catapult magazine

I am by no means an expert on or participant in hip hop culture, but a few months ago my wife called me away from brushing my teeth to see a most amazing performance on Conan O’Brian’s show. It was Bone Crusher. The guy seemed to be laying his whole soul on the line. It was so refreshing after seeing 50 Cent’s passionless performance on Saturday Night Live a few nights before.

A recent Father’s Day edition of Chicago’s “Rolling Out” magazine featured the fatherly advice of Bone to the hip hop community concerning the way to beat media stereotypes about slacker fathers in the African-American community: “The media definitely is going to over exaggerate [negative images] because it’s black folk. That’s just real. Black men are definitely slacking in areas, but a lot of black men aren’t. So, it’s just a situation where those that are doing well, we have to commend them and those who aren’t, we have to help them get to the point where we can commend them. That is what it is all about…It is not a situation where we should be pointing the finger and say, ‘Yo man, you need to be doing that and that.’ You got to show them how to be a father. They may have never been around a man to know how to be a father.” Bone Crusher displays his fatherhood proudly in the magazine with pictures of him and his 5 kids and talk of the importance of giving children opportunities to grow by sending them to camp, ballet and karate classes. Hip hop needs to be reminded of its fathers, as The Roots’ newest album indicates, if it is to sustain what has made it great in the first place.

So maybe this would be a good place to mention some of the great hip hop fathers that some of the *cino listeners have discovered (D.C. Talk does not count, unless you’re talking about the early stuff—“God is doing it, yo who’s doing it?”) Who are some of the hopefuls in hip hop of today and yesterday? Let’s see some lists.

I would think that lopez might like the Beasties, especially Ill Communication.

And I wanted to ask: If we’re going to stereotype African-Americans as the race that has a patent on “rhythm”, what do you call what white people have when they lay down a kick ass punk beat or fill the dance floor with a good Merle Haggard tune? Is this not a rhythm of some sort? I think hip hop just puts more of a focus on rhythm and tends not to put so much stress on melody, notes or chords.

I hope I didn’t sound like I was stereotyping black folks as better at rhythm. As I mentioned previously, Aphex Twin and Underworld have a great sense of motion and journey in their beats. It seems like white beatmakers have more interest in light and bright sounds and color.
Black guys seems to be more interested in the physical effect of the beat. It has to make you want to move.
Latin beatmakers like the Buena Vista Social Club have a different feel altogether.

As for punk rhythm, the focus seems to be more on sounding like a maniac. The drums seem to follow what the guitar is doing. Its interesting that moshing, which seems to be arhythmic,would come out of this. Moshing seems to be a physical reaction to the sonic assault of the band.

We should probably be more precise than saying that only African-American Hip Hop focuses on the physicality of the beat. Physicality is inherent to all music. We can’t say that hip hop is more dance music because its focus is on physicality. In fact, I am told Mid-Eastern dance music in clubs is much easier to dance to than American hip hop. So what do we call Mid-Eastern physicality, then? There must be a better way of describing the type of physicality that hip hop deals in.

I really love this discussion. I stumbeled upon it last night. Great.

Two things, first, has anyone heard the Wyclef/Kenny Rogers remake of the gambler? Very amusing to hear Kenny try to go with the flow, if you know what I am saying.

Secondly, and I know this brings the discussion back a bit, but where was the mention of Snoop? The Goddfather? I think that without him, Dre, no matter how sweet his beats, may not have made it. With so much drama in the LBC… wow.

I am quite interested to see where this current discussion is going. The racial lines in music seem to be more clear cut than most places in society, which is to say I haven’t seen many black guys in punk or country. But then you look and there are obvious exceptions. And I don’t know if it is at all prejudiced or anything. It just seems that certain genres of music have a racial history, be it black, white, hispanic, whatever. So my question is this, is music, and hiphop in specifically accepting of other races into their cultural history. In other words, is eminem so amazing, comperable to Jackie Robinson, or is pop music that much more open to the new and the fresh?

Side note: eminem wouldn’t be the same without Dre, and Dre wouldn’t be the same without Snoop, so really this is more coherent than I thought.

Interesting question. I wonder if there were any white guys playing the country blues back in the 30’s and 40’s. White guys seem to take black artforms and clean them up. Look at what swing bands did to jazz.

I would lump Eminem in a category with Elvis and Stevie Ray Vaughn. White guys who really have the spirit of rock, rap and the blues but still sound white.

I can’t think of any white artists who actually sound black. There is always a distinct difference in performance styles. Its actually quite fascinating. Listen to the Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimmy Hendrix versions of Voodoo Chile. Although both are equally soulful, SRV seems to push the beat in a different way. A very white style of playing guitar is found in punk music and, although he probably didn’t pay much attention to punk SRV still seems to draw from that energy.

The most recent Eminem album is also a good study. The first time I listened to it I felt this incredible tension in the beats up until a certain track where the beat totally sunk into the pocket. After noticing this I looked at the cd jacket and discovered Dr. Dre had produced the track.

i realize that it was my attempt at sarcastic humor that began this little tangent, but i tend to think that it’s more of a socio-economic thing more than a race thing. certain races have certain tendencies toward the same backgrounds.

look at ben harper.i’m not sure if he’s 100% african-american, but he certainly plays guitar like a stereotypical white boy. he has soul, but i’m certainly not going to mistake his work for that of robert johnson or b.b. king. that’s probably because he grew up in the suburbs of bakersfield or chicago or something like that.

also i don’t quite believe we should blame the lack of rhythm in punk music on white people. it’s just lazy. get a bunch of guys together who donn’t want to put a whole lot of effort into learning to play their instruments and all the drumbeats will probably sound something like the sex pistols’.

i’m pretty sure ben harper is 1/2 white, 1/2 black. in case that makes a difference (which it apparently does).

sorry. accidentally double posted the same thing.

I agree that a lot of the differences in the way we express ourselves comes from economic status. We could use race, economics, gender, church denomination, family, etc. to categorize musical expression. To me racial differences are the most interesting because they seem to be the most ingrained. Perhaps there is something biological that makes different races express music differently. Any anthropologists out there?

Why do we say The Blues is better if it’s blacker and that White people “clean things up”? Is it because white people like to make things as clean, pure and pristine as their pearly white skin? I’m being facetious to make a point. There are hidden unconscious forces at work here when we start to describe things as more White or more Black in this way. Unless you’re just trying to suggest that music comes from deep inside the blood, is passed on genetically, rather than just from the traditions people grew up on.

For some reason, we seem more adept at finding blackness in white folk than recognizing white influences on African-American music. According to the history books that I’ve read, when Africans came to America, their musical traditions mixed with white, Anglo traditions. The folk music of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the hymn tradition of Anglo churches all have helped shape the making of African-American Blues and Gospel music. So why don’t we say, “Bobby Blue Bland sounds whiter than Howlin’ Wolf”? Or do we say that?