Music mixes with memory. As we think back over the 20th century, every decade has a melody, a rhythm, a sound track. The years and the sounds bleed together as we scan through them in our recollections, a car radio searching for a clear station. The century starts off blue: Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads. Then the jazz age: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and, later on, Benny Goodman and “Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” Midcentury, things start to rock with Chuck Berry, “Wop-bop-a-loo-bop a-lop bam boom!” the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, “a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder. It might be better to forget the ’80s–the posturing heavy-metal bands, Debbie Gibson, “Let’s get physical–physical,” the guy with the haircut in Flock of Seagulls. Perhaps the remembered sounds of R.E.M., U2 and Prince can drown them all out.
And how will we remember the last days of the ’90s? Most likely, to the rough-hewn beat of rap. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the jazz age, just as Dylan and Jimi Hendrix were among the rulers of the age of rock, it could be argued that we are living in the age of hip-hop. “Rock is old,” says Russell Simmons, head of the hip-hop label Def Jam, which took in nearly $200 million in 1998. “It’s old people’s s____. The creative people who are great, who are talking about youth culture in a way that makes sense, happen to be rappers.”
Consider the numbers. In 1998, for the first time ever, rap outsold what previously had been America’s top-selling format, country music. Rap sold more than 81 million CDs, tapes and albums last year, compared with 72 million for country. Rap sales increased a stunning 31% from 1997 to 1998, in contrast to 2% gains for country, 6% for rock and 9% for the music industry overall. Boasts rapper Jay-Z, whose current album, Vol. 2…Hard Knock Life (Def Jam), has sold more than 3 million copies: “Hip-hop is the rebellious voice of the youth. It’s what people want to hear.”
Even if you’re not into rap, hip-hop is all around you. It pulses from the films you watch (Seen a Will Smith movie lately?), the books you read (even Tom Wolfe peels off a few raps in his best-selling new novel), the fashion you wear (Tommy Hilfiger, FUBU). Some definitions are in order: rap is a form of rhythmic speaking in rhyme; hip-hop refers to the backing music for rap, which is often composed of a collage of excerpts, or “samples,” from other songs; hip-hop also refers to the culture of rap. The two terms are nearly, but not completely, interchangeable.
Rap music was once called a fad, but it’s now celebrating a 20th anniversary of sorts. The first hip-hop hit, Rapper’s Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang, came out in 1979. Hip-hop got its start in black America, but now more than 70% of hip-hop albums are purchased by whites. In fact, a whole generation of kids–black, white, Latino, Asian–has grown up immersed in hip-hop. “I’m hip-hop every day,” declares 28-year-old Marlon Irving, a black record-store employee in Portland, Ore. “I don’t put on my hip-hop.” Says Sean Fleming, a white 15-year-old from Canton, Ga.: “It’s a totally different perspective, and I like that about it.” Adds Katie Szopa, 22, a white page at NBC in New York City: “You do develop a sense of self through it. You listen and you say, ‘Yeah, that’s right.'”
Hip-hop represents a realignment of America’s cultural aesthetics. Rap songs deliver the message, again and again, to keep it real. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that “a work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.” Rap is the music of necessity, of finding poetry in the colloquial, beauty in anger, and lyricism even in violence. Hip-hop, much as the blues and jazz did in past eras, has compelled young people of all races to search for excitement, artistic fulfillment and even a sense of identity by exploring the black underclass. “And I know because of [rapper] KRS-1,” the white ska-rap singer Bradley Nowell of Sublime once sang in tribute to rap. Hip-hop has forced advertisers, filmmakers and writers to adopt “street” signifiers like cornrows and terms like player hater. Invisibility has been a long-standing metaphor for the status of blacks in America. “Don’t see us/ but we see you,” hip-hop band the Roots raps on a new song. Hip-hop has given invisibility a voice.
But what does that voice have to say?
Now tell me your philosophy On exactly what an artist should be. –Lauryn Hill, Superstar
It’s a Friday night, early December 1998, and you’re backstage at Saturday Night Live. You’re hanging out in the dressing room with Lauryn Hill, who is sitting on the couch, flipping through a script. The 23-year-old rapper-singer-actress is the musical guest on this week’s show. It’s her coming-out party, the first live TV performance she’s done since releasing her critically acclaimed and best-selling album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. She might also do a little acting on the show–SNL staff members have asked her to appear in a skit. But as Hill reads, her small rose-blossom lips wilt into a frown. She hands you the script. It’s titled Pimp Chat–it’s a sketch about a street hustler with a talk show. Hill’s role: a ‘ho. Or, if she’s uncomfortable with that, she can play a female pimp. Hmmm. Now, being in an SNL sketch is a big opportunity–but this one might chip away at her image as a socially conscious artist. What’s it going to be?
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby. –Sean (“Puffy”) Combs It’s All About the Benjamins
You are in a recording studio in midtown Manhattan, hanging out with hip-hop superproducer Sean (“Puffy”) Combs. It’s 1997, and Puffy is keeping a low profile, working on his new album, his first as a solo performer. This album will be his coming-out party. He’s eager to play a few tracks for you. People have him all wrong, he says. He majored in business management at Howard. He’s not just about gangsta rap.Sounds from his new album fill the room. One song is based on a bit from the score to Rocky. Another, a sweeping, elegiac number, uses a portion of Do You Know Where You’re Going To? That’s what he’s about, Combs says. Classic pop. “I’m living my life right,” he says. “So when it comes time for me to be judged, I can be judged by God.”
You’re mad because my style you’re admiring Don’t be mad–UPS is hiring. –The Notorious B.I.G. Flava in Your Ear (Remix)
Hip-hop is perhaps the only art form that celebrates capitalism openly. To be sure, filmmakers pore over weekend grosses, but it would be surprising for a character in a Spielberg film to suddenly turn toward the camera and shout, “This picture’s grossed $100 million, y’all! Shout out to DreamWorks!” Rap’s unabashed materialism distinguishes it sharply from some of the dominant musical genres of the past century. For example, nobody expects bluesmen to be moneymakers–that’s why they’re singing the blues. It’s not called the greens, after all. As for alternative rockers, they have the same relationship toward success that one imagines Ally McBeal has toward food: even a small slice of the pie leaves waves of guilt. Rappers make money without remorse. “These guys are so real, they brag about money,” says Def Jam’s Simmons. “They don’t regret getting a Coca-Cola deal. They brag about a Coca-Cola deal.”
Major labels, a bit confused by the rhythms of the time, have relied on smaller, closer-to-the-street labels to help them find fresh rap talent. Lauryn Hill is signed to Ruffhouse, which has a distribution deal with the larger Columbia. Similar arrangements have made tens of millions of dollars for the heads of these smaller labels, such as Combs (Bad Boy), Master P (No Limit), Jermaine Dupri (So So Def), and Ronald and Bryan Williams (co-CEOs of Cash Money, home to rising rapper Juvenile).
“I’m not a role model,” rapper-mogul-aspiring-NBA-player Master P says. “But I see myself as a resource for kids. They can say, ‘Master P has been through a lot, but he changed his life, and look at him. I can do the same thing.’ I think anyone who’s a success is an inspiration.”
Master P introduced something new to contemporary pop: shameless, relentless and canny cross-promotion. Each of the releases on his New Orleans-based No Limit label contains promotional materials for his other releases. His established artists (like Snoop Dogg) make guest appearances on CDs released by his newer acts, helping to launch their debuts. And his performers are given to shouting out catchphrases like “No Limit soldiers!” in the middle of their songs–good advertising for the label when the song is being played on the radio.
Madison Avenue has taken notice of rap’s entrepreneurial spirit. Tommy Hilfiger has positioned his apparel company as the clothier of the hip-hop set, and he now does a billion dollars a year in oversize shirts, loose jeans and so on. “There are no boundaries,” says Hilfiger. “Hip-hop has created a style that is embraced by an array of people from all backgrounds and races.” However, fans are wary of profiteers looking to sell them back their own culture. Says Michael Sewell, 23, a white congressional staff member and rap fan: “I’ve heard rap used in advertising, and I think it’s kind of hokey–kind of a goofy version of the way old white men perceive rap.”
But the ads are becoming stealthier and streetier. Five years ago, Sprite recast its ads to rely heavily on hip-hop themes. Its newest series features several up-and-coming rap stars (Common, Fat Joe, Goodie Mob) in fast-moving animated clips that are intelligible only to viewers raised on Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and Playstation. According to Sprite brand manager Pina Sciarra, the rap campaign has quadrupled the number of people who say that Sprite is their favorite soda.
Hollywood too is feeling the rap beat. After Lauryn Hill passed on a role in The Cider-House Rules (an adaptation of the John Irving book), filmmakers cast hip-hop soul singer Erykah Badu. Ice Cube, who has appeared in such movies as Boyz N the Hood and Fridays, will soon star with George Clooney in the Gulf War thriller Three Kings. Queen Latifah, featured in the recent film Living Out Loud, is now set to be the host of a TV talk show. And the former Fresh Prince, Will Smith, has become one of the most in-demand actors around. Ice Cube–who performed a song with Public Enemy titled Burn Hollywood Burn in 1990–says Tinseltown wants rapper actors because “we add a sense of realism where sometimes a trained actor can’t deliver that reality the way it needs to be done.”
Warren Beatty, who directed and starred in Bulworth, a comedy about a Senator who becomes possessed by the spirit of hip-hop, became interested in the subject because “it seemed to have a similar protest energy to the Russian poets of the 1960s. The Russian poets reigned in Moscow almost like rock itself reigned in the U.S. Ultimately it seemed to me that hip-hop is where the voice of protest is going in the inner city and possibly far beyond because the culture has become so dominated by entertainment.”
Even Tom Wolfe, who documented the counterculture in the ’60s and greed in the ’80s, found himself buying a stack of hip-hop records in order to understand Atlanta in the ’90s for his best-selling book A Man in Full. In several sections of his novel, Wolfe offers his own sly parodies of today’s rap styles: “How’m I spose a love her/ Catch her mackin’ with the brothers,” Wolfe writes in a passage. “Ram yo’ booty! Ram yo’ booty!” Most of the characters in A Man in Full are a bit frightened by rap’s passion. It’s Wolfe’s view that “hip-hop music quite intentionally excludes people who are not in that world.” That world, however, is growing.
Poetic language emerges out of the ruins of prose. –Jean-Paul Sartre, Art and Action
The hip-hop world began in the Bronx in 1971. Cindy Campbell needed a little back-to-school money, so she asked her brother Clive to throw a party. Back in Kingston, Jamaica, his hometown, Clive used to watch dance-hall revelers. He loved reggae, Bob Marley and Don Drummond and the Skatalites. He loved the big sound systems the deejays had, the way they’d “toast” in a singsong voice before each song. When he moved to the U.S. at age 13, he used to tear the speakers out of abandoned cars and hook them onto a stereo in his room.
The after-school party, held in a rec room of a Bronx high-rise, was a success: Clive and Cindy charged 25[cents] for girls and 50[cents] for boys, and it went till 4 a.m. Pretty soon Clive was getting requests to do more parties, and in 1973 he gave his first block party. He was Kool Herc now–that was the graffito tag he used to write on subway cars–and he got respect. At 18 he was the first break-beat deejay, reciting rhymes over the “break,” or instrumental, part of the records he was spinning. He had two turntables going and two copies of each record, so he could play the break over and over, on one turntable and then the next. Americans didn’t get reggae, he thought, so he tried to capture that feel with U.S. funk songs–James Brown and Mandrill. He had dancers who did their thing in the break–break dancers, or, as he called them, b-boys. As they danced, Herc rapped, “Rocking and jamming/ That’s all we play/ When push comes to shove/ The Herculoids won’t budge/ So rock on, my brother…”
Joseph Saddler loved music too. He thought Kool Herc was a god–but he thought he could do better. Saddler figured most songs had only about 10 seconds that were good, that really got the party going, so he wanted to stretch those 10 seconds out, create long nights of mixing and dancing. Holed up in his Bronx bedroom, he figured out a way to listen to one turntable on headphones while the other turntable was revving up the crowd. That way a deejay could keep two records spinning seamlessly, over and over again. Herc was doing it by feel. Saddler wanted the show to be perfect.
So he became Grandmaster Flash. He played his turntables as if he were Jimi Hendrix, cuing records with his elbow, his feet, behind his back. He invented “scratching”–spinning a record back and forth to create a scratchy sound. He tried rapping, but he couldn’t do it, so he gathered a crew around him–the Furious Five, rap’s first supergroup.
Things happened fast. This is the remix. There were start-up labels like Sugar Hill and Tommy Boy. Then in 1979 came Rapper’s Delight–the first rap song most people remember. Grandmaster Flash warned, “Don’t touch me ’cause I’m close to the edge.” Then there was Run-D.M.C. rocking the house, and the Beastie Boys hollering, “You gotta fight for your right–to party!” and Public Enemy saying, “Don’t believe the hype,” and Hammer’s harem-style balloon pants. Then gangsta rap: N.W.A. rapping “F____ tha police”; Snoop drawling “187 on an undercover cop”; and Tupac crying, “Even as a crack fiend, mama/ You always was a black queen, mama.” Then Mary J. Blige singing hip-hop soul; Guru and Digable Planets mixing rap with bebop; the Fugees “Killing me softly with his song”; Puffy mourning Biggie on CD and MTV.
We in the ’90s And finally it’s looking good Hip-hop took it to billions I knew we would. –Nas, We Will Survive
All major modern musical forms with roots in the black community–jazz, rock, even gospel–faced criticism early on. Langston Hughes, in 1926, defended the blues and jazz from cultural critics. Hardcore rap has triumphed commercially, in part, because rap’s aesthetic of sampling connects it closely to what is musically palatable. Some of the songs hard-core rappers sample are surprisingly mainstream. DMX raps about such subjects as having sex with bloody corpses. But one of his songs, I Can Feel It, is based on Phil Collins’ easy-listening staple In the Air Tonight. Jay-Z’s hit song Hard-Knock Life draws from the musical Annie. Tupac’s Changes uses Bruce Hornsby. Silkk the Shocker samples the not-so-shocking Lionel Richie.
The underlying message is this: the violence and misogyny and lustful materialism that characterize some rap songs are as deeply American as the hokey music that rappers appropriate. The fact is, this country was in love with outlaws and crime and violence long before hip-hop–think of Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde–and then think of the movie Bonnie and Clyde, as well as Scarface and the Godfather saga. In the movie You’ve Got Mail, Tom Hanks even refers to the Godfather trilogy as the perfect guide to life, the I-Ching for guys. Rappers seem to agree. Snoop Dogg’s sophomore album was titled The Doggfather. Silkk the Shocker’s new album is called Made Man. On his song Boomerang, Big Pun echoes James Cagney in White Heat, yelling, “Top of the world, Ma! Top of the world!”
Corporate America’s infatuation with rap has increased as the genre’s political content has withered. Ice Cube’s early songs attacked white racism; Ice-T sang about a Cop Killer; Public Enemy challenged listeners to “fight the power.” But many newer acts such as DMX and Master P are focused almost entirely on pathologies within the black community. They rap about shooting other blacks but almost never about challenging governmental authority or encouraging social activism. “The stuff today is not revolutionary,” says Bob Law, vice president of programming at WWRL, a black talk-radio station in New York City. “It’s just, ‘Give me a piece of the action.'”
Hip-hop is getting a new push toward activism from an unlikely source–Beastie Boys. The white rap trio began as a Dionysian semiparody of hip-hop, rapping about parties, girls and beer. Today they are the founders and headliners of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, an annual concert that raises money for and awareness about human-rights issues in Tibet. Last week Beastie Boys, along with the hip-hop-charged hard-rock band Rage Against the Machine and the progressive rap duo Black Star, staged a controversial concert in New Jersey to raise money for the legal fees of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black inmate on death row for killing a police officer. Says Beastie Boy Adam Yauch: “There’s a tremendous amount of evidence that he didn’t do it and he was a scapegoat.”
Yauch says rap’s verbal texture makes it an ideal vessel to communicate ideas, whether satirical, personal or political. That isn’t always a good thing.”We’ve put out songs with lyrics in them that we thought people would think were funny, but they ended up having a lot of really negative effects on people. [Performers] need to be aware that when you’re creating music it has a tremendous influence on society.”
Sitting in the conference room on the 24th floor of the Time & Life Building, Kool Herc thinks back to the start of rap with a mixture of fondness and sadness. He’d like to see rappers “recognize their power, in terms of politics and economics.” Hip-hop has not made him powerful or rich. “I never looked at it like that,” he says. “I was just having fun. It was like a hobby to me.” But he would appreciate more recognition. When he calls local radio stations, looking for an extra ticket or two for a hip-hop show, he’s often told there are none available–even for the father of the form. Still, he’s planning a comeback. He’s holding a talent contest later this year, and also hopes to record his first full album. Says Herc: “Respect is due.”
Friday night at Life, a dance club in lower Manhattan. Grandmaster Flash pulls the 11-p.m.-to-2-a.m. shift, and he’s doing his thing. The Furious Five have long since broken up. Flash had drug problems, money problems and a court battle with his old record company, Sugar Hill, but he says today he has no ill will. He’s the musical director on HBO’s popular Chris Rock Show. And he’s helping to develop a movie script about his life. “I was bitter a while back because I got into this for the love,” says Flash. “I gave these people the biggest rap group of all time. But as long as there’s a God, as long as I am physically able to do what I do–what I did–I can do it again.”
The dance floor is getting crowded. Flash puts on a record. Does a little scratching. He plays the instrumental intro again and again and then lets it play through. “Ain’t no stopping us now…”
At first I did not know what I wanted. But in the end I understood the language. I understood it, I understood it, I understood it all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters … Does this mean that I am freer than I was?” –Samuel Beckett, Malloy
In Mill Valley, Calif., in a one-bedroom apartment above a coin-operated laundry, Andre Mehr, a white 17-year-old with a crew cut, and Emiliano Obiedo, a ponytailed 16-year-old who is half white and half Hispanic, are huddled over a PC. A beat spirals up. Obiedo offers some advice, and Mehr clatters away at the keyboard. They are making music. Once they settle on a beat, Obiedo will take a diskette bearing a rhythm track home and lay down some rhymes. Soon they hope to have enough for a CD. Boasts Obiedo: “I’m going to change rap.”
Across the country, similar scenes are playing out as kids outside the black community make their own hip-hop or just listen in. Some say they don’t pay much attention to the lyrics, they just like the beat. “I can’t relate to the guns and killings,” says Mehr. Others are touched more deeply. Says 15-year-old Sean Fleming: “I can relate more and get a better understanding of what urban blacks have to go through.”
Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, says rap can bring races together: “It’s a little more difficult to go out and talk about hate when your music collection is full of black artists. That is not to say that buying an OutKast record is the same as dealing with real people, but it is reason to hope.” Ice Cube is a bit more cynical: “It’s kinda like being at the zoo. You can look into that world, but you don’t have to touch it. It’s safe.”
Nonblack performers are increasingly drawing from rap. Beck expertly combined folk and hip-hop. Hanson’s hit MMMBop included deejay scratching. Portishead refashioned hip-hop into ethereal trip-hop. Singer Beth Orton, whose enchantingly moody album Central Reservation is due out in March, blends folksy guitars with samples and beats. Doug Century, author of Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse, studied hip-hop culture as he documented the lives of gang members; he predicts white acts will eventually dominate rap, just as white rockers pushed out rock’s black forerunners. “It’s possible that in 15 years all hip-hop will be white,” Century says. “[Then] black youth culture will transform itself again.”
Already the white b-boy has become an iconic figure–ridiculed in movies like Can’t Hardly Wait and the forthcoming Go, and in songs like Offspring’s Pretty Fly (for a White Guy). In Pretty Fly the punk band Offspring mocks whites who adopt hip-hop styles, singing, “He may not have a clue/ And he may not have style/ But everything he lacks/ Well he makes up in denial.” Irish-American rap-rocker Everlast, whose new CD, Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, has proved to be a commercial hit, says the song makes him laugh: “They ain’t talking about me, ’cause I’ll beat the s___ out of every one of those guys.” In fact, Everlast feels confident enough about his standing in the rap world to take a verbal swipe at Puffy Combs: “I don’t think Puffy really cares about what he’s doing. He’s a brilliant businessman, but he’s no different from the Backstreet Boys or the Spice Girls because he’s just creating a product.”
Wu-Tang Clan producer-rapper RZA is also concerned about maintaining standards. He believes many performers are embracing the genre’s style–rapping–but missing its essence, the culture of hip-hop. “I don’t think the creativity has been big. I think the sales have been big, and the exposure has been big,” says RZA. “Will Smith is rap. That’s not hip-hop. It’s been a big year for rap. It’s been a poor year for hip-hop.”
Underground rap is available for those industrious enough to seek it out. At New York City’s Fat Beats record store, you can pick up vinyl editions of independently released songs by such promising new acts as the Philadelphia-based Maylay Sparks (call 215-492-4257 for more information) and the all-female antimisogyny hip-hop collective Anomolies (917-876-0726). Maylay Sparks’ spirited I Mani and the New York City-based Anomolies’ raucous tune Black-listed (a collaboration with the group Arsonists) are two of the best songs to come out this year.
Other groups, signed to major labels, are trying to perpetuate rap’s original spirit of creativity. The rapper Nas’ forthcoming album I Am…the Autobiography promises to be tough, smart and personal. And the Atlanta-based duo OutKast’s current album, Aquemini, weaves chants, neo-soul and hip-hop into an enthralling mix. Says OutKast’s Big Boi: “We’re not scared to experiment.”
One of the most ambitious new CDs is the Roots’ Things Fall Apart (named after the book by the Nigerian Nobel laureate Chinua Achebe). The CD features live instrumentation, lyrics suitable for a poetry slam and a cameo from Erykah Badu. Roots drummer Ahmir hopes, in the future, the more creative wing of performers in hip-hop will form a support network. “There are some people in hip-hop that care about leaving a mark,” he says. “There are some of us that look at Innervisions as a benchmark, or Blood on the Tracks or Blue or Purple Rain. Leaving a mark is more important than getting a dollar. I think Lauryn’s album is one of the first gunshots of hip-hop art the world is gonna get.”
You could get the money You could get the power But keep your eyes on the final hour. –Lauryn Hill, Final Hour
It’s Puffy’s 29th birthday party, and the celebration is being held on Wall Street. Inside the party, women in thongs dance in glass cages. Above the door a huge purple spotlight projects some of Puffy’s corporate logos: Bad Boy (his record company) and Sean John (his new clothing label). But where’s Puffy?
The music stops. The crowd parts. Muhammad Ali arrives. He’s only the appetizer. The score to Rocky booms over the speakers. Only then does Puffy enter, in a light-colored three-piece suit. Forget being street. He’s Wall Street, he’s Madison Avenue, he’s le Champs Elysees. Donald Trump is at his side. It’s Puffy’s moment. His album No Way Out played on some familiar gangsta themes, but it’s a smash hit. Puffy is a household name, a brand name. In fact his name comes up again and again, in gossip columns and other people’s rap songs. He has transformed himself into a human sample. He is swallowed by the crowd.
You are at the Emporio Armani store on Fifth Avenue in downtown Manhattan. There’s a benefit here tonight for the Refugee Project, a nonprofit organization Lauryn Hill founded to encourage social activism among urban youth. Hill is here, and the cameras are flashing. Her musical performance on Saturday Night Live has boosted her album back to the upper reaches of the charts. In a few days she will receive 10 Grammy nominations, the most ever by a female artist.
She never did do that SNL skit about the hooker. She says she feels too connected to hip-hop to do a movie or TV role that might compromise the message in her music. She addresses the crowd. “I’m just a vehicle through which this thing moves,” she says. “It’s not about me at all.” You think back to some of the rappers you’ve talked to–Jay-Z, Nas, the Roots, Grandmaster Flash. A record cues up in your mind: “Ain’t no stopping us now…”
–With reporting by Melissa August/Washington, Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Laird Harrison/Oakland, Todd Murphy/Portland and David E. Thigpen/New York
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