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My complete guide to being a hip-hop head

For this final post, I wanted to share a few tips on how to keep in touch with hip-hop culture and news in the hip-hop world or to start getting into hip-hop. This non-exhaustive list will include everything from podcasts to TV show, series and documentaries, to playlists on streaming services. These are things I personally watch, read or listen to, so if you have anything else I’m not aware of, don’t hesitate to put it in the comments.

Podcasts

Dead End Hip-Hop: Dead End Hip-Hop (or DEHH) spreads across several platforms. It’s a website, a YouTube channel as well as a podcast that can be found on all major podcast apps. Even though I only follow them for their podcasts, they also post great quality content in other forms, especially on their website and YouTube channel (articles, news videos…). Their podcasts usually take the form of very chill, laid-back conversations between four to seven people. They do a lot of album reviews, which is the core of their podcast activity. Debates are often passionate and fun, but always respectful, constructive and incisive. They also do broader hip-hop debates, where they discuss major questions regarding hip-hop culture like ‘Where Will Hip-Hop Be in 20 Years?’ or ‘Is Drake The Biggest Hip-Hop Artist Ever?’. One other good thing is that their podcasts are not too long (usually 30 min to an hour), so you can easily listen to them on your way to work or school, or between classes. Definitely my favorite podcast out there, even though I regret that they don’t post more often.

The Joe Budden Podcast: After leaving Complex’daily podcast/show Everyday Struggle in December 2017 citing ‘internal chaos’ as the reason for his departure, former rapper Joe Budden created his own podcast called The Joe Budden Podcast. He partnered with his friends Rory and Mal, which gives the podcast the feel of a conversation between friends hanging out, and the conversation often deviates from hip-hop to societal topics. But the strength of the podcast lies in the detonating personality of Joe Budden, who has engineered his transition from rapper to star media personality by being highly controversial and harsh, clashing with Big Sean, Lil Yachty, Offset, Metro Boomin or Eminem. You’ll either love The Joe Budden Podcast or hate it, but I think it’s overall of great quality.

Everyday Struggle: I used to love Complex’s Everyday Struggle when Joe Budden was on it, because I think his duo with DJ Akademiks, who’s much more measured, was a match made in heaven. They almost never agreed on anything and that gave the show pace and energy. Even though I like Wayno (his replacement) and what he brings to the table being an A&R and managing artists, I feel like his character is too close to his counterpart’s. This makes the show lukewarm and sometimes boring. But to be fair, Everyday Struggle remains a great quality show, that has the advantage of airing daily and a great way to stay in touch with hip-hop news.

See also: The Lowmid Podcast, The Brilliant Idiots, The Internet Is Undefeated.

Playlists (Spotify)

Being a Spotify subscriber, I will focus on Spotify playlists in this section, which I can assure you are better than Apple Music’s, at least in terms of hip-hop playlists.

           Rap Caviar: With more than 11 million followers, Rap Caviar is definitely the number one hip-hop playlist on Spotify. It’s a cherry-picked 50 songs playlist curated by Spotify’s global programming head of hip-hop Tuma Basa, featuring the best of new hip-hop. Its influence is easily comparable to big radio stations before the age of streaming, like Hot 97.

          Most Necessary: Most Necessary is also curated by Tuma Basa and acts as a sort of antechamber for Rap Caviar. Both playlists share similar musical sensibilities, but Most Necessary will usually feature artists that haven’t reached the top yet but are definitely on their way.

           Get Turnt: Get Turnt’s name speaks for itself. It’s the best Spotify hip-hop playlist to party, bump in the car…

           NPNG: And don’t forget to subscribe to my personal hip-hop playlist that started as a workout playlist. Here it is: spotify:user:j0ehcanfuvpswyzk9sm1pv698

See also: We Everywhere, Mellow Bars.

Series/documentaries

           Atlanta: Atlanta is a comedy-drama TV series written, executive produced and directed by Donald Glover (also known as Childish Gambino), who also stars in it. It tells the touching story of two cousins trying to climb their way up the Atlanta rap scene to improve their lives and those of their families. The soundtrack for the series features an impressive cast of hip-hop stars, from 2Chainz to Future to Nas and Lauryn Hill.

           Hip-hop evolution: Hip-Hop Evolution is a documentary series that goes through the history of hip-hop from its start to its most modern forms. Each episode focuses on a particular region and/or time that made a lasting impact on the hip-hop history and features interviews of hip-hop pioneers and legends (DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Q-Tip, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane…).

See also: Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation, Wild Style, Style Wars.

Others

           Genius: There is no way around Genius. The American digital media company founded in 2009 allows users to provide and read lyrics annotations and interpretations. The site was originally launched as Rap Geniusbefore it left its ‘rap’ part out to embrace more musical genres. However, the original focus on hip-hop music remains. Be mindful however of who makes these annotations. Annotations in yellow are from random people like (sometimes Genius moderators but not always) and annotations in green are from the artists themselves. Genius also makes ‘insight’ type of videos (the series is called ‘Verified’), where artists explain the meaning or the creative process behind their songs.

          Whosampled: I discovered Whosampled this year through a friend and have used it a lot ever since. It’s basically a website that allows you to search songs, artists, movies or TV shows and discover the samples used in them and where else these samples have been used. It’s really user-friendly: you can jump directly to the parts (both on the song you’re looking up and the sampled song) where the sample appears, which is convenient because samples sometimes appear for a very short time at the end of the song for example.

[yerimsowd]

2 Chainz - Rap or Go to the League album review

After his last album Pretty Girls Like Trap Music (2017) which achieved both commercial success (certified platinum) and widespread critical acclaim (average Metacritic score of 82 out of 100, based on ten reviews), 2 Chainz returned with his fifth studio album called Rap or Go to the League (March 1, 2019 through Def Jam recordings). The project features appearances from Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, Lil Wayne, Young Thug and so many more, as well as a variety of star producers such as 9th Wonder, Pharrell Williams and DJ Mustard, not forgetting A&R LeBron James. As one of the most anticipated albums of the year, Rap or Go to the League was teased through a series of videos of both 2 Chainz and LeBron working on the album and really just talking and chilling in the studio.

           As its name indicates, Rap or Go to the League explores the widespread idea in hip-hop culture and more generally in African American culture that (unfortunately) there are only two ways of making it out of the ghetto as a Black kid: to become an NBA superstar or a famous rapper. In Things Done Changed (1994), Notorious B.I.G played on the stereotype surrounding African American poverty and how these stereotypes are perceived even within the African American community as the only ways to make it: “Because the streets is a short stop / Either you’re slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot”. On Take A Walk (2001), Masta Ace added: “Over here it’s either rap, hustle crack or play ball”. But unlike the other two, 2 Chainz actually knows what he is talking about. By fifteen years old, he had dealt marijuana and had already been arrested for felony cocaine possession. He then attended Alabama State on a scholarship and played college basketball for two years. Eventually, he made it through rap. His path to success is the framework for what I believe is his most structured, thoughtful project.

           Even though Rap or Go to the League is not entirely militant, it is 2 Chainz’ most socially conscious work and it touches a lot of issues. On NCAA, he unequivocally denounces college basketball players not being paid, despite the fact that only one percent of them eventually make it to the NBA and the fact that the NCAA, TV channels, sponsors make money off college athletes who are under the pressure of having to study, train and compete without knowing if it’s going to lead them anywhere: “Let me get this straight, if I drop 40 today / You don’t care if I ate / They say ‘you better have a good grade like a mixed baby hair’ / They say ‘we going to the tournament, we gonna need you there’”. On Momma I Hit a Lick, he reflects on making quick money by ‘trapping’. On the last track called Sam, he addresses taxes raised by the US government, which he considered near-theft: “See taxes pay the government to build a new bridge / See they take from the rich to give to the poor and sick / And I can’t lie I’ve been on both sides of the fence / See, the education levels ‘round here don’t exist / Taxes pay 12 but don’t pay ‘em to kill the kids”. Rap or Go to the League is imbued with maturity and seriousness, maybe because of evolutions in the rapper’s personal life: “Got a family now so I gotta pipe down” (2 Dollar Bill).

           Overall, aside from a (successful) emphasis on social issues and life as a family man, I think 2 Chainz fans will agree that Rap or Go to The Leaguetypical Tauheed Epps: sharp, sometimes funny, always powerful.

                                                                              Sources: Genius

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4 reasons why J. Cole is the best active rapper

No one tells a story like him

Storytelling in hip-hop is the ability, as the name indicates, to tell a story through rap. Now, some may argue that some way or another, any artist that takes their pen and write a rap tell a story. However, what we really mean by storytelling is the ability to transport the listener into a vivid, colorful, 3D type of narrative. Storytelling is almost cinematic and a good storyteller sucks the listener into their tale. In Ice-T directed and executive produced documentary Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, Ice-T interviews an impressive cast of rappers (from KRS-One to Eminem to Raekwon) about the process behind their style of writing. One of the interviewees is Rakim from Queens mid 1980s rap duo Eric B. and Rakim and he insists on the importance of storytelling in his rap technique. “I’m taking you into a whole other world of thought”, Ice-T explains he felt when listening to Rakim. My first argument in my case for Cole being the best active rapper is that no one does that better than him. Although I don’t think it is the best Cole storytelling song, one classic and well-known example would be Wet Dreamz from classic album 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The song is a fictional story of adolescent Weltschmerz about losing one’s virginity, leading to the sensational twist contained in the title.

Has got galore classics

If you browse hip-hop media outlets such as Complex or Genius (or even if you don’t) you may have come across countless articles about who the best active rapper is. You may even have had this debate with your friends. And even though it’s an unsolvable issue, one argument that always comes up is the question of who has the most classics. This is why a lot of people dismiss the idea that Drake is the best rapper of his generation, because it’s hard to pick a Drake project and say: “we’ll come back to this ten, fifteen years from now and still appreciate it”. But when it comes to classics, J. Cole is up there, with two of his projects standing out. The first is his third mixtape Friday Night Lights (2010), which contains twenty songs, features star producers such as Kanye West or Timbaland, samples everything from Erkyah Badu to Jay-Z to 2Pac and has featurings with Drake or Pusha-T. The second, Cole’s third studio album 2014 Forrest Hills Driveis much better known. That’s the album that so famously “went platinum with no features” and that got the internet crazy about it. Songs like 03’ Adolescence, A Tale of 2 Citiez, Fire Squad, G.O.M.D, No Role Modelz, Apparently, not forgetting the epic fourteen minutes long Note to Self at the end have made 14FHD -as fans affectionately call it- an instant classic.

Uplifts the whole game, instead of tearing it down

           “I love you lil’ niggas I’m glad that you came / I hope you scrape every dollar you can / I hope you know money won’t erase the pain”– MIDDLE CHILD

Cole’s relationship with his peers has not always been appeased. In a 2016 track called Everybody Dies, Cole had taken serious shots at the new generation of up-and-coming SoundCloud/mumble rappers: “Bunch of words and ain’t sayin’ shit, I hate these rappers / Especially the amateur eight-week rappers / Lil’ whatever, just another short bus rapper”.  But since then, Cole has come a long way, as the MIDDLE CHILD lines quoted above illustrate. During his set at JMBLYA festival in Austin in May 2018, the Fayetteville, North Carolina MC stopped the crowd from shouting “fuck Lil Pump” and “fuck 6ix9ine”. Later that month, he sat down with Lil’ Pump for an hour-long, laid back, one on one talk on how both started rapping, their influences, their childhoods… Before that, he had expressed his growing appreciation for the new wave, citing XXXTentacion, Trippie Redd and Lil Baby. His twitter feed is now filled with tweets of support for younger rappers from Offset to 21 Savage and 6ix9ine (whom he sent his prayers to after they got respectively deported and locked up). Finally, J. Cole uplifts the hip-hop scene through Dreamville records, the record label he co-founded with his manager Ibrahim Hamad. Dreamville has allowed the hatching of young artists such as Bas or J.I.D. It’s a multifaced project that includes a non-profit organization, a festival in Raleigh, North Carolina, and a series of compilation mixtapes featuring most artists signed to Dreamville (Revenge of the Dreamers III is coming out in April).

Commercially successful and socially and politically conscious at the same time

           “They tellin’ niggas, ‘sell dope, rap or go to NBA’ in that order / It’s that sort of thinkin’ that been keepin’ niggas chained”– Immortal

The fourth and final reason why I believe J. Cole is the best active rapper is that on top of everything I have talked about before, he is one of the few rappers that manage to find a balance between commercial success, critical acclaim and social and political consciousness. His album 4 Your Eyez Only was released alongside a documentary bearing the same name and that covered multiple issues affecting the African American community (gang violence, mass incarceration, racial discrimination…). The album itself tells the journey of a friend of Cole’s who went from selling crack to starting a family. 4 Your Eyez Only is a tape addressed to his daughter for he to listen to after he dies. Call me corny, but I don’t think you can the best rapper alive if you onlytalk about your jewelry, your car and your girls. J. Cole’s strength is that he can make party music you can play in the club and music you can listen to on your bed with your headphones.

Sources: Genius, whosampled, Vulture

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Sampling and the blurry lines of inspiration in hip-hop

 “Learned some new chords while you uncreatives were sampling”- Tyler, The Creator on P.

The more or less recent examples of legal troubles incurred by artists over sampling issues - from Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin’ (1999) to Kanye West’s Ultralight Beam (2016) to 50 Cents’ In Da Club (2003) - are enough to demonstrate how controversial but at the same time consubstantial with hip-hop music sampling is. Let’s dive into this custom almost as old as hip-hop.

Sampling is the reuse of a portion of a sound recording in another recording. Contrary to what some may claim, sampling issues and lawsuits are absolutely not peculiar to hip-hop. Back in 1999, English rock band The Verve used a sample from The Rolling Stones’ The Last Time (1965) on their song Bittersweet Symphony and were sued by the Stones for using more than the agreed upon section. However, it is true that sampling problems tend to be more acute in hip-hop because of the genre’s history. Here’s why.

           Although hip-hop has various influences ranging from reggae to electronic music, it is first and foremost, as Princeton University scholar Imani Perry documents it in Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (2004), African American music. That is because hip-hop’s main language is African American Vernacular English (AAVE), its location in society is ascribed to black people, music and cultural forms. Most importantly, hip-hop music is derived from Black American musical traditions (jazz, blues, soul…), which by the way explains why James Brown is the most sampled artist in hip-hop history (and ever), followed by Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye… Why this is decisive is because African American musical traditions before hip-hop blurred the lines between the original and the copy. In Black Musical Traditions and Copyright Law: Historical Tensions (2005), Candace G. Haines from the University of Michigan explains that because of both the “African oral tradition of orally composing and transmitting music” and the laws prohibiting slave literacy, Black music became essentially oral and was transmitted through live performance. And live performance and oral traditions meant no one really cared about authorship. This widened the gap between African American music and the American copyright regime, one based on written traditions and notions of ownership and one that had no place for live performance and oral culture. Other factors help explain why African American music so unfit for the American copyright regime and are detailed in Haines’ paper, such as its rhythmic and musical complexity, but that would be too long to get into. Bottom line is, Black American musical traditions got hip-hop off to a bad start.

The SP 1200, the star sampling machine in the 1980s

Sampling has been present early in hip-hop’s history. Rapper’s Delight (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang is known to be the first rap record ever and contains samples from Chic’s Good Times, Love De-Luxe’s Here comes that sound again and Spoonie Gee’s Spoonin’ Rap. Another early hip-hop hit, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force’s Planet Rock (1982), featured samples from German electro group Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express (1977) and Numbers (1981). But it was only in the 1980s that sampling really took off, especially on the East Coast. Producers started ‘digging’, which meant finding the perfect record to sample. Elite producers like Pete Rock or Large Professor used samplers to turn those records into hits by isolating sounds and expanding them in various ways (changing the pitch, the speed, add the drums…). The era of free, happy-go-lucky sampling quickly came to an end though.  With hip-hop’s growing success, copyright lawyers started to pay attention and sampling lawsuits multiplied. The Turtles v. De La Soullawsuit of 1989 set the tone. In 1990, NWA sampled without permission a two-second guitar chord from Funkadelic’s Get Off Your Ass and Jam(1975), lowered the pitch and looped it. This led to a turning point in sampling history, when in 2005, Bridgeport Music (the owner of the rights to Funkadelic’s music) brought the case to a federal judge, got defeated, and then won before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, who ruled that NWA’s sample was against copyright law. “Get a license, or do not sample” was written in the ruling and became the new mantra of copyright law. Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films swept de minimis doctrine, according to which short samples were compliant with copyright law.

Today, almost every major hip-hop artist goes or has gone through sampling issues, from The Black Eyed Peas to the late Mac Miller to Drake. Kanye West, who is known as the king of sampling, is currently going through multiple lawsuits. But because of both the deep-running tradition of sampling in hip-hop and the internal contradictions of American copyright law (Madonna recently successfully appealed a decision ruling against her use of a two-seconds horn sample in virtue of the de minimis doctrine), sampling seems here to stay.

Sources: Rap Genius, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop(2004), Black Musical Traditions and Copyright Law: Historical Tensions(2005), Hip-hop Evolution(2016), whosampled.com

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The hip-hop-anime romance

“Honestly I’m rappin’ ‘bout everything I go through / Everything I’m sayin’, I’m super sayin’ like Goku”. This line from Childish Gambino in My Shine is just one of many examples of how anime subculture pervades hip-hop music. From Kanye West to Frank Ocean to Pharrell Williams, I will try to explore the reasons behind hip-hop’s magnetic attraction for Japanese animation.

Perhaps the first example that comes to mind when thinking of the relationship between anime and hip-hop is Kanye West’s Stronger that came out in 2007. Stronger is greatly inspired by Akira, a 1998 post-apocalyptic Japanese animated film. It takes place in 2019 Neo-Tokyo, a city plagued by corruption, gang violence and terrorism and tells the story of Tetsuo, a boy gifted with telekinetic powers that arouse the interest of a secret government project. Anyway, Akira is known to be one of the first animes to gain widespread ovation and popularity within a Western audience. Kanye West has repeatedly stated that Akira was his favorite movie of all times, his “biggest creative inspiration”. It is therefore no surprise that Stronger’s music video has numerous scenes matching some of Akira’s greatest moments – the opening motorbike scene or the hospital scene for instance, with Tetsuo repelling an attack by the military with his psychic powers -. But Akira’s influence on the hip-hop scene doesn’t stop there. Maryland rapper Logic also revealed in an interview that Akira was the first anime he had seen, describing it as “very beautiful and disturbing at the same time”. On his The Incredible True Story tour to promote his sophomore album (2015), Logic even wore Kaneda’s (a character from Akira) jumpsuit on stage and played scenes from the film during his performances. What’s more, his second album’s skits featured Steven Blum’s voice, who was the voice actor for the main character in Cowboy Bebop (1998), an anime series whose soundtrack was also sampled by Lil Yachty on Dipset.

In short, it’s fair to say that examples of the crossover between hip-hop and anime are legion, from Lupe Fiasco naming his album Tetsuo and Youth and referencing Lupin III in his verse on Touch the Sky, to Pharrell Williams and Lil Uzi Vert morphing into anime characters in their It Girl and Ps & Qs music videos respectively, to Frank Ocean referencing Dragon Ball Z in Pink Matter. However, let’s just not forget that the relationship between hip-hop and anime falls within a broader, more long-standing story of Asian influence on hip-hop. Back in the 1990s, the Wu-Tang Clan sampled Shaolin & Wu-Tang (1981) a Hong-Kong Kung-Fu classic that clearly inspired the crew for their name. In 1997, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony released their third LP, The Art of War, named after Sun Tzu’s military tactics masterpiece.

But how to account for hip-hop’s near obsession for anime? How is it that two subcultures that have virtually nothing in common seem so intertwined? Still today, anime is often regarded as childish and most people view it as mere youthful entertainment. What Akira and other films like Speed Racer, Astro Boy or Voltrow proved however, is that anime could be used to tell deeper stories intended for more adult audiences. And hip-hop seized that quickly. Anime often stages oppressed and persecuted characters displaying “me against the world” mindsets (Naruto would be a great example). Anime heroes grow up searching for hope, the hope many hip-hop artists from Black or mixed backgrounds and urban environments grew up searching for. Rapper RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan even wrote in his book called the The Tao of Wu that Dragon Ball Z represented the journey of the Black man in America. Furthermore, anime seems to be an emotion accelerator and amplifier. “It solidifies the idea that there is strength beyond muscles, life beyond death, sight beyond what you can see (…). It entertains the idea of limitless potential and hope in dark times. These are all things an artist deals with daily”, said South London rapper Che Lingo in 2018.

Sources: Vibe Magazine, All Def Digital, I-D Vice, Rap Genius.