hackthis_archive | Let's take it back to skool. (Music awareness day)

Thanks to everyone who participated in

voleuse's Frankenstein Meme, you've ensured that I am so doing this again next month :D

I was going to write a snippet of George Clooney for Office with Jake as the First Man, but thanks to

antheia, y'all get music instead. Ahem.

I've talked (bitched) in the past about how hip-hop these days isn't really anything like hip-hop from back in the old days, and I think a lot of people who remember rap from the 80s will agree with me. There are plenty of people who write rap/hip-hop off as 'that noise' and if that's how you feel, so be it, but you're dismissing a lot of brilliance based on a few assumptions.

TWO TURNTABLES AND A MICROPHONE

I think we all know that if I tried to cover rap from its birth, I'd still be typing shit up next week, so what I'll do instead is point out a few of my highlights and what they mean to rap in general.

First of all, the genre itself is called Hip-Hop. The entire culture is itself is called Hip-Hop. Rap is what you're doing when you're spitting your words out of your mouth at 80 words a minute. You're rapping, you're talking, you're trying to sell. Rapping is not DJing (disc jockeying) or beatboxing. Those are separate. Do not confuse them. The specifics of the time signatures and beat can be learned about in this Wikipedia entry, what I want to focus on right now is just Old Skool.

The real Old Skool Era of Rap is like 1970 to 1984. When people talk about Old Skool they are generally referring to this era and artists like Afrika Bambaataa, The Furious Five & MC Shan or possibly the Golden Era which is like 1985 to 1993 (artists like Gang Starr, De La Soul & Tribe Called Quest). Anything after that, well, that's for another day.

The real godfathers of rap are 1970s black political performance groups like The Lost Poets, who did spoken word raps (if you've seen Def Poetry, think of that) and Gil Scott-Heron, who is famous for a little poem called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Nike did not make up that slogan, please don't make me hit you.

DJ Kool Herc is a name you will always see associated with the creation of rap. As a NYC DJ (disc jockey, the person who changes and mixes so you can dance all night until your muscles go watery) Herc experimented using 'two turntables and microphone' via mixing and scratching and doing all that cool ass shit that you tried with your parents records only to get grounded.

In the late 70s and early 80s, artists began trying to work words into the mixing and scratching. Some of the big names of this time were Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five who made a little song called 'The Message' that was one of the first (if not *the* first) huge political rap hits. Public Enemy had a lot of people before them. Grandmaster Flash had been on the rap scene from the late 70s along with another young man by the name of Kurtis Blow. Kurtis Blow's 'The Breaks' is one of those songs that everybody just loves, because it's crisp and clean with no caffeine. (Cookies all around)

One of the first "commercially viable rap songs" –- read a song that could be understood, learned, and loved by everyone was the Sugar Hill Gang 'Rapper's Delight'. IMO, what really makes Rapper's Delight such a classic is the way it applies "the dozens" -– which is really just how well you can insult other people and talk up yourself –- and takes it to all new feats of eloquence. Superman is a sucker in a blue and red suit and your mom's food is so bad I needed Kaopectate. C'mon, appreciate.

Def Jam Records was founded in 1984, in an NYU dormitory, by two people that if you know anything at all about music you've heard of: Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. Their first signed act was a little group called Run DMC, made up of Run (Russell's brother who used to DJ for Kurtis Blow), DMC, and a DJ by the name of Jam Master Jay. They had a few hits. Like I don't know, Run's House, You Be Illin' and my personal favorite Sucka MCs. They also did the very first rock/rap collaboration with Aerosmith ('Walk This Way') – y'all've prolly heard that one before.

Def Jam wasn't just the home of Run DMC, but also of Mr James Todd Smith, also known as LL Cool J and three white boys from Brooklyn, AKA The Beastie Boys. The The Beastie Boys 'Alive'.

The mid 80s are commonly referred to as the Golden Era of rap, and with the likes of LL Cool J, Run DMC the Beastie Boys, it's easy to see why. Also, straight out of New York was a duo by the name of Eric B and Rakim (Eric B was the DJ and Rakim was the MC). Before the political dynasty known as Public Enemy, Rakim was rapping about life, dead presidents and just trying to survive. 'Eric B & Rakim 'Follow the Leader'

There are a lot of rappers from the Golden Era that people don't talk about anymore because they didn’t have huge crossover success like The Beasties or Run DMC, but if you ask anybody who was around back then, they'll tell you that you can't mention old skool and not love Special Ed's 'I've Got it Made' and Audio Two's 'Top Billin'.

Rapping and mixing is all well and good, but sometimes if you're without the cash to supply your two turntables and a microphone, you might have to make your own music, and nobody was better at that than The Original Human Beatbox Doug E. Fresh– Doug E Fresh & Slick Rick 'La Di Da Di'

I know with all these men being mentioned the natural response is, where the hell are the women? Well, that's the thing about rap, it's misogynistic as hell. I could pretend otherwise, but uh, yeah, I'm not going to.

For every ten male MCs there was only one female, and she had to work her ass off just to kind of be heard. When UTFO wrote 'Roxanne Roxanne' about a woman who wouldn't notice them, 14 year-old Roxanne Shante answered the call with a little ditty called 'Roxanne's Revenge'. It sold 250,000 copies, but was, sadly, seen as a fluke.

Female rappers like MC Lyte ( 'Lyte as a Rock'), don't get as much credit as their male counterparts or their more famous female counterparts (Salt-n-Pepa 'Push It') but they were there, and haven't been forgotten by the hip-hop community at all.

Obviously there are lots of things missing from this list, like Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power'; Grandmaster Flash's 'Freedom'; Roxanne's 'Roxanne's Revenge' and LL Cool J's 'I'm Bad'*, but this is really just a wee primer, so if you like anything here, go and find out more.

Zip file here. Mirror here.

*I don't actually happen to have these songs on this computer, but if someone wants to hook up the rest of the class, I'm sure they'll be greatful.