Tag: Hip-hop Theory

Posted on

Thinking Odd: Learning from the Future

I mentioned earlier that it’s often difficult for adults to trust the youth, but that it’s imperative. Letting youthful vision lead is the only way into the future. Well, Tyler the Creator and his Odd Future crew aren’t waiting for permission, approval, or funding — much less trust — from anyone. They are doing it, and doing it big.

Everyone can stop mongering the minutia of Radiohead’s every move. Though they’ve done nothing but smart things since parting ways with the past, they were already famous in three solar systems when they stepped out on that limb. Clamoring to find what one can learn from their marketing strategies is like trying to climb the stairs to catch the elevator: They’re already there. Odd Future is showing everyone how it’s ground up from the ground up. I’m not going to pretend that I can distill what they’re doing into a simple myth-making and marketing how-to, but I would like to point out a few key things. Some of you will find parts of this redundant, but Odd Future offers an excellent case study in getting out there in the now.

“Go make the art you believe in.” — El-P

For the uninitiated, OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) are a Hip-hop collective out of Los Angeles. The oldest of their ten members are barely out of high school and the youngest are barely in. They have been making waves for the past year or so releasing as many records as they have members — for free — on their website, posting YouTube clips of both of their hoodrat antics and music videos for their songs. The aesthetic is somewhere between Wu-Tang Clan and Anticon, but way more dangerous and unpredictable (any one of them would slice me for those comparisons). The music is amazing, the skills are off the crazy, and their fanbase is huge, growing, and includes Mos Def, Despot, Skyzoo, and Jimmy Fallon, the latter of whom had them perform on his show recently. These kids prove that there is nothing so cool as youthful nihilism.

So, how do ten teens from L.A. build such a following? Here are six things Odd Future does right. This is how the music industry works now.

Release your darlings. Straight up, music wants to be free. It’s not a maybe. It is what your audience expects. Couldn’t you be selling yourself short (so to speak) by giving your work away? How so? Have you seen record-sales numbers lately? Odd Future has given away every record they’ve made thus far. They’re all on their website. Go ahead. Go get them.

Consider the vehicle. Does your idea fit in a tweet? Is it better as a post on your website? YouTube video? Song? Record? Painting? Poem? Find the vehicle that will best let the idea find its audience. Odd Future posts YouTube videos and new songs on the regular, often as soon as they’re recorded. Their cult of personality has largely been built three minutes at a time.

A lot of those videos are just the various Odd Future/Wolf Gang members skateboarding, graffiti writing, and goofing off, but here’s Tyler the Creator’s latest clip for “Yonkers” off of his forthcoming record Goblin [runtime: 3:05]. Take notes, kids. This is how it’s done.

XSbZidsgMfw

“Playing it safe isn’t interesting” — Ryan Kidwell

Risk it not once in a while, but every time. If you just watched that video, you know that it took a lot of courage or a touch of insanity — or a bit of both — as well as a truckload of raw talent (If you didn’t watch it, you should probably do so.). When “anyone” can do this, the just noticeable difference can make all the difference in the world. Tyler took what could’ve been another weird rap video and instead made a visual, artistic statement. That isn’t easy. You have to risk a part of yourself to get anything out of anything. Put it out there, and don’t feel forced to explain it. Mystery loves company.

Find a foil. I suggested before that one should start by having heroes as foils would likely come, but Odd Future show that having a common enemy (or three: Steve Harvey, NahRight, and 2DopeBoyz) can unite your crew. They also don’t really look up to many folks. Their whole take is about putting the tools to work in a “fuck it” kind of way. They don’t want or need your guidance. Sometimes we could all use a good shove to the next level, no matter if we feel ready. Finding someone else’s work to counteract can be just the push you need.

“You really can’t wait for anybody, and if things start fucking up and slowing down, you have to do it yourself and you have to make your own noise.” — Apathy

Do it yourself. You can’t wait around for someone else to make your thing happen. Using the establishment when possible is okay as a supplement, but your own efforts are your best resource. Make them count. OFWGKTA don’t even have parents, much less managers, publishers, or label contracts. As their website says about “Yonkers” (above): “Song Produced And Video Directed By The Nigga Thats Rapping.”

“Do what you feel, and feel what you do.” — J-Live

Love it. When you find what you think you want to do, make sure you love doing it. If you don’t, find something else. People often say that great art comes from pain, but I think that sentiment is misguided. I think that everyone should love it or leave it alone.

————

Here are Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from February 16, 2011 [runtime: 3:57]. Tell me they’re not having fun. When they announced this appearance on their site, they added “Time To Scare White America.” Mission accomplished:

XlGWRPnp0ok

Now, go do something bigger than you had planned.

Posted on

Hip-hop Then & Now: Chuck D, Common, and Joan Morgan Come to The University of Texas at Austin

On February 10th, 2011, Chuck D, Common, and Joan Morgan assembled in the brand new Student Activity Center at The University of Texas campus in Austin. It was an evening comprised of in-depth discussion, astute analysis, and the usual gripes.

If you know me, you know that Public Enemy is one of my all-time favorite groups regardless of genre. Their It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back (Def Jam, 1988) is not only what I consider the best record ever recorded, but was crucial in my lifelong fandom of Hip-hop (my own first book is named after a Chuck D lyric from the record). Chuck and P.E. were essential to my getting through high school and undergraduate studies.

Common has been one of my favorite emcees since I first heard Resurrection (Relativity, 1994) in the early 1990s. Not only was he the first rapper out of Chicago that I heard (peace to E. C. Illa), but he seemed to be keeping the Native Tongues torch burning bright at a time when they were fumbling (no disrespect; they got their grip back). He has taken risks, pushed boundaries, and remained successful where others follow trends or fall off.

Joan Morgan is a bad ass. She’s been doing Hip-hop journalism since before it had a name. Her presence and insights in this talk were invaluable, and I wish we’d had more time to hear from her (I’m hoping to interview her for the site at a later date; fingers crossed). Her angle is vehemently feminist, nuanced with knowledge, and tempered with truth. When Nicki Minaj became the topic of discussion, she was one of the few people I’ve heard speak on the Regis Philbin incident. That story should’ve been in everyone’s face, but it was invariably buried.

If nostalgia is the longing for a past that never existed, then the SAC Ballroom was full of just that. Joan asked if the crowd thought that Hip-hop was better “then” than it is “now,” and most of the hands in the room went up. I find this very troubling. I was one of the few, including our three honored guests, who actually there “then” (I heard students around me say that they didn’t know who Chuck D was until they looked him up after hearing about this event). I continue to argue that Hip-hop is better now. Sure, everything that came out then was that next new shit. The genre was young and finding its way (I would also argue that it still is), so there was plenty that hadn’t been done or heard yet, whereas now those styles have been done and heard. But for every Public Enemy and Common, there was an MC Hammer and a Vanilla Ice. Go back and listen to the average record from 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1994 — pick a year: Most of them sound dated and not near as complex and interesting as the worst thing out today. Sure, there are exceptions, but as a whole, Hip-hop is better now. It just is. Thinking that you missed the best of it is problematic on many levels.

Chuck mentioned the fact that fans now have access to the past in a way that the fans of then never did. This is a key insight. Technology curates culture. You cannot assume that the next generation doesn’t know about something from the past. They might not grasp the historical context of say “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy, “Wicked” by Ice Cube, or even “Fuck the Police” by N.W.A., which were uncompromising responses to volatile times in our nation’s history, or to grasp what it was like to hear The Low End Theory, Straight Outta Compton, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) — or It Takes a Nation of Millions… for that matter — when they dropped. But you can’t assume they haven’t heard them or seen the videos. It’s all out there.

On the other hand, Common blamed technology for the lack of creativity and “feeling” in current Hip-hop. This argument troubles me as well. It’s a non-argument that leads to an infinite regress. Hip-hop’s detractors claim that sampling — whether with turntables or sequencers — isn’t really making music. They claim that at best it’s lazy and at worst it’s theft. No one at this talk would agree with that, but it’s the same argument. Saying that technology takes away the human element and therefore the feeling of music or that it makes it too easy thereby giving someone an unfair advantage is the same thing as claiming that sampling isn’t a viable way to make music in the first place. It’s all about what you do with it. Heads know better.

These are not new issues, and I was hoping we’d moved past them. Hip-hop — then and now — is still the most interesting thing happening in music. I will always love H. E. R.

————————-

Here’s a handheld video (no cameras were allowed) of the Q&A session with Common, Joan Morgan, and Chuck D in the SAC [runtime: 8:13]:

9aSqrBrEwxE

Posted on

Rappin’ is My Radio: New Books on Rap Poetics

One of my favorite Hip-hop studio tales is from the recording of “Brooklyn’s Finest.” The story goes that Jay-Z and Biggie were sitting in legendary D&D studios in New York City listening to Clark Kent’s beat, a pen and a pad on the table between them. “They’re both looking at the pad like, Go ahead, you take it. No, you take it,” says Roc-A-Fella co-founder Biggs, “That’s when they found out that both of them don’t write.” That is, neither of these emcees write any of their rhymes down. They write, edit, and recite straight off the dome. Their method isn’t freestyling per se, but it’s still quite amazing.

Insight like this into the creative processes of Hip-hop is rare, but becoming more prevalent as the culture is recognized for what it is: the last salient, significant musical and cultural movement in history — and one that is now global in scale (Omoniyi, 2009). A few years back, Brian Coleman‘s book Check the Technique (Villard, 2007; née Rakim Told Me, WaxFacts, 2005) set out to fix this by providing liner notes to classic albums. “…it’s about talking to the artists themselves about their work as musicians, as creators.” he explains. “It seems to me that when you talk about music a lot of times, people tend to view the image of a group or at least the end product of their art, an album, as the most important thing. I think that the process of making them what they are as a group is as, if not more, important.” No question.

The books assembled here focus on language use, a tack that is often taken for granted in studies of Hip-hop (Alim, 2009), but one that is central to the culture and the music. Michael Eric Dyson (2004) puts it thusly:

Rap is a profound musical, cultural, and social creativity. It expresses the desire of young black people to reclaim their history, reactivate forms of black radicalism, and contest the powers of despair and economic depression that presently besiege the black community. Besides being the most powerful form of black musical expression today, rap projects a style of self into the world that generates forms of cultural resistance and transforms the ugly terrain of ghetto existence into a searing portrait of life as it must be lived by millions of voiceless people. For that reason alone, rap deserves attention and should be taken seriously (p. 67-68).

Enter How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-hop MC (Chicago Review Press, 2009) by Paul Edwards. This book is a collection of discussions with hundreds of emcees of all stripes about inspiration, techniques, writing, freestyling, flow, content, style, subject matter, etc. More specific topics like rhyme schemes, metaphors, rhythm, delivery, and collaboration are covered, and with a chapter each on working in the studio and performing live, contextual considerations are given due time as well. Comments, advice, and insight on all of the above from nearly everyone in Hip-hop who matters (including our dude Cage Kennylz) from every school and era that matters. Is your favorite emcee in here? Mine is. Here’s Sean Price on the art of flow:

Like Bruce Lee said, if the water is in the jug, it becomes that jug. If the water is in that bowl, it becomes that bowl. That’s how I approach it (p. 64).

It’s not all koans and riddles though. For instance, here’s Clipse’s Pusha-T on Jay-Z and writing in your head:

Anything that you’ve ever heard of anybody saying about seeing Jay-Z in the studio, what does he do? He mumbles to himself, he walks around, he mumbles to himself, he walks around, he mumbles to himself, then he’s like OK, I got it. It’s not like, stroll into the booth and [record immediately]–he plays with the idea. Paper and pen is nothing but comfort, to me it’s nothing but being comfortable and being able to look at it, digest it, and say OK, this is how it’s supposed to [go]. But if you can train your mind to do it without that, that’s dope (p. 144).

The next few pages go on to explain the reasons one might want to learn to write in one’s head, and techniques for doing so. How to Rap covers every technique in this way. Weighing in at over 300 pages and introduced by a Kool G. Rap-penned foreword, this is seriously the handbook emcees have been waiting for.

Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-hop (Basic Civitas, 2008) breaks down emceeing in a different, but just as useful and intriguing manner. He digs deep into the meter, rhyme, and rhythm of rap in search of its poetics. “In the hands of unskilled poets and MCs alike,” writes Bradley, “rhyme can be an impediment, and awkward thing that leads to unnatural sounds and unintended meanings. But rhyme well used makes for powerful expression; it at once taps into the most primal pleasure centers of the human brain, those of sound patterning, and maintains an elevated, ceremonial distance from regular speech” (p. 57). Emcees must stay elevated, maintain that distance, but not drift too far away.

Since rap is a battle-borne art form, emcees must continually add on with their contributions while maintaining the culture’s heritage. That is, a practitioner must make something new while still adhering to the rules. Thomas Kuhn (1977) described an essential tension in science between innovation and tradition: Too innovative and the theory is untestable, too traditional and it’s not useful. The same tension can be said to exist in Hip-hop, as if one “innovates” without regard to “tradition,” one is no longer doing Hip-hop. Where lyrical interpolations are concerned, one must not adhere too closely to the original source lest one be accused of biting. “What separates ‘biting’ and ‘enlightening’ is the difference between repetition and repetition with a difference,” Bradley writes (2008, p. 150) It’s a delicate balance to be sure, but one of which a violation is not difficult to discern.

Bradley, along with Andrew DuBois, continues his exploration of rap’s poetics with The Anthology of Rap (Yale University Press, 2010). This giant tome compiles over three hundred lyrics from over thirty years of Hip-hop. The editors shot here for diversity rather than inclusion, thereby showing rap’s poetic and stylistic breadth rather than just its sheer quantity, though the book does weigh in at just under 900 pages. It also sports an foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., afterwords by Chuck D and Common, and essays that contextualize each major era of rap music. The four eras according to the editors are The Old School (1978-1984), The Golden Age (1985-1992), Rap Goes Mainstream (1993-1999), and New Millennium Rap (2000-2010). Among the undisputed legends and usual suspects, other monsters on the mic include Jay Electronica, Ras Kass, Edan, Eyedea (R.I.P., Mikey), O.C., Big L, Pharoahe Monch, Black Sheep, Brother Ali, and the homies Aesop Rock and Chino XL, among many, many others. Bradley points out in Book of Rhymes that lyrics are to be taken and judged differently when spoken as when on the page, and The Anthology of Rap gives one a chance to do the latter. It is comprehensive, definitive, and essential to be sure.

And if you don’t think people care about lyrics anymore, these are Sean Price‘s final words in Paul Edward’s How to Rap book:

I think it’s going to get back to lyrics, man, and that’s good. I’m ready for that, I can rhyme. Redman, he can rhyme, Jadakiss, he can rhyme–it’s going to get back to them [MCs] who can spit real hard-body lyrics, lyrics that count—Talib Kweli and all of them, they spit bodies. I like those dudes (p. 312).

Word is bond.

——————

Here’s the book trailer for The Anthology of Rap [runtime: 3:12]:

93nOk3cDdzU

——————

References:

Alim, H. S. (2009). Straight outta Compton, straight aus Munchen: Global linguistic flows, and the politics of language in a global hip-hop nation. In H. S. Alim, A. Ibrahim, & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip-hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (pp. 1-23). New York: Routledge.

Bradley, A. (2008). Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-hop. New York: Basic Civitas.

Bradley, A. & DuBois, A. (2010). The Anthology of Rap. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Coleman, B. (2007). Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies. New York: Villard.

Dyson, M. E. (2004). The culture of hip-hop. In M. Forman & M. A. Neal (Eds.),That’s the joint: The hip-hop studies reader (pp. 61-68). New York: Routledge.

Edwards, P. (2009). How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.

Erwin, J., Malcolm, S. A., Duncan-Mao, A., Matthews, A., Monroe, J., Samuel, A., & Satten, V. (2006, August). “Told You So: The Making of Reasonable Doubt.” XXL Magazine, 10, 7, pp. 89-102.

Kuhn, T. (1977). The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Onimiyi, T. (2009). “So I choose to do Am Naija style” Hip-hop, language, and postcolonial identities. In H. S. Alim, A. Ibrahim, & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip-hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (pp. 113-138). New York: Routledge.

——————

Apologies to Aesop Rock for ganking his “No Jumper Cables” lyric for the title of this piece (“Rappin’ is my radio, graffiti is my TV, B-boys keep them windmills breezy”).

[Top photo of Ras Kass by B+. Photocopy treatment by royc.]

Posted on

Tricia Rose: Hip-hop Warrior

Tricia Rose is the O.G. Hip-hop scholar. Her book Black Noise (Wesleyan, 1994) is one of the germinal texts for serious Hip-hop studies. Anyone who approaches the culture of Hip-hop from a serious stance must contend with Rose’s work. Her latest book, The Hip-Hop Wars (Basic Civitas, 2008), is a critical look at the debates surrounding Hip-hop, debates that have largely sprung up in the fifteen years since Black Noise was published. Hip-hop music and culture deserves to be taken seriously and looked at critically, and Tricia Rose is down to give it its due.

Tricia Rose

Roy Christopher: Tell us a bit about your new book The Hip-hop Wars and how it differs from Black Noise.

Tricia Rose: Black Noise was a very academic treatment of the emergence of Hip-hop and its political and aesthetic and social element/impact on black culture and US society. It was about the music and lyrics and the social context. Although it addressed the debates about Hip-hop in the public sphere it was interested in figuring out Hip-hop “on its own terms” and setting an intellectual agenda for understanding what was then an emergent art form.

The Hip-Hop WarsHip-Hop Wars is about the public conversation on Hip-hop and how that conversation along with the spiraling downward content of commercial Hip-hop is working together to restore racial stereotype (and therefore undermine real cross-racial unity and equality), dumb down Hip-hop fans and continue the justification of unjust social policies that most negatively impact poor black youth. It is highly accessible, created with bite size chapters and is intended to spark youth engagement with social justice issues through Hip-hop (e.g., gender, racial and class) and to challenge all the stupid arguments leveled for and against Hip-hop in mainstream and Hip-hop media.

RC: Can you briefly explain the “gangsta-pimp-ho trinity” and how you think it came about?

TR: This is a term I came up with to describe the intensely defended most powerful Hip-hop triangle of financially profitable but socially destructive images that have dominated commercial mainstream Hip-hop for over a decade now. I wanted to convey their mutual relationships and I wanted to imply that together they make up the “god” of Hip-hop that is worshipped by record company executives, rappers (present and aspiring) and fans. I also wanted to challenge readers into thinking about how too many of us investment in these images as if they are the truth and that anyone who challenges this is considered outside of the culture and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. As for how it came about, well that’s an answer far too long for this space but in Hip-Hop Wars! But the very, very short answer would be: a) long and powerful history of racial stereotypes that perceive blacks as violent, criminal and hyper sexual, now refashioned for the urban present; b) expansion street economies in poor communities due to chronic and very high levels of joblessness elevates these icons in real life; c) economic value of these images of black people.

RC: I agree with you that the Hip-hop Generation needs “the sharpest critical tools to survive and thrive,” but, as Jay-Z says, they just wanna hear their boy talk fly. How are we to engage Hip-hop heads with the necessary critique of this dear culture?

TR: Black youth have always wanted to hear fly artists talk, style and boast. The issue is not about the style of Hip-hop but its content. Black artists have been incredibly creative without elevating the worst of ourselves, without constant justification of self and community destructive attitudes and behaviors. The whole history of jazz is about fly artists talking (think of the powerful style and linguistic and musical creativity associated with BeBop). And politics has always been conveyed through fly talk. What has happened is that now, this style — this powerful way of making creative pleasure is serving a death imperative. It is what I call “the manipulation of the funk” (funk serving here as a parallel to the idea of fly boy talk; the role of stylistic pleasure in making content pleasurable.

Black NoiseSo, the question isn’t why aren’t mainstream rappers political (they are – it is a politics of renegade, community destruction) or how do we get them to be critical (they are critical of all kinds of things, but too often it’s the wrong things!) it is what kind of politics are some rappers pushing when their “fly boys talk.” What kind of critical So the opposite of “bitches ain’t nothing but hos and tricks” or “99 problems” isn’t necessarily Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” or Immortal Technique’s “The Cause of Death,” it is something like Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push” or “The Cool” or Common’s “The Corner.”

RC: I’ve asked a few emcees why when one performs angry black music that the audience is mostly white. The answer I get is that it’s a class issue not a race issue. That is, middle- and upper-class folks are the ones with the leisure time to contemplate such issues. Other factors notwithstanding do you think this is an accurate assessment of the situation?

TR: When I watched 50 Cent’s DVD concert in the Detroit area I was stunned to see the mostly white audience when the rear stage cameras were in action. Yes, middle class youth have both the comfort and the educational resources to attend to these issues in a conceptual way and their consumption of radical ideas is given more room and safety. Black rappers with “angry” political content rapping to an all black crowd tends to bring out the police and the FBI; there is a long history of that in Hip-hop alone, not to mention R&B and Soul music in the late 1960s. And, black fans use “local” black radio as a key means for guiding consumption. Back radio (which isn’t local or black owned too much anymore) rarely plays radical political content — which would make it seem organic to black communities (which it is) and give it currency among black youth.

RC: Is there anything else I didn’t bring up or that you’re working on that you’d like to mention?

TR: Thanks for asking this. I want to mention the end of the book where I offer six guiding principles for progressive consumption generally and specifically for Hip-hop. I think it is so important to remind ourselves of how powerful, energizing and beautiful creative expression can be. And, to not be manipulated into thinking that the content need not be rough to be valuable (often a culturally conservative position) or that it is “keepin’ it real” when it panders to subcultures of self-destruction and violence (the hyper-pro-Hip-hop defenders). Most of us need a more balanced and forward looking, progressive way out of this. My six principles outline a larger way to think about culture, our past, our communities and our politics in ways that honors the complexity of creativity but refuses to give a free pass to those who let the market rule. So, I’ll close on one of these principles: We live in a market economy, don’t let the market economy live in us.”

Posted on

Not Bad Meaning Bad, but Bad Meaning Good

While I don’t agree with everything in Steven Johnson’s semi-recent book, Everything Bad is Good for You, it does present an interesting lens through which to reexamine pop culture. In a theory he calls “The Sleeper Curve,” Johnson states that pop culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less, as is conventionally assumed. Johnson bolsters his theory with examples from video games, television, and film. Though he doesn’t mention it, where hip-hop is concerned, I couldn’t agree with him more. Continue reading “Not Bad Meaning Bad, but Bad Meaning Good”

Posted on

war@33.3: The Postmodern Turn in the Commodification of Music

TurntableWe live in a realm where once clear boundaries have been reformed, pushed back, reconfigured, and often blurred beyond recognition. The age-old stable image of photography — once considered by most as a reliable visual representation of some brief slice of reality — is now suspect due to digital editing techniques. The same fate has fallen on film, the word, and music of all kinds.Whereas modernism adheres to the idea that there exists but one real “truth,” postmodernism sees all things shifting according to perspective. It finds no central truth, only changing points of view. As we will see through the course of this essay, the commodification of music has gone through a similar change — from a stable central authority to myriad shifting forms.

Where all of the aforementioned forms used to come down to the public from one source, like the divine word of God, or the idea of one central “truth,” the digital now allows most anyone to create, recreate and distort coded information of all kinds. In the music of the marketplace, the center of power was the record company. The decree was the packaged product — the record album, the cassette tape, and the compact disc.

Band of the Hand

Twenty or so years ago, the Hip-hop DJ emerged as a vigilante on this landscape of music as commodity. While remixing and recontextualizing the product, he decentralized the power of the record company. DJs break the code. They reorganize the power structure in the world of sound. The product is no longer the be-all, end-all, but just another piece of the new story. The center does not hold:

The DJ cultivates and manages singularities: the bifurcation points on the edge of chaos, where dynamical systems manifest their emergent properties and transcend the sum of their elements. The speakers emit alchemical sounds, cut and pasted by needles in deep grooves, manipulated by human hands on black wax. It is a pastiche of ever-shifting, hand-engineered, sonic references. The dialectic of the two turntables unfolds in time. Beats juggled for the meat jungle. Scratches snatched for the daily catch. Crowd control, cruise control, remote control, the discotheque as Panopticon: A command-control system with the DJ at the helm. Several systems work at odds and in conjunction to make waves in the scene. This is a language sans nouns; a lingua franca consisting only of verbs: motion, phase transition, aural morphology, all moving at the speed of left and right.

As the Universe of sound finds ears, vibrating shards meld into sonic calling cards: An ever-shifting musical identity that gives way to unrelenting multiplicity. Thanks to technology often perceived as obsolete, the entire history of sound is available for data-mining. The DJ is an archeologist of vinyl plates. Digging in the crates, (s)he returns with pieces to the amorphous puzzle. A cartographer of soundscapes unknown and yet unformed, the DJ makes the maps and the terrain simultaneously on the fly.

Sound manipulation is the foundation of all musical forms. The individual control of audible vibrations is what allows musicians to create aurally aesthetic sounds. As Paul D. Miller writes, “When Thomas Edison first recorded the human voice onto a tin foil roll singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ on December 6, 1877, history changed. It became malleable in a form never before seen on this planet. Experiences of events, and the moment-events themselves could be captured, edited, sequenced, and distributed. What Edison did was take the voice and reduce it to its basic component: sound.”[1] This is what the DJ in Hip-hop does when he combines and reanimates bits and pieces of old recorded history to create entirely new compositions. The music represents a future without a past.[2]

The Ones and TwosSurf, Sample, and Manipulate

Where turntablism was the most exciting thing happening in music at the turn of the millennium, the art of the remix has moved online. The power of the record company has suffered another blow as the power of the DJ has been networked. Call it “uploadphonics,” “bootlegging,” or just plain “remixing,” but whatever you call it, it is a war of intellectual property, a war of copyrights, a war of the freedom of speech and most of all a war of sound. Online, underground remixers like 2 Many DJs, The Evolution Control Committee (whose slogan reads, “We’re so next year.”), Rick Silva a.k.a. CueChamp, Cassetteboy, Bit Meddler, and many others “surf, sample and manipulate” (in the words of Mark Amerika).[3]

Rick Silva calls uploadphonics “a tight spiral outwards of creativity that makes a music in tune with the ideals of the internet, a soudscape to fit the netscape.”[4] Record companies, in an effort to retain control, are fighting a moving target. Indeed, a moving target made up of moving targets: peer-to-peer networks are completely decentralized. The file trade is made from node to node, without central control. The center does not hold.

As I write this I am (re)mixing music. Through my KaZaa Lite P2P client, I’ve downloaded a cracked version of Sonic Foundry’s Acid 3.0 mixing software, as well as a plethora of songs in MP3 format. In the past few weeks, I have been able to literally re-work many of my favorite songs. Lifting a beat from one, a guitar lick from another and vocals from a cappella versions, I’ve made entirely new compositions that none of these artists ever intended, and then uploaded them for distribution to others. Anyone with a connection to the Internet wields the same power. Think of it as a massive, collective phase transition: the record companies put out solids (records), the Hip-hop DJ melts them down into liquids (remixes, etc.) and the home-computer remix kids boil the mass into gaseous vapor (molecules of sound, splitting and recombining without end). While there is still product coming down from on high, the “central truth” no longer holds ultimate power. There is no divine sonic word. There is only sound and infinite ways to put it together.

“In a recent post to boomselection.com an assignment was given out,” writes Rick Silva in an article from 2002 on online remixing, “a call to remix Eminem’s latest track was followed by a link to the MP3 of the a capella version. A week later boomselection released a subsite dedicated only to the Eminem remixes because the response had been so positive. The tracks were rated and posted. The number one track was number one mainly because of its amazing turnaround time. Within ten minutes of the assignment, someone had turned in a bootleg. The remixer took ten minutes to download the a capella, find a track roughly the same BPM, sync it, record it, encode it to MP3, FTP (upload) it, and mail out the link.”[5] All of this is good fun for fans and remixers, but a virtual nightmare for the recording industry.

Two weeks prior to the release of Eminem’s 2002 record, The Eminem Show, an advanced copy found its way onto a popular peer-to-peer network. As widespread downloading ensued, Eminem’s record company was forced to release his record a week before it had originally planned. “The source of this conundrum is as simple as its solution is complex,” writes John Perry Barlow on the digitizing of intellectual property. “Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.”[6] Since the replication of a file in digital format doesn’t decrease its quality, nor does it have limits, this is where the ideas of copyright, intellectual property, and digital bootlegging collide head-on.

Jay-Z / Dangermouse — The Grey AlbumNo one has brought this collision to the attention of the mass mind like DJ Danger Mouse. His Grey Album, which meshed the a cappella vocals of Jay-Z’s Black Album with music lifted from The Beatles’ White Album, was an internet sensation that set off a shitstorm in boardrooms and bedrooms everywhere. Record company suits were scrambling to kill it, and bedroom remixers were scrambling to outdo it. The record (in its modern form: the physical compact disc) was squashed by a cease and desist order from EMI (who own the rights to The Beatles record), but its children replicated: The Brown Album, The Rainbow Album, The Slack Album, etc. (the latter of which is an amusing blend of Jay-Z’s vocals and music from Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted record by DJ n-wee). The remixing continues — and so does the battle to stop it.

The United States Copyright Act states that “the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”[7] The art collage band Negativland tested this clause long before Eminem was asking the real version of his oft-remixed song “Without Me” to “please stand up.”

Negativland — U2In 1991 Negativland released a single titled “U2” which sampled the Irish supergroup’s hit single “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The song and the release of the single were both part parody, part critique, and part media prank (some off-mike comments by Casey Kasem were also a part of the composition). It was quickly sued out of existence by U2’s label, Island Records.[8] Not to be beaten so soon, Negativland released a magazine in 1993 chronicling the court case. “The Letter U and the Numeral 2” was sued out of existence by Negativland’s own label, SST Records (also for alleged copyright infringement: Negativland used SST bumper stickers and press releases in the publication).[9]

“We live in a world where nothing is what we were taught it was,” Negativland write in the introduction to their 1995 book on the ordeal. “Art is business, business is war, war is advertising, and advertising is art. We are bombarded with information and entertainment. Negativland responds to this environment by making music that uses fragments and samples from existing media of all kinds.”[10] For Negativland, if it’s on the airwaves (or the internet), it’s fair game for fair use.

Bits and Pieces

While the legalities of remixing are still squirming under the weight of innovation, the format of music has shape-shifted as well — from atoms to bits.[11] The advent of the Compact Disc changed recording in many ways, but the fact that a band could now do over an hour of music (without having to release a double LP) was one of them. Where the CD killed the LP, shrunk cover art, and caused the public to buy all of their albums on a new digital format, the MP3 ends the tyranny of any multi-song format of the past. We’re now back to the single (without a B-side). A single made of bits, not atoms. A single awaiting a home on the mass storage device of your choice. A single awaiting a new beat, a new vocal track, or a new time signature.

“Just as a Powerbook is a processing-machine,” writes online remixer Tim Jaeger, “and Max/MSP is audio software with which users can program, code, and construct their own virtual instruments, combined they become meta-samplers and schiz-machines. Max/MSP consumes other instruments only to turn them into new, different instruments for others to use and produce new instruments with. The same with turntables, or small CASIO keyboards spitting out sampled rhythms from old New Order records.”[12] It’s music as shareware, open source sound, armed audio warfare… Embrace the postmodern: Reduce, reuse, recycle. The future of music is in our hands: Let’s remix it.

Notes:

1. Cumulus from America; Cartridge Music: Of Palimpsets and Parataxis, or How to Make a Mix by Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid).
 2. Band of the Hand by Roy Christopher, Born Magazine, 1997.
3. “Uploadfonix” by Rick Silva, 21C Magazine.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. “The Economy of Ideas” by John Perry Barlow, 1993.
7. United States Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 107, 1988 ed. and Supp. IV).
8. Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 by Negativland, Seeland MediaMedia, 1995.
9. Spin Magazine, May 1993.
10. Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 by Negativland, Seeland MediaMedia, 1995.
11. Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, Vintage, 1995.
12. “Scatter(ed) Dynamics” by Tim Jaeger, posted on the macrosound discussion list, January 3, 2003.

[Media Reader, #8, 2005]