It's bigger than hiphop

"It aint nothing like hip-hop music
You like it cause you choose it
Most D.J.'s won't refuse it
Alot of sucka M.C.'s misuse it
Don't think that Wu can't lose it
Too much to gain you'll abuse it
The name of the game is rapture
This one is completely captured bass"

-Method Man "Spazzola" from Tical 2000: Judgement Day

One of my favorite groups, the Wu Tang Clan, just released a new album in the last week or so. 8 Diagrams came out on Tuesday 12/11 and features all the living members (RIP, ODB) of the Clan. I’ve spent a good part of the week excitedly thinking and speaking about the new disc. I’ve also been making a plan about how to cop this new item. Music from the USA takes some time to get here, especially music that’s not mainstream. Although the words and beats of the Wu Tang Clan are on every hiphop head’s mind…they are apparently thought of as underground here in SA. I went to a music store here to enquire after the new disc and the sales clerk actually laughed in my face. A long, loud laugh exploded from her as she explained they wouldn’t probably get the CD, if they get it at all, for at least 4 months because of its underground status. 4 months…are you freaking kidding me?

So in the meantime I’m going to have a friend download the album online for me until I can lay my hands on the actual album. I’m not above collecting music through nefarious methods…but some CDs I must own. This is one of them. If I was at home, I would also have made a point of getting the album the morning it came out. I won’t do that for everyone, but if you are Beck, Method Man, The Wu Tang Clan, or the Smashing Pumpkins…you can rest assured that I will be standing outside the record store before it opens for the day waiting anxiously for your latest album.

I’m writing about hiphop music today because it’s been coming up a lot lately. It’s been a common ground to stand on with strangers and new acquaintances. It’s even more interesting here in SA because I’m a white girl and white girls should not know stuff about hiphop…at least that’s not the norm here. But I definitely don’t fit too many norms here. I think a lot of people are usually impressed that I know anything…let alone being able to delve deep into theory, artists, lyrics. I’ve had discussions about 2pac in abandonded parking lots with strangers that melted out of the dark night. Pillow talk about Pharoahe Monch and KRS-ONE. Conversations with heads over Talib Kweli, Doom, 9^th Wonder, and my hometown hero, Spinnerty. Even had a chat over tea about the state of SA hiphop with some ladies that could never be mistaken for fans…that was interesting to say the least. I’ve swapped trax produced by friends at home for SA trax. Learned about new groups, rappers, and DJs from around the world. Heck, I’ve even learned a thing or two about commercial bling bling hiphop. I can safely say that hiphop music, more than anything else, has acted as a passport of sorts for me in this foreign land.

For those of you not so familiar with hiphop, let me drop some knowledge on you (as they say in hiphop circles). I think hiphop gets a bad rap (yeah…pun intended) from a lot of people that don’t understand the music. Mostly I think this occurs because of the way hiphop is accessible to the masses. If you don’t dig hiphop then most likely you will only get hiphop in its most available commercial forms. You’ll hear people bumpin’ (aka radio blaring) some trax from cars shivering under the weight of fat bass lines. Maybe you’ll see some people on TV or in the newspaper. Maybe you’ll see some baggy-jeaned thug wannabes at the mall. However hiphop comes to you, if you aren’t into it, then you’re probably just seeing the commercial aspect of a very multi-faceted genre.

Because of what’s readily available to the masses…you might be thinking that hiphop is all flashy cars, diamond pendants swinging from platinum chains, bitches n hoes, and other shallow and materialistic crap. If you’ve put hiphop on the shelf because of this, then you’ve made a mistake. Letting these people, being pimped out to the radio c/o record executives looking to cash in on what’s cool today, represent a whole genre is like letting Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera represent all women singers. And that ain’t right. Nina Simone would be spinning in her grave as I type this…

Do you like jazz, soul, or funk? Do you like poetry? Do you like collage art? If so, then hiphop is for you. I rarely read poetry (I have no attention span for it), but I don’t need to because I listen to hiphop. Hiphop is poetry set to intoxicating bass lines and catchy hooks…a collage of sound pieced together from sources old and new. A good MC (aka rapper) can take you on a journey through words that may start off describing a story that will wind its way via metaphor and simile, resulting in an examination of important social issues. Even commercial rappers like JayZ do this (see 99 Problems, the part where he’s talking about letting the police search his car w/o a warrant). A good DJ can take 4 beats of any song from any source and create an entirely new song from it. Hiphop can be an expression of places and things that some listeners have never seen and probably never will. A sort of anthropological text depicting a life as foreign to some as that of the pygmies living in the forests of the Congo. I wanna say it was KRS-ONE, but I may be wrong, that said that hiphop was a way for black kids in the ghetto to tell their white counterparts in the suburbs what they were living. A vehicle for understanding…or at the very least, exposure to different circumstances. There’s a great song by Sublime called ‘KRS-ONE’ that talks about how “I know because of KRS-ONE.” In other words the singer didn’t know about some stuff until he heard a hiphop song by KRS-ONE. Hiphop can make me laugh. “In a room full of crackers I might cut the cheese.” (Method Man) Hiphop can blow my mind in just a few words or with an amazing beat. “Kurt Loder asked me what I’d say to a dead cop’s wife. ‘Cops kill my people every day, that’s life.’” (Talib Kweli)

But by far, the most wonderful thing about hiphop is how it speaks to people all over the world. There is not a country in the world that has not been affected by hiphop music. I can guarantee you that even in the desolate landscapes of Mongolia there is some kid layering his voice over a hiphop beat in his head. You can hear hiphop done in Japanese, Korean, Zulu, French, German, and any other random language that some folks somewhere are speaking. Hiphop is absolutely universal. And people aren’t just consuming hiphop music. They are creating it. Letting it speak for their conditions, lifestyles, and aspirations…making it their own. Besides Bob Marley, I can guarantee the only other person you can see painted on any wall anywhere in the world is 2pac Shakur. Hands down.

Hiphop, in the form we know it today, began in the 1970s in New York City. Apologies now if my history isn’t as accurate as it could be or missing some elements here and there. I’m just piecing it together from what I know and from what I’ve heard. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Hiphop has 2 fathers and 2 origins in New York City…who actually started it depends on where your allegiances lie. Basically there used to be these big block parties in parks in NYC in the 1970s. A guy called Kool Herc and a guy called Afrika Bambaata, one of them a Jamaican transplant, brought turntables and big speakers and started playing records together via a mixer that can make one song play continuously into the next song. And hiphop music was born. Other people put on other little touches, like scratching (Grand Master Flash), and the musical form evolved from there. There’s a famous line in hiphop songs (originally from KRS-ONE, I think) that says “hiphop started off in the park,” which refers to these origins I’m describing.

Hiphop was originally a DJ-centric music because the first people to do hiphop were DJs. But as time went on people would start rapping over the beats laid down by the DJs and then MCs (aka rappers) would battle each other and in time less emphasis was placed on the DJ. And that’s what you see today…where a rapper will be more well known than just about any DJ out there. Other “elements” of the genre also started to surface…things like break dancing and graffiti.

Originally hiphop seems like it was just the soundtrack to the party. But in time people started to use it as a way to express their lifestyles. To talk about issues in their community, etc. A lot of the early hiphop actually has something to say, some commentary. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Of course there are things like gangster rap that evolved out of this social commentary…which disturbed (and still does disturb) a lot of people. But what you have to realize is that a lot of the people who were rapping about violent situations and drugs were conveying what was happening in their community. Instead of shooting the messenger, maybe it would be more useful to examine why the situations people are rapping about are happening in the first place. Today, hiphop has been substantiated as a money making vehicle. Black culture has always been marketable (see Rock n Roll w/respect to Chuck Berry vs Elvis) and record executives have found a way to market hiphop to a broader audience, such that it’s been watered down and commodified. Heck, even McDonalds has “cool” “urban” commercials featuring hiphop beats. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people making hiphop songs that deal with bigger issues than what cool car the singer drives and how many hot chicks he has on his arm…there are quite a few of these “conscious” hiphoppers out there, but you will never hear them on the radio. Their tunes won’t be keeping the club jumping on Saturday night.

I think hiphop has such a universal appeal because its roots come from all over the world. Breakdancing incorporates elements of African dance, old time black dancing from the USA (sorry I can’t think of the term right now), and even from capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art). The first hiphop block parties took elements of the big street parties of Jamaica and other places in South America/Caribbean (I’ve seen similar parties w/walls of speakers in the streets of Brazil). I’m sure there are myriad other little elements that make up hiphop that have been gleaned from cultures all over the world. Because of the collage of elements that make up hiphop I think that it has a universal appeal. People that hear hiphop in Angola, Laos, or New Zealand are able to see/experience some element in hiphop that may have originated in its pure form in their community. Or have some analog in their community. Hiphop is also easily reproducible. Hiphoppers can create beats with their mouths (called beatboxing) and an MC can throw a verse over that. Drum beats can be banged out on anything from the latest high tech electronic mixer/turntables to plastic buckets.

How did I come to hiphop? How did a white girl fed on Kenny Rogers, John Denver, and Alabama in her early years on the farm come to hiphop? Well because of the time I grew up (late 80s/early 90s), hiphop music was already starting to be on the radio. It was starting to become part of the common USA culture, no matter what your origin. If you listen to musical boxed sets representing specific decades (ex: 70s, 80s, 90s), the first decade to have a really varied popular set of songs was the 90s. If you listen to just about any 90s box set you will hear Pearl Jam being followed by Naughty by Nature. My first 3 CDs were: Nirvana “Unplugged in New York,” The Lion King soundtrack, and Warren G “Regulator.” Although I knew some popular hiphop tracks from the radio (like Whoomp! there it is and What about your friends?), my real introduction to hiphop didn’t come until 1997.

In my 3^rd year of high school, I shared a table in my English class with a guy called Kevin Irons. He was one of the most popular kids in school cos he was hot, played soccer really well, was smart, and also streetwise (so he was down w/the thugs…yeah there were thugs at my school. Waukegan High School…Wauk-town til we go down!!). Kevin started to talk to me about hiphop one day and I told him I didn’t really know that much about it. He made it his mission to teach me about the Wu Tang Clan, beef, and other aspects of hiphop culture. I think it was cute to him that a nerdy white girl (so I think I was perceived in high school) was interested in all this thugged out stuff. I think I became a pet project to him. In the end he made me some tapes of the Wu Tang Clan and some other artists like Cypress Hill and 2pac. I learned a lot and fell in love with hiphop.

The next major development for me and hiphop came at the University of Illinois with and organization called UC HipHop. The organization was started in the fall of 2001 to promote hiphop culture on the campus. The organization exploded within the first semester of its inception…they were throwing the hottest parties, rap battles, breakdancing battles, and weekly ciphers (where rappers come together in the park or somewhere and freestyle rhyme with each other. freestyle=making up raps on the spot, like improv). Chill in the Grill on Wednesday nights at the Canopy Club was not to be missed. The semester after UC HipHop started, I went to South Africa for the first time. The only thing I missed more than my friends and family while I was away was UC HipHop.

So what was so great about this organization? Well there was a lot of nice talent coming out of this group and that was cool cos these were people that were my neighbors, friends, and classmates. I think music is so much more special when it comes from your friends/acquaintances vs. coming from some rich superstar you don’t know. Plus they threw good parties with music I liked. I learned more about some of the elements of hiphop that I didn’t know much about, like graffiti and breakdancing. And I learned more about the finer points of hiphop, like less commercial stuff and more arty or “conscious” hiphop. Hiphop that really spoke to me. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to hear a nice vulgar song by ODB every now and again, but the conscious stuff is really what gets me going. But the best part about UC HipHop, hands down, was the love. This was an organization composed of all kinds of different people: Indian breakdancers, Filipino/Irish metal head rednecks who had discovered hiphop, heads from the deep dark parts of Chicago, nerdy white kids from the suburbs, Puerto Ricans, and many more. But we all came together and broke bread, regardless of possible differences, at the table of hiphop. And everyone in the organization had love for everyone else (although at times there was beef…but that’s hiphop). I made a lot of really good friends thru this group…friends which have remained good friends to this day. Because of the love in this organization, with a side of hiphop, I think that hiphop became even more important to me.

Yeah, so that’s hiphop to me. I just wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having about hiphop lately…cos like I said it’s been coming up a lot with people. I’ve been detecting a pattern in the topics that I’ve been connecting with other people over…and hiphop is the leader. That being said, one thing I deeply miss in SA is being around people creating hiphop (and creating other things, but mainly hiphop). I haven’t found the people that are making hiphop music here. I’m not sure why. I know there are people making music here and breakdancing and stuff, but I don’t know if I have access to their communities yet. I think I’m going to need a visa for my hiphop passport. Working at a rock station and living in Pretoria hasn’t exactly exposed me to much hiphop here ;) I did meet some MCs a month or so ago in Pretoria, but I haven’t had time to get connected with them. I’m going to do so when I get back to Pretoria. I mainly have a negative view of hiphop in this country because I mainly just see people consuming the hiphop that I don’t like from the USA. The commercial crap. But I’m confident there are heads here…I just need to find them. I think I’m making progress and my ear is always to the ground when it comes to hiphop.

PS: My favorite DJ from home just came out w/a new CD. It’s actually a funk CD and not hiphop per se…but you can check it out and his other music at:

www.spinnerty.com

There’s also a really great article about producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin on his blog.

Much Love to you all. Happy Holidays and all that jazz

Keep the faith and spread it gently!

Lynsee