hip-hop – Page 4 – Roy Christopher

April 7, 2015

Dead Precedents on Repeater Books

I am proud to announce that I have signed a contract with Repeater Books for my book about cyberpunk and hip-hop. Titled Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, the book uses the means and methods of cyberculture and hauntology to thoughtfully remap hip-hop’s spread from around the way to around the world. Its central argument is that the cultural practices of hip-hop culture are the blueprint to 21st century culture, and that an understanding of the appropriation of language and technology is an understanding of the now.

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter, “Endangered Theses”:

Though their roots go back much further, the subcultures of hip-hop and cyberpunk emerged in the mass mind during the 1980s. Sometimes they’re both self-consciously of the era, but digging through their artifacts and narratives, we will see the seeds of our times sprouting… My original guiding premise was that hip-hop culture provides the blueprint to 21st century culture. After researching and writing this book, I am even more convinced that this is true. If we take hip-hop as a community of practice, then the cultural practices of the culture inform the new century in new ways… The heroes of this book are the architects of the future: emcees, DJs, poets, artists, scholars, theorists, writers. If they didn’t invent anything but reinvented everything, then that everything is where we live now. Forget what you know about time and causation. This is a new fossil record with all new futures.

Repeater was founded by the crew that brought us Zer0 Books. Their mission statement is as follows:

Radical change is possible and necessary but only if alternative thinking has the courage to move out of the margins. Repeater is committed to bringing the periphery to the centre, taking the underground overground, and publishing books that will bring new ideas to a new public. We know that any encounter with the mainstream risks corrupting the tidiness of untested ideals, but we believe that it is better to get our hands dirty than worry about keeping our souls pure.

I’m super excited to be working with Tariq Goddard, Mark Fisher, Matteo Mandarini, Alex Niven, and Tamar Shlaim on this project, and to be joining authors Christiana Spens, Dawn Foster, Steven Shaviro, Steve Finbow, Eugene Thacker, Kodwo Eshun, Pamela Lu, Adrian West, Graham Harman, Mark Fisher, David Stubbs, Evan Calder Williams, Alberto Toscano, and others on Repeater.

Dead Precedents will be out on March 19, 2019.

February 19, 2015

Placing the Playback: Hip-hop in Context

The perpetual now of digital media makes it difficult to contextualize events in time: watching old SNL sketches and trying to explain what it was like to watch them live on television, playing old records and trying to capture what it was like the first time the world heard that sound, talking about where you were when the Shuttle exploded or the Towers fell. As Shinya Yamazaki so bluntly puts it in William Gibson‘s All Tomorrow’s Parties (Putnam, 1999),

I know you all think you live in all the times at once, everything recorded for you, it’s all there to play back. Digital. That’s all that is, though: playback. You still don’t remember what it felt like (p. 259).

Built as it is out of previously recorded material, hip-hop is especially vulnerable to this contextually lossy age. Thankfully, there are remedies. Check the Technique, Volume 2: More Liner Notes for Hip-hop Junkies by Brian Coleman (Wax Facts, 2014) continues his investigating skills and impeccable taste with liner notes for 25 more classic hip-hop records. Some lesser known than the last the albums in the last volume but no less essential: debuts by 3rd Bass, Black Sheep, The Beatnuts, Ice Cube, Dr. Octagon, Jeru the Damaja, Mantronix, Black Star, Stetsasonic, Kwamé, Raekwon, Gravediggaz, Naughty by Nature, Diamond D, Smif-N-Wessun, and Company Flow. About the latter’s Funcrusher Plus (Rawkus, 1997), rapper, producer, and current Run the Jewels member, El-P says,

I didn’t have any specific expectations for the record, I just wanted it to be huge. Shit, they were playing it on Hot 97, we were in the Source, we were selling out shows. It was crazy. So yeah, it was great, it was a dream come true, and it was the thing that made the rest of my career possible (p. 75).

The promotional steps needed to break an act like Company Flow in the late 1990s were all but gone just a few years later. This kind of context—the historical milieu, the technical aspects, the events of the day, the personalities in the studio—these are the cues and clues needed to make sense of recordings heard out of their times. As Coleman told me in 2005,

When I sit down and chop it up with my friends about what hip-hop albums I love, I’m not like: “Wow, isn’t it weird how many white people like hip-hop? Why do you think that is?” I’m more like: “Holy shit, how did Schoolly D get ‘PSK’ to sound like that? Did he do that drum program himself? And that story about his mom tearing apart his room in ‘Saturday Night’ is fucking hilarious.” If writers are really fans of the music and the art form, personally I just wish they would put the energy into describing why it’s such a dynamic music and stop trying to describe and translate it to their unhip academic peers.

Check the Technique, Volume 2 and its predecessor, much like Albert Mudrian‘s Precious Metal (Da Capo, 2009), go a long way to not only contextualizing these great records but also to bringing the energy of fans to the music.

Further to that end, Paul Edwards, the man who brought us How to Rap (Chicago Review Press, 2009) and How to Rap 2 (2013), is back with The Concise Guide to Hip-hop Music (St. Martin’s, 2015). Subtitled “A Fresh Look at the Art of Hip-hop, from Old-School Beats to Freestyle Rap,” this book is truly that. It’s that rare book that’s both perfect for the beginner and essential for the veteran. As I said in my back-cover blurb,

Part oral history, part investigative nitty-gritty, Paul Edwards’ The Concise Guide to Hip-Hop Music fills the cracks left by the large and growing literature on the genre. From the very origins of the word to its worldwide word-up, this is the essential guide for both the hip-hop buff and the hopelessly baffled.

That’s real. No matter what you think you know about the history of hip-hop, this book will school you on some, if not all, aspects of the genre.

From the wide world of hip-hop history to its many regional influences, Chicago Hustle and Flow by Geoff Harkness (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) connects Chicago hip-hop to its subcultural context. His perspective is further from the theories and closer to the streets. When you think of Chicago hip-hop, perhaps you think of Common, Kanye West, or Lupe Fiasco, but, as Adeem states in the Introduction to Chicago Hustle and Flow, “that’s all fine and dandy, but that’s a Hollywood type of Chicago picture right there. You need to get to the underground, to the actual ‘hood, the heart of it. Then you’ll come to understand it” (p. 1). Harkness does just that. From the Xcons vs Bully Boyz to Chief Keef vs Lil Jojo, and from traditional appropriation to the inverting of gang signs, this is the first in-depth exploration of Chicago’s hip-hop underground. It’s a worthy read about a worthy region.

Just when you thought you knew everything about hip-hop, more great books come out. Getting this stuff situated in its proper context both historically and geographically is the work of book-length interrogations by knowledgeable, reverent writers like these.

January 5, 2015

The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies

I am proud to announce that I’ve been asked to contribute a chapter to The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough. The collection includes essays by Lev Manovich, Mark Amerika, Kembrew McLeod, Aram Sinnreich, as well as the editors — a whopping 41 chapters in all! My essay, which has largely been hashed out via posts on this very website, is titled “The End of an Aura: Nostalgia, Memory, and the Haunting of Hip-Hop.” Using the tropes of hacking and haunting, as well as a chunk of thought from Walter Benjamin, it deals with the question of memory in a time of easy digital reproduction. Of the essay, Navas, Gallagher, and burrough write in the Introduction,

His inquiry is realized as an actual literary critical performance. Christopher’s text by and large comprises a series of quotes by divergent authors, ranging from cyberpunk to hip-hop, which take the shape of an intertextual collage that turns into a case study of authenticity in the time of constant digital reproduction (p. 6).

Many thanks to Eduardo Navas for inviting me to contribute and to Barry Brummett for pushing me to write about this idea in the first place.

The collection is out now!

December 7, 2014

Top 14, 2014

Depending on the fandom, our attention to music can span from the insignificance of wallpaper to the altar upon we sacrifice our days. It can be everything from decoration to downright worship. I probably tend more toward the latter than the former, but you probably already know that.

Of all the things that December brings, year-end lists might be the most polarizing, to some by their contents and to others by their mere existence. Regardless, these are the records that soundtracked my 2014, in no particular order. The links on this post, unless otherwise specified, link to the bands’ Bandcamp page so you can listen to them if you like.

Yob Clearing the Path to Ascend (Neurot): If there’s any band that has yet to get their due, it’s Yob. They’ve been slowly building a stellar body of work for years, and Clearing the Path to Ascend illustrates just how refined their sound has become. It’s heavy and doomy, yet oh so subtle, their most personal and personable release: a near-perfect record.

Nothing Guilty of Everything (Relapse): Nothing came out of nowhere last year promising to update a sound that was all but lost to the past. On their debut full-length, Guilty of Everything, you can hear the presence of various bands from the 1990s: The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Sebadoh, Eric’s Trip, Teenage Fanclub, The Boo Radleys, etc. But Nothing manages to take those sounds and do something all their own with them. For every influence you might trainspot, there’s always something ultimately unique about the way Nothing brings it all together. It’s a mesmerizing mix.

Young and in the Way When Life Comes to Death (Deathwish): The mix of black metal with other genres in not new. Many bands have done it to great effect (e.g., Wolves in the Throne Room, Deafheaven, Panopticon, Myrkur, etc.), and the blackened crust of YAITW is a perfect alloy. The riffs that are usually missing from black metal are here en force. I can never seem to play it loud enough.

White Suns Totem (The Flenser): White Suns, whose last record spent a lot of time in my ears, completely reinvented themselves for Totem. As they said of a show just prior to the record’s release, “You may notice that it is a bit different from our previous work.” The core of what they’ve done in the past is still here, but it’s much sharper, much more piercing. Here’s hoping that abrasive electronics like this and Wreck & Reference, whose Want (Deathwish; See below) was also in heavy rotation around here this year, continue to crush expectations.

Godflesh A World Lit Only by Fire (Avalanche): I’m always wary when a long-defunct, all-time favorite band reunites years later. Not that I doubted Justin Broadrick and Benny Green’s getting back together, but I did have to wonder. The record that resulted, A World Lit Only by Fire, is a welcome return of a monster outfit. It fits well in their catalog and continues what they were doing when they split 12 years ago. The title evokes a flaming planet, cities and nations scorched in ruin, but it’s actually a reference to a book about the darkness of the Middle Ages by the same name. Both visions work well for Godflesh’s sound on this record. It’s dark, brutal, and could come from a tumultuous past or a post-apocalyptic future. Glad to have them back.

Trans Am Volume X (Thrill Jockey): The tenth album from Trans Am, the 21st-century’s own Kraftwerk Plus (Lily calls them “Krautwerk”), is no less confounding than anything in their nine previous lives. From their usual arty Krautrock to the surprisingly frenetic thrash of “Backlash,” Trans Am is well worth exploring if you haven’t already, and Volume X is as good a place to start as any.

Code Orange Kids I Am King (Deathwish): This is another record that just makes you proud to love the band that made it. Code Orange Kids studied up, did their homework, and schooled everyone else trying to make any kind of heavy music. I Am King stays true to its hardcore roots while bringing all kinds of new noise to the network. This is the anthem.

Hail Mary Mallon Bestiary (Rhymesayers): Even if I’ve strayed from Hip-hop with my several year metal kick, there are still a few folks I have to check in on. My dudes Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, and DJ Big Wiz are among the few, and Bestiary illustrates why. This is just classic beats and rhymes with tight wordplay, the turntable on display, and an atemporal sense that it could’ve been made during any era. Timely, timeless, and right on time.

Wreck & Reference Want (Deathwish): This is the sound of despair. There’s no other way to describe it. Wreck & Reference defy genre conventions with machine-driven noise, anguished vocals, and abject nihilism. Want is as heavy as anything out, but it’s nothing you expect from heavy music: monstrous, wondrous, and somehow beautiful.

Perfect Pussy Say Yes to Love (Captured Tracks): Debates about punk being dead are over. Perfect Pussy keep it alive and kicking so much ass. From The Shoppers to Perfect Pussy, Meredith Graves is a force of nurture.

Panopticon Roads to the North (Bindrune): Panopticon, Austin Lunn’s one-person band, continues to show why he’s such a force in American black metal. Where his work with Seidr is heavy on the heavens, Panopticon tends toward the trees. It’s as rural as it is dark and might be the only black metal in which you’re likely to hear a banjo.

Torch Runner Endless Nothing (Southern Lord): After nearly wearing out Committed to the Ground this year, I found out that Endless Nothing had dropped. It’s a welcome 13 more songs of violent, ugly, hardcore grind. Just what I needed right when I needed it.

Earth Primitive and Deadly (Southern Lord): Earth are the undisputed kings of drone, and they expand their sound in subtle ways with every record. Primitive and Deadly includes more vocals than normal, courtesy of Mark Lanegan and Rabia Shaheen Qazi on two respective tracks, but all of the reasons that Earth is so revered are here in glorious form.

Pallbearer Foundations of Burden (Profound Lore): What else is there to say about Pallbearer’s break-out opus? This is the kind of record you always wish a band you love would release. Foundations of Burden is a beautiful blend of loss, rage, and hope. It’s heavy in every possible way and rewards the repeated listen. It’s a beast of a release.

If This List Were Longer: Boris Noise (Sargent House), Coffinworm IV.I.VII (Profound Lore), Thou Heathen (Gilead), Cult Leader Nothing for Us Here (Deathwish), Falls of Rauros Believe in No Coming Shore (Bindrune), Sguaguarahchristis Der Nacht (This Winter Will Last Forever), Mogwai Rave Tapes (Rock Action), Scott Walker & Sunn O))) Soused (4AD), Full of Hell & Merzbow (Profound Lore), Rob Sonic Alice in Thunderdome (OK-47), Trap Them Blissfucker (Prosthetic), Trash Talk No Peace (Trash Talk/Odd Future), Today is the Day Animal Mother (Southern Lord), Morphinist The Pessimist Session (Throats Productions), Theologian Some Things Have to Be Endured (Crucial Blast), Planning for Burial Desideratum (The Flenser), Panopticon/Falls of Rauros split (Bindrune), Wolves in the Throne Room Celestite (Artemisia), Floor Oblation (Season of Mist), The Atlas Moth The Old Believer (Profound Lore), Run the Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal), Murmur Murmur (Season of Mist), and Myrkur Myrkur (Relapse).

The One I was Mentioned On: My dudes Johnny Ciggs and Skweeky Watahfawls gave me a shout out on their collab record, See Us on the Dancefloor (Gritty City), on the song “Celebrate” (at around the 4:35 mark). The record is dope, and I’m stoked to have been a very small part of it. Can’t wait to see what the fam does next. Rock, rock on!

If I’m Being Honest: It should probably be noted that I listened to Deafheaven’s Sunbather (Deathwish) as much or more than any record from this year. I should also mention that this list was compiled in the shadow of intense anticipation of the new Xibalba record, Tierra Y Libertad, to be released next month on Southern Lord.

Special Thanks: I can’t imagine what it must take to run a record label these days. Many thanks to the people who do, especially the fine folks at Deathwish, Inc., Southern Lord, Profound Lore, The Flenser, Bindrune, Neurot, Sargent House, Thrill Jockey, Crucial Blast, Season of Mist, Rhymesayers, and Relapse: Power to you all.

August 21, 2014

Gritty City Fam: See Us on the Dancefloor

With their usual working-class class, the Gritty City Fam has dropped another gem. See Us on the Dancefloor (Gritty City Records, 2014) is the product of Richmond, VA stalwarts Johnny Ciggs, Skweeky Watahfawls, and Fan Ran.

Ciggs claims that this record was spawned by a conversation he had with Skweeky about Mike Daily and me:

We wouldn’t have done this album if it wasn’t for y’all. I literally told Skweeks, “I think those dudes would like it if we did an album.” I hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.

We both get shout outs on the song “Celebrate” (at around the 4:35 mark), which is a personal dream come true. It’s an honor to promote gracious people putting in good work. Mad thanks and respect to Ciggs, Skweeks, Fan Ran, and the whole Gritty City Fam.

November 14, 2013

Johnny Ciggs: Gritty City Cesspool [by Mike Daily]

“Music is pretty much the only thing that has ever mattered in my life,” says Johnny Ciggs, a major member of the Gritty City Family. I was introduced to this creative crew of rappers and producers by my man Tim Baker over at SYFFAL. He sent me the clip for “Hunnid Dolla Bills” by Fan Ran, Skweeky Watahfawls, and the dude Johnny Ciggs [embedded below]. I’ve been following the fam ever since. Johnny’s “Write Like the First Day” (featuring Fan Ran) off of his 21 Tracks About Malt Liquor, Fat Asses, and Other Ill Shit mixtape has been my go-to hype song for a minute now. Vee Aye All Day.

The following interview was conducted by my close friend and colleague Mike Daily with photos by Sirus the Virus. — Roy C.

Johnny Ciggs

Johnny Ciggs and the Gritty City Family from Richmond, Virginia are killin’ it. That’s what I heard from my professor Roy Christopher, so I followed up on it. I liked much of what I heard and saw. They rock shows, throw backyard pool parties and close bars—literally, as key members of the crew serve alcohol to make a living. The rawness is real. All too real, at times. In Fall 2013, I picked up a few CDs direct from Johnny Ciggs as he was passing through Portland on a road trip and conducted the following interview with him.

Mike Daily: I like the video that shows you guys bootlegging power from your neighbors’ house with the extension cord.

Johnny Ciggs: [Laughs.] Yeah. That was funny. We didn’t have the money to pay our electric bill for like two months. I was sayin’ to Sirus [the Virus], “We gotta pay that bill, man.” And he was like, “Yeah, I know. We should do that.” We just kept sayin’ that like every other day for two months. I woke up that Monday and my clock was off and I was like, “Why is my clock off?” For a while there–me and Sirus livin’ together—we were both makin’ no money at all. I can’t remember what song it is—I think it’s on Toilet Wine—I talked about splittin’ ramen noodles on the kitchen floor because we didn’t have any furniture and all we had was a pack of ramen noodles. I think the thought of bills—now that we’re makin’ a little more money—scares us still. We act like we’re still broke like that.

alAJPTChfqU

MD: You said “makin’ a little more money.” Is that from music?

JC: No, I wish. We actually just got lucky and got a good bartending gig at a good bar in town. We were both servers for a while but we were barely scrapin’ by. We knew all the bartenders at a bar down the street and Sirus was lookin’ for a job. He got one up there and then got me a job up there. I don’t make much money off the music itself but I make money off the merchandise like t-shirts and hoodies. I don’t think it would be enough to live off of but it’s just nice to get a little bit, so we can buy supplies like the new mic we need, CD cases…stuff like that.

MD: Is that where it’s at now with music in general? Shows and merch over music sales?

JC: Yeah. Especially at the level we’re at right now. We’ve got a pretty decent local following. Instead of thinking that we’re owed something at the level we’re at now, we just want to get people to hear us, so we’ll go hand out CDs for free, hang out with people and find out what kind of stuff they’re into. We’re out around town all the time so we’re basically working on connecting our faces to the brand. We’d be foolish to try and sell our CDs for 15 bucks or something. That’s how you turn people away. We’re trying to bring people in. New music is everywhere. You have to give people a reason to care and separate you from the rest. Where music is at right now–where everything’s free and there’s so much stuff and the whole scene is watered down by the internet and everything–it’s really hard to ask—at least in my opinion—to ask for money, when you’re just tryin’ to promote yourself. I spent like 300 bucks gettin’ these CDs printed for the trip. I’d rather do that–that’s a few bar tabs. I’d rather just stay in a few nights here and there to get the CD out, you know, than spend 300 bucks for a headache.

MD: In that “Power Outage” video, there’s a BMX bike sitting there. Whose is that?

JC: That’s Pandemic’s. He rides that around town. It’s the worst bike in the world. I had to ride it to work one day. It’s terrible. The seat’s super low and the bike’s just tiny in general. It doesn’t ride like a normal BMX bike. It rides like no bike I’ve ever ridden before in my life.

MD: Does it have brakes on it?

JC: No.

MD: Do you guys skate?

JC: Not all of us. I came up as a big skateboarder. I’d ride skateboards ever since I was a little kid, and then startin’ when I was like 14, I really started gettin’ into it. I still skateboard here and there—mostly just mini-ramp. Not as much as I used to. My passion kinda died out a little bit probably like three, four years ago. A lot of my friends who skated left Richmond, and then the mini-ramp that I would go to all the time, a tree fell through it, and it was just kinda like, “What the hell now?” Skweeky [Watahfawls] was a sick skateboarder in his day too, but he doesn’t skate much anymore either.

Johnny Ciggs in the studio.

MD: That’s right around the time you must have started rapping.

JC: Yeah, so it just kinda worked out. I still like to skate when I can–it’s just hard to do. I work like 12 hours a day and then the rest of the time is all spent recording, writing, rapping or whatever the hell we’re doing.

MD: The first raps you made, how did you know how to make bars and choruses?

JC: Well, I’ve been a drummer my whole life. I started drummin’ when I was a little kid. I just understood it. I didn’t even really understand how to write bars necessarily at the time, but just like I do these days, I basically used every syllable as a drum hit–that way I would stay on time. My first verses would just round out to 16 somehow by chance. Sixteen is the basic length of a rap verse. It just kinda worked. It changed my writing once I realized how to count out the words by bars though. With that, I was able to write more cohesive verses and build my own formula on how a basic Ciggs verse should be put together. What gave me more trouble was taming my voice and getting a smoother flow. When it comes to hooks, I hate them. I can write them, but I don’t enjoy it. That’s Sirus’ department. He loves writing hooks.

MD: You said you favor flow over lyricism, but you do have some lyrical lines.

JC: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I do have the ability to get lyrical. The fellas always make fun of me when I start makin’ mythology metaphors and stuff like that. I just don’t want it to sound like rappers trying to sound overly lyrical. That just bothers me. It didn’t always but now it just really bothers me. I like there to be a little style. A lot of rappers who are trying to be too lyrical will come out with some seriously intelligent shit, but it will have no personality and will be the most boring shit you’ve ever heard in your life. I feel like there’s certain rappers—who I won’t name names—that could be great rappers. They’re already great, but they could be even better if they just dumbed it down a little. Not even “dumb it down”—that’s a bad way to put it. But just not try so hard and make it a little more natural. I don’t want to hear what a rapper thinks he should spit or what he or she thinks will blow away their listener. I just want to hear rappers spit what they spit. That’s all I do. The lyrical ability comes naturally to me. I worry more about rockin’ on a track. And the only way to really rock in my book is to have a nasty flow. Peace to Treach.

MD: Do you do storytelling, would you say?

JC: That’s something I want to get back into. I used to do a lot of storytelling earlier on. On my first mixtape [21 Tracks About Malt Liquor, Fat Asses, and Other Ill Shit, May 2012], there’s a few stories. What I’ve heard is my greatest track ever is “Street Stories,” where I tell two stories with a middle verse from the homie Che Broadway. I really like storytelling. I’ve just kinda gotten away from it on what we’ve been workin’ on lately. I’m plannin’ on gettin’ back into that. The album I’ve been tryin’ to figure out how to put together, I think I finally got a feel for it. There’s gonna be a lot of storytelling on that one.

MD: When you say “tryin’ to figure out how to put together,” do you already have the beats in mind? Do you have the concept for the words?

JC: I’ve got so many beats for this album, it’s ridiculous, but I still need more. With Gritty City, the thing is there’s no politic’in’ your way into it: You gotta get down with us. We’re all really good friends. We all hang out all the time. It’s just been a rough year. We just lost another member of Gritty City, Joe Threat—Rest in Peace. And it’s just, you know, with stuff like that, it’s just been… This was supposed to be the year where we were gonna do 16 releases, and it hasn’t worked out. We’ve still been doin’ a lot, but there’s been other stuff gettin’ in the way. I just want to do an album that reflects on the lifestyle and things I’ve seen—more than just the punchline rap and stuff like that. Which is fun, but I feel like people wonder where exactly everything we talk about comes from. I just want to more blatantly go out there and put it out there and talk about the life we lead, and reflect on that—get into my head about thoughts I have, doubts I have, the whole bipolar nature of my existence. I want this album to have more to offer and be more personal than my past releases. I feel a lot right now, I just gotta figure out how to say it. Don’t worry though. There will still be plenty of the classic Johnny Ciggs rawness on there, too.

MD: What do you mean by “lifestyle”?

JC: I don’t even know how to explain it without sounding like we’re totally out of our minds. We’re just fuckin’ crazy. [Laughs.] I’ll put it like my homie Seap One (R.I.P.) used to say before he passed: “Lemme tell you bout this life…” If anyone ever asked him what he meant, he would laugh and shake his head and repeat himself. Let’s just say we have a good time.

MD: You guys work full-time jobs and you’re prolific, making music every chance you get. That’s “lifestyle”, right?

JC: Yeah, that’s lifestyle. It’s just what goes on. We talk about the way things have happened in our lives and everything. We took the harder route, maybe you could say. We all have had our problems with just bein’ stupid kids and gettin’ in trouble. We’ve seen friends pass from drugs. Some people have recovered from drugs and now they’re doin’ this. We all drink too much and stuff like that. And just everything that goes along with that—the crazy women that come around. Just…whatever. I mean, I can’t even really explain it in a sentence. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to do it—back to the original question—I can’t figure out how to say it. Fan Ran said it the best. He’s like, “What you gotta understand is 99% of people ain’t as crazy as we are.”

MD: How many guys are in Gritty City?

JC: There’s eight of us total, including Seap and Joe. Delta Automatik, Skweeky Watahfawls, Pandemic, Fan Ran, Sirus the Virus and myself. Those are the artists, but we’ve got friends all over the town like the Divine Prophets guys. Fan Ran is in Divine Prophets as well, which is an old Richmond group. I don’t know if you all have heard of them, but that was like the big Richmond hip-hop group, forever. And they actually just lost their producer this year as well: R.I.P. Chadrach. We hang out with those guys all the time. I don’t know if you heard in the songs, we talk about Main Street Mafia. There’s a strip in Richmond where it’s like the dive bar scene, and we all just hang out around there and get smashed and make rap music. That’s basically it. Then we also got extended fam like the homie Devious Kanevil, Oktober 9, The Fugitive 9 crew, which is family ties right there. We got members married to the same mob and shit: RT, BC Music First, Sleaze. There are a few rappers that show their face around the Gritty City house pretty regularly. We love all of them.

MD: How old are you?

JC: I’m 29.

MD: I first heard about you guys in a text that Roy Christopher sent me: “Check out Adam Zombie and The Gritty City Family (especially Skweeky Watahfawls and Johnny Ciggs): Richmond, VA is killing it.”

JC: [Laughs.] Skweeky Watahfawls is my favorite rapper. That dude is hilarious. What you gotta understand about Skweeky Watahfawls is: Skweeky Watahfawls is the biggest asshole on the face of the earth. He’s a douchebag, asshole, drunk piece of shit, and I love him. But he’s a fuckin’ dick. That’s what’s so funny…I feel like people appreciate him for his lyrics, but if you know that guy personally and you listen to some of the stuff he says, it is just the funniest shit you ever heard in your fuckin’ life. This is another one that’s just unexplainable in words. He is hilarious, his wit is incredible, he’s super smart and then on top of that, he’s just a fuckin’ dirtbag so it’s just like a perfect mix. He’s like a comedic rapper, in my mind. When me and him write together—we work on a lot of songs together—we’ll go line for line, just tryin’ to make each other laugh. And if we laugh the whole time we’re writin’ it, then it’s gonna be a good song. But back to the original question, yeah, Richmond, VA is killin’ it. There is a lot of good hip-hop happening and I’m honored to be able to say that I work closely with most of my favorite rappers in town. This city will be on the map here soon. Just wait.

MD: Does Skweeky have a solo album?

JC: He’s workin’ on it. We’re about halfway through. He was livin’ at my house before Seap was livin’ there and we were workin’ on his stuff pretty heavily, but then he moved and got a different job and things just changed. There’s been a lot of shiftin’ around lately. It kind of got put on hold but it’s gonna be real sweet. It’s good. He’s almost got more of like a Beastie Boys sound on it. Where other guys do more like hardcore and soulful hip-hop, his has got a few rock samples on there and things like that, but it just really works with the way he raps, so it’s good. It’s called Cocaine ‘n Demons. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

[Note: As I was wrapping up the article, Johnny Ciggs said in a voicemail message: “I know your boy Roy Christopher and you had been askin’ about me and Skweeky Watahfawls and everything. I don’t know if y’all care but me and him in the past couple weeks started an album together. We’re about halfway done with it and just wanted to give y’all a heads up on that. It was actually kind of influenced by y’all though so we thank you for the compliments. We decided to run with it, do somethin’ together, so hopefully y’all will like that when it comes out here in the next couple of months.”]

MD: A friend of mine said that he considers himself one of a thousand rappers out there. I was really surprised to hear that because I think he’s a great artist. Do you think like that?

JC: You mean sayin’ that I’m just one of a thousand guys all tryin’ to do it?

MD: Yeah.

JC: I don’t really consider myself that way and I don’t consider really anybody in my group that way. I had trouble explainin’ the whole lifestyle thing, but it’s like…what we bring to the table is more than just like, you know, “Yo, I’m an MC, look how dope I am at rappin’.” It’s more than that. A huge part of it is really just personality. We’re not gangsta rappers and definitely not anything like all those club rappers out these days. We’re not doin’ that. We’re not really followin’ any sort of mold. We’re just touchin’ on what feels right, and I really do feel like it’ll help us stand out in time. There are thousands of other rappers out but a lot of them dudes are just boring. Even a lot of those “real hip-hop” rappers out these days are wack as fuck, even more wack than the music that they supposedly hate. We can rhyme, man. That’s one thing I know for sure. I’d put my team up against anyone. We are hip-hop, even when we’re drinkin’ bottles of Bud and listenin’ to hair metal. We’re original and anyone who crosses paths with us realizes it. We’re about to release some “day in the life” videos and cribs episodes and shit. We feel like we’ve done enough music–now we’re tryin’ to show people who we are. We don’t just make this shit up. People ask us, “Where do you come up with this shit?” I’m like, “I live it at my house. I just sit back and watch, if I’m lucky enough that night to not be directly involved. Some total fuckin’ weirdos come through there. And what happens next… It makes for some good rap music.”

MD: What’s it take to stand out now?

JC: I don’t know. Just somethin’ original. I don’t even know if what I do is actually original, but it’s fun and I never stray from being myself. Because of that, the product is what it is. I feel like our music is good on its own but I really do want to start puttin’ more faces to the names—gettin’ some more videos out there. Not just music videos. We’ve got video footage from the past three years of us just hangin’ out. I’ve got a video comin’ out that’s a day in the life of Joe Threat and Johnny Ciggs. Every day that we were able to hang out—like probably three days a week—he and I would get up, get some food, maybe go check out the swap or whatever, and then do a track, and then we’d go out to the bar and close the bar. It was just these crazy, super eventful days that we were doin’ every time he and I kicked it, for months. We were like, “We should videotape this.” So we did a day where we just basically videotaped ourselves all day on just a standard day that me and him would have. Just little things like that. I’m tryin’ to find ways to make us stand out as a crew of characters–not just another group of drunken rappers. Everybody’s funny, everybody’s got their own works, everybody’s got their own style. Everybody’s a general in their own way. The world must know about it.

fHDRQjnLlec

MD: How long has Sirus been writing?

JC: I don’t know…two years; three years? He started rapping because he was staying on my couch for a while and I was recording myself all the time. Next thing we knew we had some songs together. I’ve been rappin’ three-and-a-half years, so no longer than that. Sirus is like my best friend. I’ve known him for like 10 years. We used to beef over graffiti way back when we were livin’ a couple neighborhoods apart from one another. I like his stuff a lot. He’s got some real funny verses, which fits his style perfectly. When he first started rappin’, he didn’t even understand how to ride a beat. I’ve got Sirus verses that are just all over the place. He just stuck with it and now his shit’s nasty. I love seein’ that progression. He didn’t even ever really wanna be a rapper—-he just did it for fun–and he’s still havin’ fun with it. He’s made incredible progress. He’s dope now. He’s among the Virginia elite.

MD: What’s the story behind your track “Hunnid Dolla Bills”?

JC: It’s a beat that Fan Ran originally gave to somebody else and they never did anything with it. We were just sittin’ around my house—me, Skweeky and Ran—not really doin’ shit, and Ran was like, “You guys wanna write to this beat? I really like this beat. I wish that somebody would do somethin’ with it.” So we wrote to it. It was funny because Skweeky…that was when he first started workin’ with us, and that’s totally not his type of beat. He was like, “I can’t write to this shit.” He’s more into faster boom bap-type beats. He did it anyway. That was the second verse he did with us. He had just moved to Richmond. He killed it, too. Me and Ran came real correct on it and it just became a monster of a track. That track was a total accident and it’s our most popular joint. It blows my mind.

ObimF2v_aSI

MD: How popular is it? Did it get a lot of downloads?

JC: We don’t even have it up for download. I need to do that. We did that video just for fun. It was this hot-ass day. We were all hungover as hell and we went out and shot a video for it–just havin’ fun. That video… I haven’t checked it for a while, but it’s got 1500 views, which is probably the most views we have on any of our videos. Which I know is nothin’ in the grand scheme of things, but you know, I’ll take it. That video was the one that those guys at SYFFAL did a write-up on, and that was the first time we saw anybody from out of town talkin’ about our shit except for some people that we had met personally, but that’s different. They said they got it through that dude Roy Christopher. I don’t know, I guess people just like it. Alaska and Blockhead did a write-up of the pool party video, which had us all crackin’ up. Blockhead called us “suburban whigs,” and we were dyin’! It was funny as hell. That video was actually shot in our backyard in the city, where we live. I know who Blockhead is—that’s cool. He didn’t give us the best review, but at least he said somethin’… Even though his facts were mad twisted. Shout to SYFFAL.

Bf2fXAO45yA

MD: Blockhead? The producer of Aesop Rock’s early stuff?

JC: I guess.

MD: I wrote to Roy Christopher and said that I wanted to get some Gritty City stuff on CD, but it seems that isn’t how you’re rolling for distro, unless it’s local. Roy wrote back, “Those guys don’t have money to make CDs!”

JC: [Laughs.] We have ways of making CDs but yeah, a lot of times it’ll be like just a few. And then we’ll get money together and do like a hundred copies of whatever’s newest. We got our little hustle for how we can get that cheap, so it works. But the only one we’ve ever done professionally was the Delta [Automatik] CD, the first one [The Resume]. We saved up for that for like two years, and then we realized gettin’ it professionally printed was expensive as hell and not worth it. So we’ve just been doin’ our own packaging now. Because like you said, it’s just a local thing. There’s no reason for our shit to be shrinkwrapped. Half the time when we’re givin’ out CDs, I’m givin’ ‘em to someone at a bar. They say, “I’m gonna listen to this on the ride home!” And hopefully they do. Drunk people don’t need to be unwrapping shrinkwrap while driving. But yeah, it doesn’t need to be like that anymore, because it’s all digital now, which I hate to see because I’m a collector of music myself. I don’t download anything, except I’ll download my own stuff just to have on my iPod or whatever–if I even remember to do that. I’ve got like one or two of our CDs on my iPod. It is really sad to see that that’s goin’ out, but nobody really seems to care except for me and I guess you and maybe like five other people I know, tops. But no, it really is too bad. I like hard copies. Like I said, I’m a collector. I’ve got thousands of CDs and records that I’ve just been collectin’ my whole life. I refuse to not release hard copies.

MD: Can you name some stuff that you’re stoked that you have in your collection that you revisit and listen to for inspiration?

JC: Wu-Tang Clan’s like my favorite group ever. Them or Mobb Deep were both like neck-and-neck. I think Wu-Tang’s got the upper hand. I could go on forever, man. LL Cool J is the greatest rapper of all time. AZ, Nas, guys like that are right up there too. Cam’ron is my shit. I got so many hip-hop CDs, it’s out of control. I recently revisited Motley Crue stuff. It had been a couple years since I really got into them. I love Motley Crue–up until the late ‘80s. I lost interest, let’s say, after probably their fourth or fifth CD, if it even goes that far. The stuff that people don’t realize I liked, which kind of makes people laugh, is I absolutely love Luther Vandross and R Kelly. I just can’t help it. Bobby Womack, Poet 1 and 2. Awesome. Barry White. Marvin Gaye. He’s great. Dokken, Van Halen, ZZ Top. It doesn’t stop. Music is pretty much the only thing that has ever mattered in my life.

MD: What stuff do you currently have your eye out for?

JC: Fred the Godson. He’s the nastiest rapper out right now–new rapper. That guy… I slept on him forever. My roommate would play his stuff and I just didn’t even really listen–I don’t know why. And then the other day when I was in L.A., they had a Fred the Godson and the Heatmakers CD. The Heatmakers I’ve always loved—-beats they made over the past probably like 10 years now. And I was like, “Alright, I’ll buy it. It’s only six bucks. Whatever.” And I just loved it. And then I went and revisited the mix tape that Sirus had been playin’, and it’s just nasty. That guy’s just real clever. He’s got good concepts, good flow… He’s a good rapper. That’s who I’m checkin’ for these days. I just got the new Alchemist and Prodigy CD—-Prodigy and Mobb Deep–and that’s a great CD. Besides that, when it comes to new hip-hop, I’m not really checkin’ for too many besides Raekwon. Raekwon is the king of rap music and no one notices for some reason. No one is doin’ what Rae does. He’s everywhere and he’s not showing any sign of slowing down. But yeah, rap ain’t offerin’ me much else these days. I’m not tryin’ to hate on anybody. I’m just listenin’ more for old soul and hair metal. [Laughs.]

—————

Bonus Track: The Sickness of Seap by Seap One: “Seap One’s one and only album, the album that released a couple weeks before he passed—The Sickness of Seap–is on there and that album is fuckin’ bananas. It’s a look into his life, his problems, his shortcomings. It’s a pretty sad album but it is beautiful at the same time. It’s an album about depression, drug use, jail, wishing he could do certain things and stuff like that. It was an honor to be a part of that one. I didn’t know we were gonna lose him right after that but the whole process was great and it was awesome workin’ with him.”—Johnny Ciggs

—————-

Contributor Bio:

Mike Daily is a novelist, journalist, zinemaker, spoken words performer and co-creator of the Plywood Hoods freestyle BMX team. He lives in Oregon. Daily is at work on his third novel, Moon Babes of Bicycle City, which will be published by Portland’s Lazy Fascist Press.

November 10, 2013

It’s Tricky: Burgeoning Versioning

More mornings than not, either my fiancée or I will wake up with a song securely stuck in one of our heads. Yesterday morning in hers was “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi (2009). Once she found and played the song, I noticed something a bit off about it. I wondered if it had originally be sung by a woman and if he’d just jacked the chorus for the hook. I distinctly remembered the vocals being sung by a woman but also that they were mechanically looped, sampled, or manipulated in some way.

Upon further investigation I found that the song was indeed originally Kid Cudi’s, but that singer/songwriter Lissie had done a cover version of it. Her version is featured in the Girl/Chocolate skateboard video Pretty Sweet (2012), which I have watched many times (Peace to Guy Mariano). Even further digging found the true cause of my confusion: A sample of the Lissie version forms the hook of ScHoolboy Q’s song with A$AP Rocky, “Hands on the Wheel.” This last amalgam of allusions was the version I had in my head [runtime: 3:26]:

dGd9DTTrX4U

So yeah, I sampled your voice. You was usin’ it wrong.
You made it a hot line. I made it a hot song.
— Jay-Z, “Takeover,” 2001

Citing Serge Lacasse, Justin Williams (2013) makes the distinction between the sampled and nonsampled quotation illustrated above. The former being the straight appropriation of previously recorded material, and the latter being like the variations on a theme found in jazz or covers like the Lissie version above: A song or part of a song performed not cut-and-pasted. Building on Gérard Gennette’s work in literature, Lacasse (2000) calls these two types of quotation autosonic (sampled) and allosonic (performed). Of course the live DJ, blending and scratching previously recorded material, conflates these two types of quotation (Katz, 2010), and when we bring copyright law into the mix, things get even more confusing.

Run-DMC: Raising Hell (1986) For instance, the song “It’s Tricky” by Run-DMC (1986) is primarily constructed from two previous songs. The musical track samples the guitars from “My Sharona” by The Knack, and the hook is an interpolation of the chorus from the hit “Mickey” by Toni Basil (1981). Explaining the old-school origins of the song, DMC told Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, “I just changed the chorus around and talked about how this rap business can be tricky to a brother” (quoted in McLeod & DiCola, 2011, p. 32). Tricky indeed: Twenty years after the song was released, Berton Averre and Doug Fieger of The Knack sued Run-DMC for unauthorized use of their song. “That sound is not only the essence of ‘My Sharona’, it is one of the most recognizable sounds in rock ‘n’ roll,” says Fieger, The Knack’s lead singer. As true as that is, it’s not the most recognizable element of Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky.”

Ice-T‘s track “Rhyme Pays” (1987) samples a guitar riff from Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” (1970). I remember the first time I heard Faith No More‘s 1989 cover version of the Black Sabbath song and wondering why in the world they’d be imitating an Ice-T song.

I guess I owe Kid Cudi an apology.

References:

Carter, Sean. (2001). Takeover [Recorded by Jay-Z]. On The Blueprint [LP]. New York: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam.

Katz, Mark. (2010). Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lacasse, Serge. (2000). Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. In Michael Talbot (Ed.), The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 35-58.

McLeod, Kembrew & DiCola, Peter. (2011). Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Williams, Justin A. (2013). Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-hop. Ann Arbor: MI: University of Michigan Press.

October 31, 2013

Mayhem to the AM: Eminem Goes Berzerk

I turned my head for a minute and Eminem dropped this single “Berzerk” from his forthcoming record. The song illustrates everything I love about Hip-hop. It’s not that I miss the era he’s referencing here (I don’t), it’s that he’s referencing things: All kinds of things. Mathers’ use of allusion is masterful, and it’s one of the reasons I study rap in the first place.

Eminem’s sense of humor and of himself is firmly intact. “Berserk” boasts guest shots from and references to “So Whatcha Want?”, Royce da 5’9″, Rick Rubin, Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” Public Enemy, N.W.A., Kendrick Lamar, Ad Rock, and Kid Rock. It’s a celebration of roots: from rap and rock to the city block [runtime: 4:20].

ab9176Srb5Y

More than anything else, Em gets his Beastie Boys on here. Because they, more than anyone else, encompass all of the things going on in this song. Rubin employs his standard formula, which he once described as “reduction” rather than “production.” It’s heard on early LL Cool J records like “Rock the Bells” (1985), Run-DMC tracks like “Rock Box” (1983), “King of Rock” (1984), and the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration “Walk This Way” (1986), and reprised on Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” (2003). But the Beasties’ Licensed to Ill (1986) is the best exemplar. Rubin stripped everything down to just the boom bap: 808s, John Bonham drums, big guitar riffs, and the noises and voices of the boys. The result was resonant and irresistible — and it still works.

The new record, The Marshall Mathers LP2 comes out next week.

August 28, 2013

Herc Your Enthusiasm: Ice-T’s “The Coldest Rap”

As part of HiLoBrow‘s “Herc Your Enthusiasm” series, named in honor of legendary DJ Kool Herc, which consists of 25 posts by 25 critics about old-school Hip-hop tracks, I was asked to contribute one from 1983. That was kind of an in-between year being just after the reign of Kurtis Blow but before Run-DMC became the Kings of Rock. Fortunately, 1983 was the year of Ice-T‘s “The Coldest Rap.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Ice-T’s first single, “The Coldest Rap”/”Cold Wind Madness (a.k.a. The Coldest Rap, Part 2)” (1983) consists of a two-part rhyme-fest of boastful wordplay. The single is backed with “Body Rock,” an electro-dance number that puts in extra work trying to explain what Hip-hop is all about. Past all of the playful posturing and woefully dated structure, one can hear the seeds of Ice-T’s lyrical heyday. His distinctive delivery, his cadence, his occasional turn of phrase, and his gift for innuendo all shine through, hinting at his future success on the mic. “The Coldest Rap” is a player anthem, a party song, a Hip-hop trope that Ice-T would revisit throughout his recording career. The power production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who were then core members of Morris Day’s band, The Time, as well as close associates of Prince, provided the backbone for the track. They stretch out a bit on Part 2, but Part 1 is all Ice-T’s, though the track originally had female vocals on it. “They stripped the girl’s vocal out,” he told Wax Poetics in 2010, “gave me the instrumental, and I rapped over it that night in the studio.” In spite of the single’s inauspicious origins, Ice-T sounds as authoritative as ever, if not as focused as he would become a few years later. “Those were just some rhymes I had in my head,” he said.

So maybe Melle Mel and Kurtis Blow are the most revered and remembered emcees of the time, but Ice-T was in the mix, and he was just getting started.

You can read the whole post over on HiLoBrow. Many thanks to Joshua Glenn for the opportunity and Jeff Newelt for the push.

August 17, 2013

Hustle and Flow: Hip-hop Theory and Praxis

The once quotable KRS-One once said, “The essence of Hip-hop truly is the transformation of existing objects and forms.” In Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-hop (University of Michigan Press, 2013), Justin A. Williams takes KRS at his word and starts from the fundamental assumption that Hip-hop comes from putting together pieces of the past. Whether or not sampling and remix are legitimate cultural practices shouldn’t even be a debate anymore, and, thankfully, Williams’ concerns go much further than that.

Citing Serge Lacasse, he draws an important distinction between sampled and nonsampled quotation (the former being the straight appropriation of previously recorded material, and the latter being like the variations on a theme found in jazz: performed not cut-and-pasted), and in Chapter 4 “The Martyr Industry,” he tackles the haunting of Hip-hop by its fallen emcees, writing,

Rappers who sample martyrs such as Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. add to the creation of new identities, tributes that often become part of new narratives within the imagined community of hip-hop culture (p. 109).

In that chapter, Williams cites songs by Nas and Jay-Z who were both contemporaries of Tupac and Biggie. In Chapter 5, “Borrowing and Lineage,” Williams goes on to cover Eminem and 50 Cent, neither of whom were famous recording artists until after Tupac and Biggie passed the mic. Their collaborations with the dead emcees align them with the fallen rappers. Williams also does an adept job of illustrating how the concepts of lineage, continuity, and community come not only from the songs but from the fans and the press.

Williams’ approach is interdisciplinary, drawing not only from the usual cultural studies and aesthetics but also from musicology and history, as well as the evolution of technology. All of this makes Rhymin’ and Stealin’ a unique and informative read on a shelf otherwise crowded with similarities.

Another recent standout is How to Rap 2: Advanced Flow and Delivery Techniques by Paul Edwards (Chicago Review Press, 2013), the follow-up to his essential How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-hop MC (Chicago Review Press, 2009). Edwards’ books analyze rapping techniques from the practitioner’s point of view. This gives them a much different feel from the many studies concerned with aspects of poetics, literature, and figurative language use. That is, when you’re thinking of how words go together best and sound good together, you don’t care whether it’s assonance or antanaclasis, asterismos or anthimeria. You only care if it sounds dope or not.

Not that Edwards’ language isn’t precise — it is — the focus is on technique though, not analysis. Shit like Shock G’s Humpty Hump voice being an impression of the Warner Brothers Frog, which is itself an impression of Bing Crosby; using the impermanence of a verse to experiment with it; and trying out bars that don’t or barely rhyme: That’s what this book is about.

Continuing the care he took in part one, Edwards asks advanced wordsmiths for advice on rhythm, melody, pitch, timing, enunciation, percussion, playing characters, rhyme schemes, and rhyme patterns. Among the experts included are Cage Kennylz, Royce Da 5’9″, Brother Ali, Buckshot, The Pharcyde, Del the Funky Homosapien, Souls of Mischief, Freestyle Fellowship, Q-Tip, One Be Lo, Planet Asia, Sean Price, and my dude Aesop Rock, among many others. It’s a who’s who of lyrical prowess opened with a foreword by Gift of Gab.

Just when you thought there were already too many books on Hip-hop, these two essential texts come out, showing two more directions in which Hip-hop truly is about transforming and transcending.