Four words - David Toop's "Rap Attack"
You will *not* find a better history of hip-hop/rap/whatever. There is also
a "Rap Attack 2" (the one I have) which brings the history into the late
eighties/early nineties.
MCs rapping conscious lyrics didn't have much to do with "denser" music.
Read Chapter 9 entitled "Tough" which presents a very good argument that
conscious lyrics in rapping were there all along.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Frank <samuel.frank@yale.edu>
To: idm@hyperreal.org <idm@hyperreal.org>
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 5:26 PM
Subject: (idm) Hip-hop history/CD philosophy
quoted 44 lines I'm trying to work out a possible paper topic, and I have two in mind, but>I'm trying to work out a possible paper topic, and I have two in mind, but
>I'm not sure how much documentation there is in magazines and books, so
>I'll raise my questions here first...
>
>1) In a discussion with a friend about how dinky old-skool hip-hop beats
>were,
>and how cheesy the rapping was, he said something to the effect of "the
>lyrics evolved because the beats evolved." By that he meant that the
>electro sound determined the cheesy party rapping, and that once electro
>was appropriated by Freestyle, and hip-hop became denser, then rhyming
>styles evolved too. Now, I'm sure this "beat determinism" isn't entirely
>accurate, but it has a certain amount of possibility--Chuck D wouldn't
>have sounded the same without the Bomb Squad fucking shit up behind him,
>etc. Is there any literature out there on the development of hip-hop
>production? What about on the x0x instruments, and their relationship to
>hip-hop? My teacher said something about dub/reggae behaving the sme way,
>that the toasters keyed off the production with their rhyming style. I'd
>also postulate that the reason jungle MCs tend to suck is because the
>beats are too fast for them to stress words right, among other
>difficulties, so their rhymes sound enormously awkward. Anyway, any
>literature on instruments/drum patterns/production/rhyme styles in
>hip-hip/dub/jungle, etc would be greatly appreciated. Is there a good
>magazine article on drum machines?
>
>2)Have any artists besides Oval exploited the theoretical possibilities of
>the CD medium? What can you really do with the mdeium anyway, besides
>playing a disk straight, or making it skip? Are there any other possible
>manipulations? Hidden tracks don't particularly interest me.
> Obviously, with records, plenty of people have fucked with the
>medium itself--Marclay, turntablists, etc. Cd's are obviously harder to
>manipualte, but that doesn't mean people haven't done it. Are there any
>writing which theorize about the consequences of didgital playback and the
>CD medium? Has Lesser done much with skipping CDs? I've heard the name
>Gilles Deleuze dropped now and then--what relation does he play to all of
>this?
>
>Any leads would be much appreciated, whether they're artists to listen to,
>things to read, or people to contact. I'm trying to figure out whether
>either of these are feasible topics.
>
>Later
>Sam
>
>