldothedog »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #106
whinenot wrote: post #51

Earlier 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

On a similar note, Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" remixing Jay Z's The Black Album over samples from The Beatles' White Album... Amazing. It's pretty findable, but it's unfortunate that there's no canonical source.

Somewhere I have a dead iPod shuffle with the grey album on it. Listened to that non stop in undergrad. Have not been able to find another bootleg of it :(

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

#115

Post by lawgimenez »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #106
whinenot wrote: post #51

Earlier 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

On a similar note, Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" remixing Jay Z's The Black Album over samples from The Beatles' White Album... Amazing. It's pretty findable, but it's unfortunate that there's no canonical source.

I have an old mp3 Wu-Tang vs The Beatles, I think it is not available on streaming. Not sure if the same artist who remixed it but it was fire.

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

#116

Post by lawgimenez »

arkaic wrote: post #44

The same goes for lots of the underground hardcore music. So much of it isn't even on spotify or it is but with the wrong year. Thankfully there are still existing blogspots that still house those rare LP rars

Years ago I asked Lou of Subzero on Instagram why Suffering of Man album is not on streaming yet. I have an mp3 of this, and he mentioned about record labels holding it or something.

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

#117

Post by lawgimenez »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #49
lawgimenez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of great producers too on hiphop if one just takes time to appreciate the difficulty of creating a beat.

There was a cool website featured on here a little while back about Dilla-time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36189583 https://pudding.cool/2023/06/groove/

Thanks for the link!

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

#118

Post by cookie_monsta »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #105
cookie_monsta wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;)

For anyone following along at home, MC Solaar might be a really good entry point into French Hiphop. Give La concubine de l'hémoglobine a try - talk about smooth.

Solaar is super smooth. If you're looking for a little edge I'd recommend Les Sages Poètes de la rue. Gènèral P is on high rotation at my place

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

#119

Post by OfSanguineFire »

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…

There are plenty of exported musical genres where the connection to the culture of origin was completely sundered. It only takes a few decades for that. Finnish tango has no connection to Argentina. Irish traditional music plays a lot of mazurkas (a traditional Polish form that came over) with no acknowledgement of or even awareness of Poland. Only natural the same would happen to hip-hop.

Also, because hip-hop requires as a minimum nothing more than a source of a beat and the ability to do intricate wordplay, and is arguably the most accessible of genres, it has found root in impoverished communities worldwide. People in those communities might not have the relatively privileged background that would allow them to explore the history of the genre and the original culture in the USA that it came out of.

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

#120

Post by Exmoor »

michaelt wrote: post #33
Exmoor wrote: post #29

I've thought about this quite a bit. I'm a big fan of the record label Bear Family, a German label that specializes in releasing boxsets from R&B/Rock&Roll/Country artists from the 20's-70's. Want to hear every song The Carter Family ever recorded in their original incarnation? They have a 12 CD boxset for you! They generally do this be acquiring the original master tapes from the labels, which often include a lot of…

> Unfortunately, most of this material was only released in unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s and often with some random dude shouting over the intro. If that's the art form as it was experienced, do archivists need to make a "better" version?

I get your point, but I absolutely do prefer to hear older recordings where they have been able to in some way improve the quality over what was initially released. An extreme case would be some of the old 78rpm records that recent innovations have been able to clean up substantially. While the hip-hop records I'm talking about are not nearly that bad, the releases were often made in 128kbps with whatever encoder was available. Some may even have been transcoded.
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