MUSIC 15 Week 10

1
MUSIC 15 Week 10

• Back to the Streets?

2
After 2004

• Beginning of the full scale collapse of the music
  business
• How did this effect hip hop which had just become
  the dominant form?
• Since hip hop had always had an awkward
  relationship with the mainstream, it moved back
  into a more diffuse and underground position

3
Important factors in recent hip hop

• Mixtapes
• Local dance styles
• Street culture historicism
• The internet
• Questions has this changed the demographic of
  the music and if so how?

4
Mixtapes

• Originally promotional tools for DJs
• Became a useful career-building tool for many
  artists, providing black market revenue and
  street credibility and exposure
• Also a primary venue for experimentation and
  dispute a much faster moving medium than
  official albums

5
Mixtapes contd

• Relationship between the music business and
  mixtape scene has always been complicated
• Strictly speaking most are still illegal
• The shift to online distribution has broadened
  the scope and ambition
• Its often hard now to distinguish a mixtape
  from an official album

6
Street culture, mythologizing the drug trade

• By the mid-late 2000s crime was at historic lows
  in most major American cities
• Crack was almost completely gone
• But crack-dealing raps were everywhere
• Part of a general adaptation of the story of
  crack into a genre narrative.
• See also magazines and DVDs that chronicled gang
  culture historically

7
Young Jeezy Go Crazy remix w/ Jay Z

• One of the first retro crack dealing songs,
  complete with notorious snowman logo
• Jay Z verse added credibility for both artists,
  but is interesting for how he speaks to the
  criminal/corporate divide (or lack thereof)

8
Rick Ross B.M.F.

• Rick Ross, former corrections officer took his
  stagename from Freeway Ricky Ross, the L.A.
  crack kingpin of the 80s
• BMF supposedly stands for blowing money fast
  but is a reference to Atlantas Black Mafia
  Family crime syndicate
• The cinematic gloss of both the video and the
  production make it quite clear that this has
  everything to with fantasy and little to do with
  real life

9
Dance Music

• For much of the 1990s and into the 2000s
  mainstream hip hop had faded as a form of dance
  music
• However in most cities in the U.S. there were
  small regional club styles that were somewhat
  associated with hip hop that lived largely under
  the radar, at least until Youtube
• Some of these scenes produced novelty songs that
  became hits
• More recently mainstream hip hop increasingly
  drew on club music as a production influence

10
Soulja Boy Crank Dat

• Probably the most successful dance craze song
• Video spells out that its a response to an
  already significant phenomenon
• Produced by Collipark whod made a lot of club
  records for Atlanta artists (notably the Ying
  Yang Twins)

11
New Boyz Youre a Jerk

• Representative song of a larger subculture/dance
  style
• West coast this time
• While the dance moves are compelling the fashion
  is also important here

12
E 40 Tell me when to go

• Again more a document of a larger culture than a
  one-off craze, this time the Bay Areas hyphy
• E 40 has had a very long career and is notable
  for both the novelty of his slang and the odd
  rhythmic sensibility of his rhyming

13
T.I. Why You Wanna

• An early example of the trend of rapping over
  beats made from club records rather than soul or
  funk or jazz breaks
• The source here is Crystal Waters early 90s house
  record Gypsy Woman
• This became a dominant trend for a while and is
  still everywhere, from Pitbull to the success of
  collaborations between rappers and European house
  music producers like David Guetta and Calvin
  Harris

14
Different vocal styles

• Much recent rap has reacted against the
  traditional emphasis on lyricism
• Many recently successful artists are not
  technically adept lyricists, but emphasize unique
  vocal styles, rap as well as sing, or are more
  concerned with producing an overall persona

15
Lil Wayne A Milli

• Lil Wayne shifted from regional star to pop star
  status by becoming more flamboyant, but also by
  experimenting with his vocal delivery rapping
  through autotune, half-singing, slurring his
  voice deliberately (or at least deliberately
  recording while high) etc etc
• His lyrics also became almost self-consciously
  surreal and full of non sequiturs. This is a good
  example--the beat is minimal in the extreme and
  allows him a lot of space

16
Kanye West Monster w/ Rick Ross, Jay Z, Nicki
Minaj

• From Kanyes My Beautiful Dark Fantasy album,
  largely conceived and released through the
  internet
• Notably especially for Nicki Minajs verse which
  features her trademark sudden shifts in accent
  and diction

17
Wacka Flocka Flame Hard in da Paint

• Someone whos hardly a rapper by traditional
  standards
• Attitude is everything
• Beat was breakthrough for Lex Luger, the dominant
  producer in Southern hip hop at the moment. Style
  is incredibly bombastic, but also cheap and
  synthetic sounding at the same time. Combines
  orchestral samples with almost marching band
  sounding drum patterns

18
AAP Rocky Peso

• Harlem rapper who has built his sound and style
  largely on Southern models, especially Houston
  and Memphis
• Fashion is hugely important here, not just luxury
  brand things, but street style as a kind of
  fashion avant garde
• Made much of his impact via the internet, fashion
  magazines etc
• Some of the music deals with being a child of the
  crack era

19
Kendrick Lamar ADHD

• Compton rapper, who has made a point of his
  generation being the children of the crack years
  this track is from the album Section80
• Stylistically hard to place at once conscious,
  political and populist

20
Tyler Yonkers

• Head agent-provocateur of Odd Future, Los Angeles
  crew that draws as much on skate culture as
  traditional hip hop
• This song is autobiographical in an emotional
  sense in a way that a lot of earlier rap isnt
  (its almost emo)