#musc2000

Words by RIP NICHOLSON For MUSC2000 Wk 11.

This essay aims to evaluate the shift in hip-hop from a youth expression to a rap industry over the period of 1979 to 1984 as it intersected with the recording industry. Scholarly articles and music journalism will help to build an objective case on the impact of Sylvia Robinson as she created precedence in the rap industry over the release of two records:  

‘Rappers Delight’ by The Sugar Hill Gang (1979).

‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 (1984).

Where Emmett Price looks into the mechanics of this shift, establishing a firm understanding before arguing for or against, Shannon McCabe’s Ism vs Prism theory explains the spectrum of hip-hop’s culture and why it’s worth preserving against the commercial use of rap iconography and imagery as hip-hop in the media. To provide a balanced view, The Big Payback by Dan Charnas suggests Sylvia Robinson’s impact on hip-hop has blazed a trail for future artists and refers to a culture then, in need of a paying gig. Lastly, first-hand accounts from Afrika Bambaataa and KRS-One are introduced, discussing ‘Planet Rock’s’ part during this intersection and, in a final rebuttal, KRS-One presents a credible solution for artists to take back the profits of their culture, clearly lost to commodity.

Weighing the cases presented and sources, how pivotal the use of recording media and the two chosen records have been in the shift from culture to commodity, this essay will arrive to a balanced opinion with a final thought to grease further discussion on the most important cultural shift in hip-hop’s forty-plus years.

Original hip-hop journalist details how Sugar Hill wrestled rap away from the DJ.

Charnas, Dan. The Big Payback: The History of The Business of Hip-Hop. New American Library, (2010).

Words by RIP NICHOLSON Images supplied by BMG/Rhino Entertainment.

For MUSC2000 Wk 10.

Charnas, a veteran on the business side of hip-hop has worked for Profile Records and Rick Rubin’s Def American as a talent scout before writing for The Source and Village Voice as one of the original hip-hop journalists. His accounts detail how Sylvia Robinson had engineered a sound of hip-hop by session musicians reproducing the samples and cuts of Flash’s wheels of steel. Grandmaster Flash would be utilised as naming rights for the track alongside his Furious 5. It has been this side of the story that has never sat well for many hip-hop purists, casting Robinson forever the villain. However, NME’s Val Wilmer, (1982) presented Robinson in the light of someone who forged a niche in the market for hip-hop’s early incarnations to become a viable product, and that in a culture where money was scarcely earned, perhaps her vision came as a blessing. Wilmer had praised ‘The Message’ as being “the first really big political record since James Brown’s 1970 ‘Say It Loud’” declaring it something to which everyone in America could relate. Charnas’ research shows these early machinations of hip-hop on record to have formed the roots through which rap music thrives today, to every beat since the needle dropped on a 45 fabricating an expression of youth culture.

Image above: 7″ sleeve for ‘We Don't Work For Free’ by Grandmaster Melle Mel And The Furious Five. Produced by Clayton Savage, Sylvia Robinson for Sugar Hill Records, 1984. 

Grandmaster Flash was no longer in the group. In 1983, he had sued Robinson and Sugar Hill Records for unpaid royalties amounting to  $5 million.

A cultural shift: first-hand accounts to weigh a ton dropped on Rip Nicholson from two of the most immovable forces in hip-hop.

Bambaataa, Afrika. (2013). Afrika Bambaataa: Poppin’ and Lockin’. Time Off, BNE, Street Press Australia. Interviewer: Nicholson, Rip. Retrieved from http://hiphop.sh/intbam

KRS-One. (2012). The Teacha Introduces Rip Nicholson to his School of Hip Hop. Drum SYD, Street Press Australia. Interviewer: Nicholson, Rip. Retrieved from http://hiphop.sh/intkrsone

Words by RIP NICHOLSON For MUSC2000 Wk 10.

At the back-end of the industry of hip-hop stands, immovable, two of the foremost authorities on the culture of hip-hop, MC and activist campaigner, and one third of Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One and of hip-hop’s holy trinity and founder of the Universal Zulu Nation worldwide movement and creator of hip-hop, the almighty Afrika Bambaataa who, in 1982, took on Sylvia Robinson’s Sugar Hill Records when he jacked German synth-based act Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans Europe Express’ melody and a drum pattern on a Roland TR-808 to create ‘Planet Rock’ for Tom Silverman’s Tommy Boy Records. Village Voice’s Steven Hager’s ‘Pied Piper of Hip Hop’ article, (1982) documenting hip-hop’s evolvement stressed “Bam's role in shaping and encouraging the early hip hop movement has been vastly under-appreciated.” Interviews with both practitioners reveal true insight to when the culture moulded for a profit venture fitting. And what KRS-One had laid out was a solution to artists recovering control of their own publishing to subvert the profit-sharing from the likes of Jay Z’s Tidal and other external corporations that have been constricting the fate of hip-hop since ‘Rapper’s Delight’.

Kool Moe Dee (of Treacherous Three) with Grandmaster Caz (of Cold Crush Brothers) New York, 1982.

Words by RIP NICHOLSON Images courtesy of Joe Conzo.

For MUSC2000 Wk 9.

Emmett Price zeroes down on the period where the MC took prominence in hip-hop. 

Price, Emmett G. (2006). Hip Hop Culture. Retrieved from http://www.eblib.com

When the recording industry took a strong interest in developing radio-friendly rap songs to cut a new characteristic sound for hip-hop, MCs were instantly recognised and consumed as part of the overall culture. Price’s under the bonnet research shares the mechanics that went into this transition and develops groundwork on the who, what, where, when and how of this transformation before arguing for or against this culture shift. Becky Blanchard’s 1999 study for EDGE concurs with Price stating that from the moment the MC caught the attention of fans their rhymes would go from between tracks to the main focus during the performance and were soon recognised in their own right as artists. Price remarks that record contracts trumped out from Tommy Boy, Def Jam and Paul Winley’s doo-wop imprint quickly assumed the MC into top spot in hip-hop, providing them the maximum exposure and earning potential far greater than the DJ, or the b-boy.

JDL (Jery Dee Lewis) and Grandmaster Caz at Club Negril, New York, 1982.

The Ism Complex versus the Prism Complex illustrates how a multi-dimensional youth culture fell prey to a commoditised rap iconography. 

MCabe, Shannon. Aesthetic Alternative: Hip-hop as Living Art. UMI: Michigan (2011).

Where “prism” refers to the spectrum of all that encompasses the arts and culture of hip-hop in McCabe’s theory, "ism" is in reference to images and ideologies that are evident in rap music, an art of hip-hop which homogenizes culturally, projecting binary opposition such as; black/white, rich/poor, hope/despair etc. as popular discourse in rap as opposed to promoting the diversity so prevalent in its own culture. McCabe’s “ism” paradigm aligns with Baba Israel’s research which states, "in the marketing of hip-hop (Rap music) Blackness is played out in exaggerations of ignorance, hyper sexuality and violence". Rip Nicholson will draw from McCabe’s theory to establish how the incongruent toll of commoditised rap has decayed hip hop from its original context. Where early, seminal hip hop recordings ‘Rappers’ Delight’ and ‘The Message’ started, a culture was remoulded and misguided onto vinyl.

When we think of the 50s, whose mind doesn't instantly recall the [in]famous rocker subculture of youth in the UK?

From the motorbikes and Marlon Brando, to the pompadour hair and the Mods rivalry, the history of the greasers is an exciting one.