In hip hop, since the beginning of MCing, there have been producers who work in the studio, behind the scenes, to create the beats for MCs to rap over. Producers may find a beat they like on an old funk, soul, or disco record. They then isolate the beat and turn it into a loop. Alternatively, producers may create a beat with a drum machine or by hiring a drumkit percussionist to play acoustic drums.
The producer could even mix and layer different methods, such as combining a sampled disco drum break with a drum machine track and some live, newly recorded percussion parts or a live electric bass player. A beat created by a hip hop producer may include other parts besides a drum beat, such as a sampled bassline from a funk or disco song, dialogue from a spoken word record or movie, or rhythmic "scratching" and "punches" done by a turntablist or DJ.
An early beat maker was producer Kurtis Blow, who won producer of the year credits in 1983, 1984, and 1985. Known for the creation of sample and sample loops, Blow was considered the Quincy Jones of early hip hop, a reference to the prolific African American record producer, conductor, arranger, composer, musician and bandleader. One of the most influential beat makers was J. Dilla, a producer from Detroit who chopped samples by specific beats and would combine them together to create his unique sound.
Those who create these beats are known as either beat makers or producers, however producers are known to have more input and direction on the overall the creation of a song or project, while a beat maker just provides or creates the beat. As Dr. Dre has said before "Once you finish the beat, you have to produce the record."[137] The process of making beats includes sampling, "chopping", looping, sequencing beats, recording, mixing, and mastering.
Most beats in hip hop are sampled from a pre-existing record. This means that a producer will take a portion or a "sample" of a song and reuse it as an instrumental section, beat or portion of their song. Some examples of this are The Isley Brothers' "Footsteps in the Dark Pts. 1 and 2" being sampled to make Ice Cube's "Today Was a Good Day".[138] Another example is Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness" being sampled to create the song "Otis", released in 2011, by Kanye West and Jay-Z.[139]
Chopping is dissecting the song that you are sampling so that you "chop" out the part or parts of the song, be that the bassline, rhythm guitar part, drum break, or other music, you want to use in the beat.[140] Looping is known as melodic or percussive sequence that repeats itself over a period of time, so basically a producer will make an even-number of bars of a beat (e.g., four bars or eight bars) repeat itself or "loop" of a full song length. This loop provides an accompaniment for an MC to rap over.
While hip hop music makes a significant use of sampling old records, using turntables and drum machines to create beats, producers use electric and acoustic instruments on some songs. Pictured is an electric bass player at a hip hop show.
The tools needed to make beats in the late 1970s were funk, soul, and other music genre records, record turntables, DJ mixers, audio consoles, and relatively inexpensive Portastudio-style multitrack recording devices. In the 1980s and 1990s, beat makers and producers used the new electronic and digital instruments that were developed, such as samplers, sequencers, drum machines, and synthesizers. From the 1970s to the 2010s, various beat makers and producers have used live instruments, such as drum kit or electric bass on some tracks.
To record the finished beats or beat tracks, beat makers and producers use a variety of sound recording equipment, typically multitrack recorders. Digital audio workstations, also known as DAWs, became more common in the 2010s for producers. Some of the most used DAWs are FL Studio, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools.
DAWs have made it possible for more people to be able to make beats in their own home studio, without going to a recording studio. Beat makers who own DAWs do not have to buy all the hardware that a recording studio needed in the 1980s (huge 72 channel audio consoles, multitrack recorders, racks of rackmount effects units), because 2010-era DAWs have everything they need to make beats on a good quality, fast laptop computer.[141]
Beats are such an integral part of rap music that many producers have been able to make instrumental mixtapes or albums. Even though these instrumentals have no rapping, listeners still enjoy the inventive ways the producer mixes different beats, samples and instrumental melodies. Examples of these are 9th Wonder's "Tutenkhamen" and J Dilla's "Donuts". Some hip hop records come in two versions: a beat with rapping over it, and an instrumental with just the beat. The instrumental in this case is provided so that DJs and turntablists can isolate breaks, beats and other music to create new songs.
The development of hip hop linguistics is complex. Source material include the spirituals of slaves arriving in the new world, Jamaican dub music, the laments of jazz and blues singers, patterned cockney slang and radio deejays hyping their audience using rhymes.[142] Hip hop has a distinctive associated slang.[143] It is also known by alternate names, such as "Black English", or "Ebonics". Academics suggest its development stems from a rejection of the racial hierarchy of language, which held "White English" as the superior form of educated speech.[144]
Due to hip hop's commercial success in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of these words have been assimilated into the cultural discourse of several different dialects across America and the world and even to non-hip hop fans.[145] The word diss for example is particularly prolific. There are also a number of words which predate hip hop, but are often associated with the culture, with homie being a notable example. Sometimes, terms like what the dilly, yo are popularized by a single song (in this case, "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" by Busta Rhymes) and are only used briefly. One particular example is the rule-based slang of Snoop Dogg and E-40, who add -izzle or -izz to the end or middle of words.
Hip Hop lyrics have also been known for containing swear words. In particular, the word "bitch" is seen in countless songs, from NWA's "A Bitch Iz a bitch" to Missy Elliot's "She is a Bitch". It is often used in the negative connotation of a woman who is a shallow "money grubber". Some female artists have tried to reclaim the word and use it as a term of empowerment. Regardless, the hip hop community has recently taken an interest in discussing the use of the word "bitch" and whether it is necessary in rap.[146]
Not only the particular words, but also the choice of which language in which rap is widely debated topic in international hip hop. In Canada, the use of non-standard variants of French, such as Franglais, a mix of French and English, by groups such as Dead Obies[147] or Chiac (such as Radio Radio[148]) has powerful symbolic implications for Canadian language politics and debates on Canadian identity. In the United States rappers choose to rap in English, Spanish, or Spanglish, depending on their own backgrounds and their intended audience.[149]
Hip hop has made a considerable social impact since its inception in the 1970s. "Hip hop has also become relevant to the field of education because of its implications for understanding language, learning, identity, and curriculum."[150] Orlando Patterson, a sociology professor at Harvard University, helps describe the phenomenon of how hip hop has spread rapidly around the world. Patterson argues that mass communication is controlled by the wealthy, the government, and major businesses in Third World nations and countries around the world.[151]
He also credits mass communication with creating a global cultural hip hop scene. As a result, the youth are influenced by the American hip hop scene and start their own forms of hip hop. Patterson believes that revitalization of hip hop music will occur around the world as traditional values are mixed with American hip hop music,[151] and ultimately a global exchange process will develop that brings youth around the world to listen to a common musical form of hip hop.
The annual Blockfest in Tampere, Finland is the largest hip hop music event in the Nordic countries[152] and also one of the best-selling festivals in advance.[153] Picture of Blockfest in 2017.
It has also been argued that rap music formed as a "cultural response to historic oppression and racism, a system for communication among black communities throughout the United States".[154] This is due to the fact that hip hop culture reflected the social, economic, and political realities of the disenfranchised youth. In the 2010s, hip hop lyrics are starting to reflect original socially conscious themes. Rappers are starting to question the government's power and its oppressive role in some societies.[155] Rap music has been a tool for political, social, and cultural empowerment outside the United States. Members of minority communities—such as Algerians in France, and Turks in Germany—use rap as a platform to protest racism, poverty, and social structures.[156]
Eric BarberHip hop lyricism has gained a measure of legitimacy in academic and literary circles. Studies of hip hop linguistics are now offered at institutions such as the University of Toronto, where poet and author George Eliot Clarke has taught the potential power of hip hop music to promote social change.[142] Greg Thomas of the University of Miami offers courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level studying the feminist and assertive nature of Lil' Kim's lyrics.[157]
Some academics, including Ernest Morrell and Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade, compare hip hop to the satirical works of great "Western canon" poets of the modern era, who use imagery and create a mood to criticize society. As quoted in their work "Promoting Academic Literacy with Urban Youth Through Engaging Hip Hop Culture":
Hip hop texts are rich in imagery and metaphors and can be used to teach irony, tone, diction, and point of view. Hip hop texts can be analyzed for theme, motif, plot, and character development. Both Grand Master Flash and T.S. Eliot gazed out into their rapidly deteriorating societies and saw a "wasteland." Both poets were essentially apocalyptic in nature as they witnessed death, disease, and decay.[158]
Hip hop music has been censored on radio and TV due to the explicit lyrics of certain genres. Many songs have been criticized for anti-establishment and sometimes violent messages. The use of profanity as well as graphic depictions of violence and sex in hip hop music videos and songs makes it hard to broadcast on television stations such as MTV, in music video form, and on radio. As a result, many hip hop recordings are broadcast in censored form, with offending language "bleeped" or blanked out of the soundtrack, or replaced with "clean" lyrics.
The result – which sometimes renders the remaining lyrics unintelligible or contradictory to the original recording – has become almost as widely identified with the genre as any other aspect of the music, and has been parodied in films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember, in which Mike Myers' character Dr. Evil – performing in a parody of a hip hop music video ("Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" by Jay-Z) – performs an entire verse that is blanked out. In 1995, Roger Ebert wrote:[159]
Rap has a bad reputation in white circles, where many people believe it consists of obscene and violent anti-white and anti-female guttural. Some of it does. Most does not. Most white listeners don't care; they hear black voices in a litany of discontent, and tune out. Yet rap plays the same role today as Bob Dylan did in 1960, giving voice to the hopes and angers of a generation, and a lot of rap is powerful writing.
In 1990, Luther Campbell and his group 2 Live Crew filed a lawsuit against Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro, because Navarro wanted to prosecute stores that sold the group's album As Nasty As They Wanna Be because of its obscene and vulgar lyrics. In June 1990, a U.S. district court judge labeled the album obscene and illegal to sell. However, in 1992, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity ruling from Judge Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Broward County's appeal. Professor Louis Gates testified on behalf of The 2 Live Crew, arguing that the material that the county alleged was profane actually had important roots in African-American vernacular, games, and literary traditions and should be protected.[160]
In 1990, Luther Campbell and his group 2 Live Crew filed a lawsuit against Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro, because Navarro wanted to prosecute stores that sold the group's album As Nasty As They Wanna Be because of its obscene and vulgar lyrics. In June 1990, a U.S. district court judge labeled the album obscene and illegal to sell. However, in 1992, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity ruling from Judge Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Broward County's appeal. Professor Louis Gates testified on behalf of The 2 Live Crew, arguing that the material that the county alleged was profane actually had important roots in African-American vernacular, games, and literary traditions and should be protected.[160]
Many black rappers—including Ice-T and Sister Souljah—contend that they are being unfairly singled out because their music reflects deep changes in society not being addressed anywhere else in the public forum. The white politicians, the artists complain, neither understand the music nor desire to hear what's going on in the devastated communities that gave birth to the art form.
Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop that reflects the violent culture of inner-city American black youths.[162] The genre was pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups such as N.W.A. Ice-T released "6 in the Mornin'", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song, in 1986. After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop.
N.W.A is the group most frequently associated with the founding of gangsta rap. Their lyrics were more violent, openly confrontational, and shocking than those of established rap acts, featuring incessant profanity and, controversially, use of the word "nigga". These lyrics were placed over rough, rock guitar-driven beats, contributing to the music's hard-edged feel. The first blockbuster gangsta rap album was N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988.[163][164]
Straight Outta Compton established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and established Los Angeles as a legitimate rival to hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "Fuck tha Police" earned a letter from FBI Assistant Director Milt Ahlerich, strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song.[163][164]
Controversy surrounded Ice-T's song "Cop Killer" from the album Body Count. The song was intended to speak from the viewpoint of a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops. Ice-T's rock song infuriated government officials, the National Rifle Association and various police advocacy groups.[165] Consequently, Time Warner Music refused to release Ice-T's upcoming album Home Invasion because of the controversy surrounding "Cop Killer".[165]
Ice-T suggested that the furor over the song was an overreaction, telling journalist Chuck Philips "... they've done movies about nurse killers and teacher killers and student killers. [Actor] Arnold Schwarzenegger blew away dozens of cops as the Terminator. But I don't hear anybody complaining about that." Ice-T suggested to Philips that the misunderstanding of "Cop Killer" and the attempts to censor it had racial overtones: "The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer."[165]
The White House administrations of both George Bush senior and Bill Clinton criticized the genre.[161] "The reason why rap is under attack is because it exposes all the contradictions of American culture ... What started out as an underground art form has become a vehicle to expose a lot of critical issues that are not usually discussed in American politics. The problem here is that the White House and wanna-be's like Bill Clinton represent a political system that never intends to deal with inner city urban chaos," Sister Souljah told The Times.[161] Until its discontinuation on July 8, 2006, BET ran a late-night segment titled BET: Uncut to air nearly-uncensored videos. The show was exemplified by music videos such as "Tip Drill" by Nelly, which was criticized for what many viewed as an exploitative depiction of women, particularly images of a man swiping a credit card between a stripper's buttocks.
Public Enemy's "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need" was censored on MTV, removing the words "free Mumia".[166] After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Oakland, California group The Coup was under fire for the cover art on their album Party Music, which featured the group's two members holding a guitar tuner and two sticks[167] as the Twin Towers exploded behind them despite the fact that it was created months before the actual event. The group, having politically radical and Marxist lyrical content, said the cover meant to symbolize the destruction of capitalism. Their record label pulled the album until a new cover could be designed.
Due to the success of the music genre, starting in the 2000s, more industries and brands began to cooperate with hip-hop artists, who until then had been considered too scandalous for mainstream marketing.[168] Similar to greenwashing, the phenomenon of companies using hip-hop collaborations for commercial purposes without fully understanding and supporting the culture involved is referred to as "streetwashing".[169]
