i’m taking a music in literature class now called “Rattle and Hum”. we started talking about big band music, we’re currently in jazz, and then we’re moving on to rock, maybe some country or blues, and we end on 8 Mile talking about rap… a little. since the class is my first one on Mondays and Wednesdays (11:30 AM… so now 9 AM is ridiculously early to me), i spent some time last night after reading about 60 pages of the Anita O’Day’s autobiography, “High Times, Hard Times”, just thinking about the state of music as it stands and its audience. no, i’m not going to rant about how i feel music is on the decline and, despite the title of this post, i’m not going to wax poetic lamenting the way people elevate low-tier, low-class, low-talent rappers to the place of high fame and acclaim where under-recognized, highly skilled lyricists should be. no, this is more about thinking of the audience as a whole, in terms of the history.
arguably, hip hop is only a few years older than i am. i think i’ve heard people dispute if it was started in the 70s or in the 80s, whether it was started in the Bronx or not, who was the real first group, etc, but the point is that hip hop is still, relatively, a baby. yet and still, there’s a immense history out there. between undiscovered artists, amazing songs that never made it to single-status by well-known artists, and the behind-the-scenes pioneers, there’s so much to be said about where hip hop has come from in these three decades. but because so much is being made everyday, new trends, new styles, new artists (for better or for worse), i don’t think that there’s any emphasis on learning hip hop from “before your time”.
there are people who have this depth of hip hop knowledge, and they’re basically in two groups to me: Gurus and Self-Righteous Assholes. There are some who lie in between, but mostly I find that there are people who know a lot to whom I constantly go to learn new things and there are people whom i avoid like the plague, lest they bash me over the head for not knowing that some sample on some obscure Jay-Z song was from X song by Y artist who only sold 5000 copies worldwide. those people I can’t stand. likewise, there are the newbies, so to speak. there are three basic categories, and each share the same two subsections. there are people who have wide knowledge with no depth – they can name a lot of artists, but basically, they know the songs that are singles… songs with music videos. conversely, there are people with very narrow knowledge that is very deep… they might know a whole lot about like… two or three artists. and thirdly, there are the ones who only know the shit that’s on the radio NOW… so, shallow and narrow. within all of these, there are people willing to learn and people unwilling to learn. some have no problem learning about the other music that’s out there that they aren’t cognizant of. other would rather just stick with what they know.
i say all this to say that there ARE people who can teach this stuff as well as people who are willing to learn. but unlike other genres, like blues and rock and country, there isn’t really a major push to have venues where people can LEARN. honestly, my only hip hop schooling comes from friends and the internet. not too bad, but there could be a better way. this could be because, like i said before, hip hop is still relatively young. there’s a lot of dispute, too, over who did what and things like that… how to rank rappers. do we go by records sold or content? if we go by content, then how do we establish a system of codifying the lyrics in order to come to some sort of raw content score? i guess this is true of ANY genre of music, but there seems to be a schism in hip hop especially.
just some thoughts.
peace.
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