For Myself & Others: The Music Might Be Weak, But the Beats Are Strong
By Bomani Jones, AOL BlackVoices columnist
Perhaps the most entertaining part of my job is that it's lead to me being adopted as the "media assassin" (props to Harry Allen) for Language Arts, an up and coming rap group in the Durham/Chapel Hill area. A major duty I perform is riding with them while they hunt for beats and, hopefully, help them uncover a great producer before that cat's fame makes his work too expensive. One thing has become clear during those missions -- beats are better now than they've ever been, and that might continue for a long time.
The cultural implications of hip-hop's 30th anniversary have been widely discussed in the last few months (most notably by Greg Tate in 'The Village Voice'), but the technical aspects of rap's quasi-adulthood have received less press. But with three decades under its belt, it should be noted that this is the beginning of a new era in rap music. This is the first time that producers emerged from the womb into a universe where their memories begin with hip-hop as their dominant, if not only, musical influence. That may not seem like an important observation, but consider that until the last five to 10 years, beat makers drew upon soul and Top 40 radio as the foundation to build their sounds. So where Marley Marl could easily say that he was influenced by Otis Redding, whose 'Hard to Handle' lent the sample of 'The Symphony,' cats now are just as indebted to the techniques Marley used to sample such records as they are to the originals.
That sort of refinement builds upon Chuck D's assertion that rap is different from any other genre because rap, instead of being music itself, is "done" over music. By borrowing from what was made before, Chuck believes that beats are really just reinterpretations of other music. That may have been the case 10 years ago, but that view seems antiquated now. If what he says was true before, then rap is now being made from rap itself, and beats have become better as a result.
Think of how much broader the range of available beats on the radio has become in the new millennium. How many beats were as simultaneously gutter and catchy as 'Lean Back' in the late '90s? How many tracks seven years ago achieved that balance like Mobb Deep's 'Got It Twisted'? By having a deeper cache of rap records to use as reference, producers have been better able to craft interesting sounds, those that are commercially viable without blatantly and lazily pandering to the market's common denominators (i.e. songs already heard a million times before).
The best part about this is that there is a new a world of high-caliber producers. It's beyond me how artists are willing to pay Dr. Dre $250,000 -- his reported fee for those who aren't "friends or family" -- for a beat when there are dudes giving away great tracks they make in their bedrooms. This expanded set of influences, working in tandem with the breaking of regional rap barriers, has made it possible for more and more people to make noise on the boards, and that makes it much easier for Language Arts and I to find the next big thing without spending big face bills.
Most critics, including this one, lament that rap music has slipped from its place as the creative vanguard of popular music and is simply the most popular music in the landscape. That's the fault of emcees, though, and not producers. A wider array of beats than ever before informs the mainstream. Rappers have seemingly run out of things to talk about, but producers continuously give them beats dope enough to make folks ignore that they've heard most of their stories before.
The sounds are beautiful byproducts of rap music growing up. If only some rappers would do the same.