Hip Hop: Everything Old Is New Again

I am a huge fan of hip hop...I came late to the music as a result of my work in Brooklyn, but I am a whole-hearted convert and believer in the inherent quality of the best music. Even make my own beats, some of which I'm pretty proud of. Yet I am really disgusted by the current state of the industry, in which the worst examples of the music are getting airplay and the best languish in semi- to total obscurity. It got me thinking about the similarities between the commercial history of hip hop and the commercial history of jazz.

Hip hop critics love to call this music the "new jazz". I find that debatable from a musical standpoint, but I think there's some value in looking at the commercial situation of both musics. Both began as popular entertainment and dance music. The early years of jazz up through the swing era the music was primarily for dancing. Even the soloists we revere most now were playing in their small groups for dancing as much as for listening. The same is true in the early days of hip hop, where the DJ ruled the roost, MC skills were still fairly primitive and the music was about providing a great beat for dance. Even the dancing had a similar competitive edge. The Lindy Hop was as much about showing up others with your moves as Breakdancing is...though the Lindy was still a social dance, and breaking isn't really.

In the 40s with the rise of bop the tempos got really too fast for dancing and the music started to morph into a listening music. Though people did dance to some of the smaller hard bop bands for a while, this change to listening music was pretty complete by the time free jazz broke on the scene. Record companies initially resisted this change. It's no coincidence that most of the Bird recordings are on Dial or Savoy early on and not Columbia. Big labels were still interested in dance hits and eventually moved their commercial interests to R and B and then more spectacularly Rock and Roll.

The same has been the case for Hip Hop. In the late 80s and 90s the balance in hip hop went from the DJ/Producer to the MC. Lyrics became important, whether the rapper was a daisy age poet like Q-tip or a gansta rapper like Tupac. People still danced to rap, especially G-funk from the West Coast but the music became much more about the words and the message, which varied from earnest to hedonistic. At times the music itself became almost secondary as long as the beat was hard.

Mainstream commercial recording wanted to harnass the popularity of rap from early on, but in easily marketable ways. At first it was about making the message friendly for white audiences, so the pop/rap groups were either pretty simple minded like Criss Cross, non-threatening like Will Smith, or they hid their message behind pretty clever wordplay like Naughty by Nature. But when gansta rap exploded and young white kids were all dressing "'hood" and talking about blowing people away with gats the industry just went with it.

The problem now is even more odd. Hip hop has lacked a dominant voice in this decade. Younger rappers are either repeating dance move directions like glorified square dance callers, or they repeat old gansta and misogynistic lines from their betters. L'il Wayne is called the best rapper alive even though his flow is just recycled from classic Jay Zee....and musically hip hop has been stuck in a recyled pattern for the last five years. Kanye put out his Graduation album, which contained samples from 90s techno and trance music and all of a sudden hip hop became dominated by very tired techno and trance sounds. Not even repackaged...just ripped from earlier songs and keyboards and repackaged for a new audience. The commercial labels are pushing this stuff relentlessly as hip hop, to the point where even great music from 6 years ago is rejected as dated and "corny" to today's young hip hop heads.

That's not to say that great music isn't being made today in the music...it is. But it's ALL underground. Gifted rappers like Skyzoo or Torae languish in near obscurity, despite superior wordskills. Rappers who could run rings around L'il Wayne or Flo Rida can't pay their rent while these guys hog all the spots. And really experimental people can't get any traction...noone's heard of Gonjasufi and El-P had to close down his artistically amazing Def Jux label. Sound familiar jazz heads? Didn't the major labels try to rebrand jazz as "smooth jazz" in the ninties? Aren't we getting the "jazz singer" as representative of jazz to the public...Dianna Krall, Norah Jones, Michael Buble....?

Hip hop isn't where jazz is now...it's still even at it's most underground, closer to a substantial audience and culture than jazz is. But if this music isn't careful it's going to loose it's soul and relevance too...especially when the next BIG THING takes the radio and label attention away from it. There hasn't been a new big thing in a while, but we are due for it..and rest assure it will come. Then hip hop is going to have to do the soul searching jazz has had to...it's either going to have to grow up or die.

I hope it grows up a little.