Hip Hop History: Part I

Posted on March 25, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{I’m speaking on the history of hip hop at HSPVA in a few weeks; in preparation for that, m and I are working on some playlists. This is the first in a series of posts meant to be listening guides for those playlists.}

Hip Hop History Part 1: Origins through 1982

Amen, Brother by The Winstons (1969). This is the most sampled song in hip hop history, specifically the drum solo about halfway through, which is so popular, it is known as “the Amen Break.”

When the Revolution Comes by The Last Poets (1970) and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron (1974). The link between these songs and hip hop is one of cultural continuity, not direct artistic lineage. We’ll talk more about this, but in many ways these songs were far more influential on hip hop in the 1990s and 2000s than the 1970s and 1980s.

Wake the Town by U-Roy (1970). U-Roy was one of the earliest practitioners of toasting, a Jamaican tradition of speaking over repeated rhythms. Many of the early DJs and MCs were first generation immigrants from the Caribbean, and while the direct impact of toasting on early MC styles isn’t totally clear, it is clearly present (as are speech styles from radio dee-jays of the 1950s and 1960s).

Rapper’s Delight by The Sugarhill Gang (1979). Claims to be “the first” are usually eventually disproven, but this is probably the most important of the initial songs to feature rapping throughout the entire song. There is a lot here, from the (currently) bizarre notion of a fifteen minute song to the classic structure of a series of MCs taking turns introducing themselves to the way in which the famous lines prefigure beatboxing.

That’s the Joint by Funky Four Plus One (1980). Included because the Funky Four Plus One were an important group in the early days, and because of the sampling of this song on a later De La Soul cut. They were the first group to have a female rapper (Sha Rock), and, like many of the early groups, went through numerous variations both in name and composition.

The Breaks by Kurtis Blow (1980). The first rap record to reach certified Gold status–and only the 2nd 12″ to achieve that level of sales. Certified Gold means over 500,000 records sold through official channels–yes, that implies the presence of various gray markets and the fact that other hip hop singles likely broke 500,000 units sold as well.

Rapture by Blondie (1980). The question of the role and relevance of white artists in hip hop exists from the very beginning (and looms even larger once you consider the roles of producers like Rick Rubin). Also, while Fab 5 Freddy reached his greatest fame as the host of Yo! MTV Raps in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was an important and influential figure in early hip hop, especially as a conduit between music being made uptown in the Bronx and the downtown art scene (dominated at the time by punk generally and the performance space CBGB’s specifically).

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel by Grandmaster Flash (1981). Hip hop is usually defined as containing four related art forms (DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti art), and while MCs dominate the industry over the past several decades, the early stars were the DJs. This album captures a live performance by Grandmaster Flash. Listen for other songs you’ve heard, both here and elsewhere.

Busy Bee vs Kool Moe Dee (1981). This is the most important early rap battle, and set the stage for “the battle” as an important part of hip hop. Busy Bee was an influential early MC, but here Kool Moe Dee (at that point part of The Treacherous Three) just destroys him. Annihilates. Obliterates. Pick your verb. Pay attention to the structure of the sets: Busy Bee comes in with a standard set of verses, then Kool Moe Dee gets started. Note how he raps about specific parts of Busy Bee’s verse, and then continues to complicate the rhythmic patterns until he hits a series of doubletime verses that are a decade ahead of their time.

Don’t Stop … Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force (1982). It’s very hard to date this track: Bambaataa was performing it for several years before it was recorded. There is probably no more intimidating figure in early hip hop than Afrika Bambaataa–a pivotal force in the transition of The Black Spades from a gang into the community organization, The Zulu Nation, and a huge man, he was one of the original three DJs (along with Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash) that dominated the early days. While the impact is often overstated, the song is clearly influenced by German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk.

The Message by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. It took a while for the MC lineup of The Furious Five to stabilize (Cowboy, Melle Mel, and Kidd Creole were original members, Rahiem came from the Funky Four Plus One, and Scorpio came last). However, only Melle Mel was involved in The Message, one of the most important songs in hip hop history. The song was written by Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher, a Sugar Hill session musician, and Sylvia Robinson (we’ll talk more about her) had a hard time convincing the group to perform a song that was so clearly not a “party song.” Melle Mel and Fletcher split the verses (Rahiem lip-syncs Fletcher’s lines in the video). While politics is present throughout early hip hop, both implicitly and explicitly, The Message has a legitimate claim as the first successful political hip hop song.

That’s it. Part 2 will see the rise of the supergroups, the birth of beatboxing, and the explosion of political consciousness into hip hop. That will only take us up to around 1987 or so!

The Spotify Playlist for Part 1 may be found here: http://bit.ly/hiphophspva-1

DeepCuts

“Songs” appear in quotation marks, Albums in italics without quotations, and Artists in bold.

The entire DeepCuts playlist can be found here: http://bit.ly/hiphophspva-deep . This playlist will be added to as each installment is published.

#Samples and Other Influences

“Funky Drummer” by James Brown; Mothership Connection by Parliament. “Drop the Bomb” by Trouble Funk; “Maggot Brain” and “One Nation Under a Groove” by Funkadelic.

The Last Poets by The Last Poets, The Watts Prophets, Pieces of a Man by Gil Scott-Heron; Dennis Alcapone; I-Roy.

#1979 – 1982

“Rappin’ and Rocking the House” by Funky Four Plus One; “Christmas Rappin'” by Kurtis Blow; “Looking Good (Shake Your Body)” by Eddie Cheba; “The New Rap Language” by Spoonie Gee and the Treacherous Three; “8th Wonder” by The Sugarhill Gang; “Looking for the Perfect Beat” by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force; “Scorpio” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five; “Rockin’ It” by The Fearless Four.

#Political Hip Hop

“How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise?” by Brother D with Collective Effort.

{Continue on to Part 2}

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Reading Well: Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The most compelling writing in Molly Prentiss‘ debut novel, Tuesday Nights in 1980 (2016), surrounds a synesthetic writer, whose descriptions of the New York art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s are fantastically vivid and surprising. He is not quite an art critic, more of a critical virtuoso, whose ability to identify emotional resonance in artists proves to be a bellwether for critics and collectors alike.

I don’t believe it is a description of synesthesia in a strict sense–his ability to perceive color and smell and sensation from works of art vanishes and returns at key points in the novel’s plot–but as a conceit, it works very well, allowing Prentiss to pull together creative and unexpected adjectives to evoke the varieties of style and emotion, especially in the visual arts of the era.

The rest of the characters–an Argentinian painter in exile on the verge of success, a naif from Idaho trying to find her way into the scene, along with a full company of supporting roles–are drawn well, and their personalities and motivations remain distinct throughout the book.

This is a novel about art, about what it takes to create it, but moreso about what it might mean to lose it, to never find or no longer have access to the outlet that it provides, and it is most successful when it is engaging directly with those themes, and with their impacts on the lives of the characters.

Clearly, the more this historical moment–New  York City once Warhol has peaked, the gentrification of southern Manhattan has barely begun, and the HIV/AIDS crisis is still in its infancy–appeals, the more the novel will as well.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Continually create descriptions that are as poetically surprising as Prentiss’. Yes, the synesthesia thing grants her a huge amount of leeway, but (a) what a great idea to find something to provide that, and (b) she still executes it with aplomb and precision.

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Reading Well: Two Quick Things

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Every once in a while, I encounter an artist whose aesthetic fits my own in what feels like a profound way, someone that becomes an instant and enduring favorite. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tord Gustaven‘s piano trio did this, China Miéville‘s fiction did this, and Eddie Izzard‘s stand up comedy did this.

As such, I read Izzard’s autobiography, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens (2017) with great anticipation. Much of what resonates with me about Izzard’s comedy is his intelligence, and his observations about history and contemporary culture, many of which distill complex phenomena into cutting, incisive observations. I am also a sucker for artists talking about their craft, about how they think about the creation process of their art.

Unfortunately, neither of these make much of an appearance in Believe Me, and his explorations of what it meant to grow up and then come out as a transvestite in England a few decades ago are clearly personally powerful, but lack a level of sophisticated exploration to really be more universally compelling. The absence of political nuance in the book is striking, something that combines with some other clues about rushed editing (the repetition of some thoughts and phrases, etc.) that make me wonder about how much of the tone was planned/controlled.

It’s an interesting read, and I’m glad to have more understanding as to what possessed him to run 27 marathons in 26 days, but it lacks either the depth of insight or the laugh out loud moments I hoped to find.

# # #

The Dark Defiles (2014) concludes Richard K. Morgan‘s A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy (started in The Steel Remains and continued in The Cold Commands). There’s not much new here, and the write-ups of the previous two books continue to be true: this is engaging, page-turning fantasy/speculative fiction, and worth a shot if that’s what you enjoy.

I’ve started several series as part of Reading Well; this is one of the few I carried on with and completed, and should Morgan choose to return to this world (surely there is more, either in the history of conflict with the reptilian invaders or in the intergalactic travelers), I will be happy to journey there as well.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Detroit

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Detroit is a 2017 movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow (of Hurt Locker fame) that reconstructs elements of the 1967 12th Street Riot – or Rebellion if you prefer.  It centers on the events at the Algiers Motel, where after suspicion of shooting at police, a dozen or so people who were staying at the motel were detained by the police, tortured, and several killed.  The movie, while not a documentary, attempts to adhere as closely as possible to the factual record – which of course is incomplete and leaves a lot of room for the filmmakers.

It is not an easy movie to watch.  The central, quite long, section focuses on the brutal treatment and torture of the motel residents by the police, and goes on painfully.  There is a little background regarding those at the motel, and brief coverage of the eventual trial of the police officers most directly involved, and some interviews and subtitles at the end about what happened to some of the individuals. The movie is short on context with Detroit’s prior civil rights struggles, history of police brutality, and the pre-riot lives of Detroit’s black population are given short shrift.  Despite this, both the combination of newsreel footage of the multiple day riot and its fairly seamless integration with the movie allows it to make its points powerfully and dramatically.

While the movie was made to honor the 50th anniversary of its events, the resonance with the current situation in US cities is depressingly powerful.  It’s worth seeing, though gird yourself!

The movie also brings up a disturbing question of whether a white director – even one with the best intentions and sympathies – can make a movie that captures the internal context and history of an American minority population without leaving out so much context as to undercut its meaning and power to any who lack deep familiarity with it.  The following article, while to me overstated, tackles this problem:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/detroit-is-the-most-irresponsible-and-dangerous-movie-this-year_us_5988570be4b0f2c7d93f5744.

Detroit is a movie worth seeing, and one of those that say art can and perhaps should be disturbing.

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Reading Well: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I’ve been looking forward to Neil Gaiman‘s Norse Mythology (2017) since it was announced. As long as your expectations are correct, it doesn’t disappoint.

Here’s what I mean: this is a very faithful retelling of the well-known tales of Norse legend–the origination of Thor’s hammer, the battle of Ragnarok, the treachery of Loki, etc. And those stories are told with all of the vividness, nuance, and wit that readers of Gaiman have come to expect. And it’s well-informed: Thor is bit of a doofus, which is consistent with the source material, but not the character as envisioned in the Marvel universe; Loki is complicated and both guilty of high treason and responsible for key successes in the narrative of the Gods, etc.

That faithfulness can also leave a reader wanting more: in the introduction, Gaiman refers to all of the gaps in our knowledge of the Norse mythic landscape: there are gods and, especially, goddesses that are referenced but whose stories are lost and numerous events that are only referenced obliquely in the material that has survived. Gaiman’s creation and interpretation of those stories would be a highly compelling read.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Get a contract to rewrite a known set of myths? Sure! I think more than that, the process of submerging myself in a known sea of writings and then reinterpreting them is highly attractive, although I doubt my ability to remain as consistent with the source as Gaiman does here.

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Reading Well: Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Max Porter‘s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015) lives somewhere between a prose poem and a novella, and, in fact, at times feels like the script for a fascinating stage production. It is a short, stunningly creative, and highly evocative lyric narrative exploration of his partner’s death and the impact of that loss on him and their two sons.

There is sadness here, but there is also growth, and humor, and joy and, ultimately, a family finding its way to a moment where grief is no longer the dominant force in their lives. Grief is portrayed in the book as a crow, who also exists as a bit of a dream/trickster figure, leading the family on their journey while also keeping them from moving too quickly through it.

There is some buried treasure here for poets as well: the protagonist is working on an academic exploration of Ted Hughes’ work, and the crow figure itself is one that is highlighted there.

It’s a very quick read, and if the ideas of grief and poetry are attractive, it is highly, highly recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I’m not a poet. I’ve written some poetry and even some that I’m proud of, but as lyrically descriptive as I aspire to be, the pure poetry here eludes me. What I mean by pure poetry are the ruptures and irruptions in the text that break open its meaning. Porter has chops, and there are moments where those shine through in ways I could never attain.

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Reading Well: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

We are all about to be submerged by a tidal wave of Nnedi Okorafor. Who Fears Death (read before I started Reading Wells, and highly recommended) is in production by HBO, her Binti series is a critical favorite, etc. The third novel to be reviewed here is Lagoon (2014), which  is most similar to The Book of Phoenix in that it is, in my view, likely to be seen as a less-central part of her output.

Lagoon is an odd book, one that becomes much better than anticipated, but quite intentionally doesn’t really end, and not necessarily because there are more installments coming (although that is possible, for sure). At core, I think the novel is really focused on two areas: the first is the essential question of the plot, which is what would you do if the aliens appeared? and the second is a loving ode to the city of Lagos.

The former is complicated by three central characters with supernatural powers, but the basic range of responses, from flight to fight, from riot to rally together, are presented in inventive, creative ways. The latter is more subtext than text, but is clearly present, both in some key secondary human characters (government officials, soldiers, a particularly vocal pastor) and some nice non-human touches (the spirit of the city itself, a monster that possesses the Lagos-Benin expressway to feed on the bones of travelers).

The aliens are a catalyst in many ways, loosing upon the world both the range of human behavior described above and a wave of monsters from the deep ocean with long held resentments towards humanity.

The action of the book is limited first to Lagos, and then to Nigeria (with a short vignette in Ghana), but there is also a gradual widening of the lens, as millions of people start to observe what is happening via social media. The end of the book–even interspersed with the author’s note and acknowledgements–touches on a trio of African-American students in North America and their reactions to what they have seen.

In the first third of the book, I was concerned about it feeling a bit thin, a bit prone to caricature. By halfway, though, I was hooked, and I found it to be as creative and thought-provoking as the rest of Okorafor’s work.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Okorafor’s writing sparkles with creativity and confidence, a combination that is hard to beat, and Lagoon is no exception.

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Reading Well: The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Kameron Hurley‘s The Stars are Legion (2017) is a good old-fashioned space opera featuring an exclusively female cast of characters. There is a groundhog-day element at work, as the protagonist has repeatedly failed in an attempt to seize control of (some significant part of) a galaxy and ends up being “recycled,” which leaves her at the center of a massive planet, having to navigate outward through successive layers of worlds/civilizations to try once again. These two narratives are each handled well, and are consistently compelling and engaging, and the protagonist’s memory loss makes all the narrators somewhat unreliable, which is handled deftly.

It’s all a bit complicated–the planets are actually spaceships, and they are alive, and the various nested areas within them are unaware of each other, and the advanced technology is decidedly nature-based (the best example being the lovely invention of a cephalopod gun, which shoots octopus-like things that burn through any flesh to which they attach).

It’s a nicely executed page-turner, and recommended if that’s what you’re looking for.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I mean, come on, cephalopod guns. I mean that in a more general sense: the nature/technology fusion that Hurley invents is intriguing, and I like both the inventiveness and her trust in the reader that allows her not even to attempt to explain how it all works.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Strawberry and Chocolate

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

When we were in Cuba in March, we asked several people to recommend Cuban films. Usually the first one mentioned was Strawberry and Chocolate, a 1993 film directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío and nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film of that year. We saw it via Netflix a couple of days ago.

It’s a first rate film, quite amusing, yet with deep engagement of politics and ideology – to a degree that it’s somewhat surprising it got past the Cuban censors back then. The film is set in Havana in the late 1970’s, though I saw nothing to date it earlier than when it was actually made. It’s the story of the meeting, the development of a friendship, and the attempted seduction of mind and body between two seemingly as-different-as-they-could-be young men: David, a militantly ideological university student, gorgeous, heterosexual (though a virgin); and Diego, a somewhat older, obviously gay artist and arts advocate, deeply distressed and in constant trouble by the government’s anti-gay and anti-free artistic expression policies. From antagonism to friendship to deep concern, though never overtly sexual, their relationship grows, and David’s eyes on the world are opened far wider. His time with Diego infuriates some of David’s more narrowly ideological peers, and he is labeled gay because of the association. He also develops a relationship with Nancy, an older party member who’s part of the neighborhood watch, carries on black market trade, and lives in the apartment above Diego’s.

The film is funny and penetrating, the discussions of social policy, government, and culture well done and intellectually balanced, and the scenes of Havana delightful. The acting is excellent and the capture of time and place near perfect. For those who’ve been there, the apartments are in a building you’ll recognize that now houses La Guarida restaurant on the top floor and roof. Well worth seeing.

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Reading Well: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

History of Wolves (2017) by Emily Fridlund is a fantastic book, certainly one of the best I read this year. It’s a whodunnit that manages to preserve dramatic tension throughout, despite having made “the big reveal” quite early in the book. That alone is a great achievement; throw in a narrator who, as a teenager, remains both fascinating and believable, and an ongoing series of secondary plots that constantly interrogate notions of blame, of culpability, and of the relationship between thinking–or even desiring–a path of action and actually pursuing it, and you have a book that is a pleasure to read.

Both the scenes from the protagonist’s adult life and some of the secondary characters may run a little thin, but those are, ultimately, minor quibbles: I was thoroughly engaged in the emotional journey. One note, though: all of the characters in History of Wolves are damaged, and redemption is not easy to find; if you need your protagonists triumphant, the book may very well leave you cold and more than a little disappointed.

Additionally, while the novel explicitly struggles with some “big questions,” it neither offers a simple answer (this is a novel, not a fable), nor does it lose sight of the mechanics of fiction when doing so. Those are lofty achievements. Very highly recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The woods of northern Minnesota, and specifically those woods in winter, are so gorgeously drawn, with as much detail as to nearly be a character on their own. It’s an amazing job of incorporating a highly specific local feel into a narrative in a way that deepens a reader’s connection to the material.

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