The Forgotten Art of Breaking

I have really been looking forward to this week’s reading, as b-boying is simultaneously the area of hip-hop I know the least about and the most intriguing. And while the Schloss reading was not particularly poignant or revealing about b-boying as a whole, it was easily one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read so far in the class, ranking up at the top alongside Toure.
My favorite chapter in the book was the chapter on battling. To me, when I think about b-boying I automatically think about the battles. And while I have never seen a battle in real life (I have seen several solo performances, including one in New Orleans that was absolutely fantastic) I have seen several of those cheesy break dancing movies. And that obviously makes me an expert! Schloss went into deep detail regarding the mindset of b-boys as they prepare for and compete in a battle. Particularly the section where he discusses the strategies involved in battles, as a lot of it can be related to any other strategic endeavor.
Schloss also gave some insight into why b-boying isn’t as popular today as it used to be, which was welcome and something I haven’t seen in readings before. Among other things, he mentions that as rap has become more mainstream the tempo has also slowed down. As this happened b-boying became less and less interesting, as the best breaks are fast and demand the most out of the dancer. Because of this b-boys eventually stopped dancing to new songs, focusing solely on the older music that was more fitting to the spirit of b-boying. Schloss said that this was the reason that we see comparatively little breaking in modern hip-hop, as the art has been left behind. Which is a shame, as to me there is very little more enjoyable than watching a talented b-boy dance to a solid beat. I enjoy rapping or listening to a good deejay as much as the next person, but there is something particularly fun about watching a dance.

Understanding Graffiti

I have a hard time looking at graffiti art and not thinking about gangs. I have spent a lot of time studying gangs/gang life in my major and have put no small amount of effort into looking at gang tags. However, once I actually started looking through Spraycan Art I was able to really differentiate between the two. When looking at gang tags it is almost always a warning about something. Whether or not it is telling someone that this is your turf or that other people aren’t wanted in the area, it is almost always something simple like a name or a symbol. Graffiti art, on the other hand, is really and truly something of beauty. I’m not entirely sure how so few people can look at some of the stuff these people do and not consider it art. I guess I just feel the same way about this as I do about hip-hop as a whole. I’ve never really understood how so few people can not see it as legitimate.
Since I love posting my favorite quote from a book or reading I will do the same this week. From Spraycan Art, “You ask someone, ‘Do you like birds singing in the morning, do you think it’s beautiful?’ and the person will most probably answer, ‘Yes.’ And then you ask the person, ‘Well, do you understand them?’ and the person will go, ‘Well, no.’ And then you say, ‘You don’t have to understand something for it to be beautiful.” I really do feel this about graffiti art, and actually art as a whole. I always have a hard time trying to figure out what an artist is ‘saying’ in one work or another, and the problem is only exacerbated in graffiti art where I sometimes cannot even make out what a work is even saying. And I mean that literally, as sometimes with all of the colors and things going on it is actually difficult to see. But just because I don’t really know what’s going on doesn’t mean that I can’t see that it is something special.

Rhymes and Lyrics

For the most part I was unimpressed with the readings for this week. However, that is only because they didn’t really tell me much that was new, especially the excerpts from the Book of Rhymes. That entire reading just seemed like it was my 12th grade English class put into hip-hop’s perspective. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy them. I actually gained a fair amount from this week, even if it was not a ton of factual knowledge. I did take away more information about rappers in general, which is always good since my knowledge base was weak to begin with.
The quote I most enjoyed from this week’s readings and felt like it described hip-hop the most was out of Book of Rhymes. This quote was, “It’s not what he’s saying, it’s how he’s saying it.” The author was saying this in response to being questioned about the vulgarity in hip-hop language, but it could also be interpreted to describe rhyming. While you won’t find many people who question language more than I do, the quote really spoke to me. It makes you understand that even though some people may find the rap lyrics offensive; they are usually not being used for the sole purpose of their vulgarity. They are being used because that is the language of the medium. If a rapper were to not use the language it isn’t likely that he would be popular at all, if for very long. While I may not approve of or believe that rappers should believe in what they say, I understand the need for them to say it.
For the most part I thought it was a waste of time when reading about the different types if rhymes. While it did give me a little technical knowledge in that I now have all of the names of the different types of rhymes, I could (for the most part) describe the different rhyme forms without doing the reading. The best thing it did was give me a feeling for how different rappers used different rhyme schemes in their rap.

Does Hip-Hop=Music?

I wanted to open this week’s blog post with a quote from the reading: “Rap, by definition, is political music. Fabricated from stolen snatches of prerecorded music by smash-and-grab producers who frequently thumb their noses at copyright laws, it is the musical equivalent of shoplifting.” As we all should know by now, in the early 90s (1992? I don’t have my notes with me at the moment) copyright laws came down hard on hip-hop music as a whole, basically killing the concept of sampling and with it the deejay. Before, hip-hop deejays had would pretty much take anything they wanted from any song they wanted and use it in their tracks, after these lawsuits that art in particular became difficult to use. After those cases we did not see any more deejays using popular music in their tracks, as it was too expensive to do it, especially when we realize that some songs had a dozen or more different samples in them. While hip-hop had its beginning firmly rooted in the art of deejaying (Flash, Bambatta, Kool Herc) and the Golden Age had a very big emphasis on it as well, after this time period we see almost no deejaying in any genre music. Is it a coincidence that it is after losing this building block we entered what is referred to by some as the downfall of hip-hop? It is commonly believed that hip-hop has been waning in quality since the Golden Age, but I personally don’t believe that the end of deejaying is (solely) responsible for it.
Another point that many of the readings for the week brought up (and the reason for the title of this post) is that a majority of the population has trouble accepting hip-hop as music. We have seen many times before that hip-hop has spent the entirety of its existence trying to legitimize itself to the masses, and we still see this going on today. However, there was a point in one of the chapters were I saw a fairly unique viewpoint. Hank Shocklee gave the quote, “We don’t like musicians. We don’t respect musicians. The reason why is because they look at people who rap as people who don’t have knowledge. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite. We have a better sense of music, a better concept of music, of where it’s going, of what it can do.” I really enjoyed this, and the quote really fits into the themes of hip-hop we’ve seen. Rather than trying to make hip-hop legitimate, Shocklee feels that it is all other music that is not legitimate.
As a musician, I have a hard time understanding why so many people have a hard time accepting hip-hop as music. While I have a fairly broad/hippieish belief that anything can be music to anyone, even many of the stricter definitions shouldn’t have a problem with it. From a purely musical standpoint, there is no reason that hip-hop should be ostracized.

Midwest Rappers?

This week’s blog post is going to be solely discussing Prophets of the Hood for one specific reason. It’s the only one I can get my hands on. I’m having trouble getting the online article to work without buying it (I hope I’m not supposed to), and I cannot seem to find my copy of Parodies of Ownership. So here I am, with roughly a third of what I was supposed to read for the week. Let’s see if I can make it work.
Also, sorry about the title not really making sense. It's the best I could come up with.
For one, Prophets seemed very boring to me. This might just be because I’ve really enjoyed the last two books (Toure and Dyson) and Perry’s style is very different from theirs. But the intellectual debate just tends to bore me in general, and beyond that, hip-hop just seems to flow better when it’s in a more informal format. This may just be my opinion, but I feel like hip-hop being discussed in this manor is kind of missing the point. Hip-hop is fun and energetic, shouldn’t reading about it be the same. I’m probably just being greedy here, but that’s just my $0.02.
In the first chapter I felt like Perry was trying way too hard to get the reader to see his point. He spent the entire chapter just trying to make the point that rap is black music. While every once in a while he points out that people of other nationalities do participate in hip-hop, he is always quick to make sure that the reader knows that they still have to fit into the black mold of the genre. I remember one part where he was discussing language and he made the remark that there has been a fairly strong Hispanic influence on hip-hop, but is quick to caveat that to succeed these musicians have to use African American vernacular and put their own language into that. While I am far from an expert on hip-hop of any kind, and especially Hispanic hip-hop, I don’t seem to recall this being true. If I am wrong someone please correct me, but haven’t we read entire articles on the (hidden) prevalence of Hispanic hip-hop? I guess what I’m getting at is that Perry really wants the reader to see his side of things, and that he could have used a lot fewer pages to do it.
One other thing I wanted to bring up was that Perry brings up a fourth hip-hop area. While we have already been over the East coast (message), West coast (gangsta), and South (party) rappers he mentions the Mid West as an area of hip-hop in several areas of his book. I guess I just hadn’t realized that we had a large number of rappers around here. If this really is so, is there a specific area of hip-hop that Mid Westerners are attributed to?
I think that was my biggest problem with the book. To me it just feels like Perry rambles on and on and could use a lot less to make the same argument. I usually try to use these blog posts about things I like about a book, but there wasn’t really much I enjoyed here. I can pretty honestly say that this was my least favorite reading so far. While I’ll wager that I just made up my mind to dislike the reading too early and everyone else has seen the truth about hip-hop from it, I still feel this way. So feel free, nay encouraged, to chew me up if I just missed the point entirely.

Prison and Sexism, Hip-Hop Style

I just want to start this week’s blog off by saying how much I liked this book. Usually I find myself getting bored when I read the more academic literature, but I devoured this book. It might be the fact that it’s written as a series of interviews, but I may have actually liked this more than the Toure book, and I’ve actually had several of my friends read that. I’m hopefully going to do this same with this.
It shouldn’t be surprising that I’m the most interested in the chapters/sections where Dyson discusses the more criminal aspects of hip-hop, specifically when discussing hip-hop’s role in the justice system. I also enjoyed the chapter about misogyny in hip-hop. It helps that that is something I’m interested in. I don’t really have a lot to add to what Dyson said about the prisons and how it affects hip-hop. However, he did have some very insightful points. I really liked how he pointed out that, just like the stars of hip-hop, many of big name civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, went to prison. And while a lot of our culture idolizes civil rights leaders while it condemns hip-hop artists, a lot of them meet the same violent end (being shot/murdered). I guess Biggie and MLK have more in common than I thought!
The only other thing I found particularly interesting in regards to prison was how he referred to prison as “natural” to black people. Due to the fact that 1/3 (if I am correctly recalling my statistics) of all black people are in prison at some point in their lives, his joke (?) that most of them are either on their way, in, or coming out of prison it especially poignant.
Of all the chapters, the one about sexism in hip-hop was probably my favorite. And as I find myself running out of words for this blog post, I’ll try to rush some of my favorite moments out. In my opinion, the best part of the section was when he compared the similarities between hip-hop stars and the conservative right. While both believe (at least in practice, if not openly) in the subjugation of women and both hate homosexuals, they also revile each other. While there have been groups brought together and united with less, these two can still be very similar and yet very antagonistic. I also now realize that my two favorite segments of the book are both Dyson relating two groups that appear to be vastly different but share many qualities. I guess I just find stuff like that amusing, even if it might not be the most important.

Politics in Hip-Hop

In our hip-hop class we have finished up the sections of the course titled “Hip-Hop History/Culture” and begun delving into the concepts of hip-hop politics. For our class tomorrow we were asked to define hip-hop and describe how hip-hop can be political. To me, the simplest definition is usually the best, so I define politics as the process by which groups make collective decisions. This is usually seen at the international, national, state, and city level. However, almost everything can be related to politics if it involves more than one person making a choice.
At first glance it seems like it would be hard for hip-hop to be political. After all, what does music have to do with decision making? And this is the belief I’ve held in the past, as I’ve already mentioned how little I knew/know about hip-hop outside of the music. But the readings for this week describe the politics of hip-hop in much depth. In my opinion, the best example comes out of the reading “The Challenge of Rap Music from Cultural Movement to Political Power.” Near the end it describes many of the informal connections between grassroots and commercial hip-hop. Examples of this include the many social charity organizations set up by hip-hop artists such as the Wu Charitable Foundation, Daddy’s House, and the Christopher Wallace Foundation. Many of these grew out of the limelight of hip-hop and, for that reason, may seem superficial. However, when we look at these stars and see how much work they put into their organizations we see that they truly care about the good they do.
The author goes on to make suggestions that could make the grassroots/commercial hip-hop connections more formal. These ideas include having hip-hop challenge their white listeners to work on race relations and having hip-hop artists pool their resources in order to take care of serious social issues. To me, these seem like fantastic ideas. We’ve already seen that working alone these artists can make a difference for a small number of people. However, if hip-hop were to become more political then it could affect a huge number of people. Too many people, hip-hop is currently a trend; however, hip-hop can be a social movement if the parties involved let it.

Jay-Z Has Got Guts

My choice from this week’s reading to blog about was easy; it had to be over the Jay-Z chapter. Jay-Z has always been one of my favorite rappers (although the list of rappers I’m particularly familiar with is admittedly fairly short). While reading this selection I tried to pay particular attention to something we discussed last week in class. I was trying to keep in mind the fact that Toure is writing this article for popular magazines and is therefore writing them to be marketable rather than writing them to be particularly probing or critical.

In my opinion, the article succeeds greatly if we look at it for its enjoyment. So far I am loving this book as a whole, and I have actually suggested it to a number of my friends. This chapter was especially interesting to me as I enjoyed the transitions from describing the game of cards that Toure, Jay-Z, and his crew were playing to discussing Jay-Z’s history (the interview itself) to talking about his music. To me the most interesting parts were discussing the card game, because that is what really made me feel like I “knew” Jay-Z. Anyone can read about his history or listen to his music, but this told me something about Jay-Z the man rather than Jay-Z the rapper.

When I tried looking at this from a more critical viewpoint I couldn’t really find much. While in some of the earlier articles it seems likely that Toure didn’t ask some of the more probing questions that he could have (50 Cent) or didn’t talk about some of the more negative things that the rappers did while he was around (DMX) this article was mostly just talking about playing a card game with Jay-Z. I did particularly enjoy how Jay-Z always comes off as a calm and collected guy during the game, and that he is usually thought of as not being a wild hip-hopper like many are. But then when we go and look at some of his songs, or when Toure mentions that no one really teases Jay-Z because he is too harsh, or how after the last game he explodes in emotion we see that Jay-Z is just like the rest of us. He is not a cold and emotionless music robot, and he is also not a flamboyant attention hog like some rappers seem to be. To me Jay-Z is the most “real” rapper we’ve seen so far in the book.

It Was A Wonderful World

This week I chose to blog about Toure’s tribute to Biggie’s death. If I had just read this piece I would have believed that he was sincere about being done with hip-hop. However, in the introduction he tells the reader that the piece wasn’t actually about that at all; instead it is just Toure trying to demonstrate the pain he felt at having Biggie and Tupac killed so soon after another. It is a testament to his writing that he was able to do this in such a way that he could make himself sound serious about being done with hip-hop.
One of the first things that I noticed was how Toure referred to the Hip-Hop Nation. I don’t know if I’m just being forgetful or not, but did we discuss the popularization of this term and why some people choose to or choose not to use it? All I seem to recall is a conversation about the concepts behind the idea of the hip-hop nation and why the class was called such. But when was it first used? And who was the first person to use it? I apologize if we already went over this, but I cannot recall.
Also in his piece Toure describes the evolution of hip-hop as it became less about yourself and how you feel empowered and more about making money/hatred. He brings up the point that for a while all of the hip-hop icons were still alive. But at a point they began dying, and none of them died of natural causes. In this era (is it a coincidence that it was at the end/just after the Golden Age of Hip-Hop) rappers and cultural celebrities began being shot and murdered. It was also in this time that the East/West coast feud began.
To me, this is important as I am very interested in the criminality of the hip-hop culture, and how/why early hip-hop culture was more about partying and having fun while as time progresses we see more violent and criminal hip-hop music while also being more and more related to gang activity. What caused this paradigm shift? Why, with the death of Tupac (was this a turning point? I could use some help with dates/chronology), did hip-hop begin to become more and more criminal in its nature? These are all questions that I obviously don’t have the answers to, and I would love to hear the ideas of others that are more knowledgeable than myself.

The Not-So-Black Hip-Hop (and an introduction to my blog)

There are three things I want to do in today’s blog post. The first is introduce myself, since it is my first (it’s also going to be a fairly long blog post to make up for not doing one last week). The second and third both pertain to the readings we had for this week, specifically discussing the history of hip-hop (at least in New York) and Hispanic hip-hop.

So firstly, the introduction. My name is Brett Zeiler, and I’m a senior at Drury studying Criminology and Psychology (so a lot of my blogs will likely be related to those fields in some way). I’m a Taurus, I enjoy long walks on the beach…wait a second, none of this really matters. What does matter is the question most of you are probably (hopefully?) asking yourselves. “Brett, what does a suburban white guy who is the son of a doctor and a lawyer, attending a small private university, know about hip-hop?” Well, kind reader, the simple answer to your question is very little. That’s also the complicated answer, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t actually know much about hip-hop outside of the very limited amount I have listened to in my life. However, what I’ve liked what I’ve listened to, and that’s one of the reasons I’m taking this class. I hope to learn a lot more about this genre of music I respect and enjoy. So here we go into the magical world of hip-hop blogging (that’s blogging about hip-hop, not blogging in hip-hop, although that would be neat…).

The first thing I want to mention about this week’s reading is how glad I am that there was some history in it. My knowledge of history is sketchy at best, and it only gets worse the closer to modern day that we get. So when an entire excerpt for the week was almost entirely about the history of hip-hop in New York City in the 70s I did my best to engulf it all so I could have some context to place all the information I’ll be obtaining this semester in. It was about what I expected, a story of the pain and suffering that minorities in New York City had to go through in the 70s. And while I knew that happened, and obviously has been happening for a long time, the sheer scope of it amazes me. And while some of it may have been some author bias, which I am usually pretty quick to catch, I don’t think I cared with this piece. When people have it as terribly as the minorities in NYC at that time, I’m actually ok with some stuff (possibly) being over dramatized. As far as I’m concerned, we still owe all of those people big.

The second thing I wanted to talk about today was Hispanic hip-hop. To be honest, it never really occurred to me that there was Hispanic hip-hop. I guess I always figured that it existed; I had just never heard any. And when I go back and think about it, since a fair amount of hip-hop is related back to gangs and the fact that there are just as many (just as bad) Hispanic gangs as there are black gangs it really makes sense that Hispanic hip-hop would exist. And the readings for this week really got me to thinking about the subject, and a lot of questions (warning: some rhetorical) and musings that I have on the subject. For one, it seems rough that while blacks were only fighting against/rebelling against whites, the Hispanics had to fight against the same whites AND the blacks in making their music. Were there any Hispanic rappers who had songs about having to rise up against their black oppressors? It also seems odd to me that while Hispanics were not only accepted, and in some cases glorified, in some aspects of hip-hop (break dancing/graffiti) that they had such a hard time getting into the area of music. Is music just considered the god-tier of hip-hop, with the others areas falling behind? Also, I know that they did talk about the reasons that it took so long for actual Spanish hip-hop (read: in Spanish) to take off, but I was under the impression that most hip-hop was a very personal thing. As far as I know, most hip-hop artists don’t have to deal with record labels telling them what they can or can’t play. So why couldn’t these Hispanic hip-hop artists make their own music for themselves and the people that listen?

Well, I’ve rambled on enough for one week. So tune in next time! Same bat place, same bat channel!