Edith and Bernie's Final Project

This contemporary article is an interesting way to look at how hip-hop is produced today. The article also shows the thought process of producing a hip-hop album. Derek Ali the one who was the producer/engineer who worked on Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp A Butterfly” describes himself as someone who takes the artist to the destination they want to go with the album. The article also talks about how the album was influenced by funk, soul and jazz from the 1970s. Derek Ali takes the reader through a play by play how “To Pimp A Butterfly” came to be. It was recorded using both new and “old” technology. By older technology it was revamped production equipment like the SSL EQ. Used to make it sound a bit grungier like if it was made in the late 70s and 80s. This was to keep that aesthetic Kendrick wanted according to Derek Ali. This can relate to both articles. Like in “It’s about Playing Records” it talks about how in the early 80s when digital sampling just started and the DJs now known as producers used these new technologies to keep the beat break aesthetic of hip-hop. But the first and second generation producers of hip-hop didn’t need to create an old school sound they were living it. Also Derek talks about the places where the album was recorded. They recorded in tour busses, actual recording studios. Since a lot producers can now work using software like FL (FruityLoops a digital work station) on their computer they don’t need the desk and outboard to produce. But Derek Ali wanted to use the older digital equipment to achieve the aesthetic of old school hip-hop. Also using in studio equipment to produce meant there could be more collaboration. Ali talked about other producers coming in and listening to what they were creating in the studio. This also relates back to “It’s about Playing Records” when it talked about in early hip-hop production it was a communal thing. Stating “hip-hop is produced by a community of like-minded individuals hip-hop producers who consider themselves a community and actively work to maintain themselves as such”. Even working with the very famous Dr. Dre for the album.  Ali could have worked on it alone with Kendrick but he knew the importance of feedback and having that real experience as he states it “I want to be like an artist in a booth who can move his hands and feel free and express himself. I don’t want to feel like I am editing a movie”. Because producing has become a very private due to digital producing software you don’t have to haul in the old producing technology. It is all in one place you can have your own studio at home or any small space making it a private environment. This is something Derek Ali didn’t want. Even though he does say he would go and work on a song for long hours to get it where he felt it was ready. Today’s production of hip-hop feels like it starting to go back to how it used to. Hearing hip-hop today in 2017 you start to hear the old funk, jazz and a lot of bass that you would have heard in the early 80s and 90s of hip-hop. It appears it all goes back to the sampling and finding the break beats in the old records from the 70s on the turn tables.

“One of these is the ‘no biting’ rule, which places a restriction on source material that has been recently used by someone else. Biting ‘refers pejoratively to the appropriation of intellectual material from other hip-hop artists. Generally speaking, it does not apply to the appropriation of intellectual material from outside the hip-hop community.’ A producer may only sample recently used material if he attempts a different approach to the sample than his forebears.” (Chang)

“Initially Kool DJ Herc was trying out his reggae records but since they failed to cut ice he switched to Latin-tinged funk, just playing the fragments that were popular with the dancers ignoring the rest of the track... hammering the beat by using two copies of the record on twin turntables and playing the one section over and over.” (Joseph Schloss 2004)

This shift in hip-hop production towards digital sampling is the focus of the next reading, Records that play: the present past in sampling practice. Written by Vanessa Chang, it explores the semiotic associations with sampling that are influenced by the historical context of the sample. Chang believes “the past both defines the present (of sampling) and is effaced by it”. In order to substantiate this argument, Chang remarks on existing theories about recorded and live music. She comments on the “schizophonic” (Schaefer) nature of the earliest recording device the phonograph and its responsibility for destroying the aura of music (She does reference Walter Benjamin to explain this concept). The phonograph, Chang discusses, is the reason for the destruction between the link of human labor and music. Chang then begins to discuss the affect this so-called aura plays on sampling. She argues that in response to “archaic notions of creativity”, much of the conversation regarding sampling centers on the presence of reproduction. In a sense, the dissolution of origin “has made it easy to map the postmodern aesthetic model of pastiche onto sampling practice”. Chang refers Roland Barthe’s “The death of the Author” at this point of her argument to set up her next point. (Barthe’s believes originality is death, and the only form of discourse mimics existing texts in a way that is unrecognizable.) Chang argues that because of the temporal and evanescent nature of music and the fluidity of its meaning, sampling fails to be another iteration of Author-death.  Unlike certain images or texts which rely on the aura of the original to give them meaning (Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans), sampling is free from the constraints of this. In summation, “sampling resists the absolutism of linear signification”. Regardless of unnecessary nature of the original in sampling to build semiotic associations, producers have tenets in which they follow that command respect of an original’s aura. There lies a focus on the ingenuity of sampling as oppose to its diversity from the origin. Sampling makes sound the instrument, while instrumentation considers sound the final step in the process of music. Another tenet, producers’ follow, called “digging”, demonstrates the reverence for vinyl through their use of obscure, out-of-print records. By integrating these vinyls as sources for sampling as opposed to CDs, the producers acknowledge the historicity of vinyl. Digging also demonstrates the essentiality of skillful listening to sampling. Producers must listen to music with a fluid interpretation. They must recognize the potentiality of a song to be something different. “dope DJs break open breaks, searching for the answer to hip-hop’s most basic, yet unanswered question: how small is a piece of funk?” The last tenet of sampling, Chang mentions is “no biting”. Producers may use existing samples, but must do so in a way that does not mimic the source. Samples must be varied from their sources. And using two samples from the same source constitutes a laziness on behalf of the producer. This tenet, in particular, strengthens the distinction between Author-death and sampling. Sampling, while aware of the aura of the original, seeks to recontextualize a sample with a new semiotic association. Chang provides further examples of this recontextulization through the Skull Snaps song, “It’s a New Day” and its sampling by two deejays, DJ Spooky and DJ Shadow. Both new songs retain a trace of the break of “It’s a New Day” but also transcend the genre originally ascribe to it. “Each producer, then, is always negotiating a multiplicity of relationships to the past, even while inhabiting the present.” Producers through play with a sample, allow the sample to inhibit new indexes of meaning, which can sometimes be in a social space.