A Music Thread

[Al B. Sure!]

Sloww:

The early genesis of rap:

The real importance of "Hold On To What You Got" lies
in the lyrics and the eccentric way they are vocally
counterpoised against the steady piano beats.

Some authors consider this song to be the very first
example of "soul rap" and claim that as such it paved the
way for all subsequent rap and hip-hop. You actually can
hear the genesis of full-blown rap in the way that certain
lines are inflected and stressed --

Where some women make misTAKES
Is when their men go out and let 'em PLAY,
They would STAY,

-- a seemingly haphazard skewing or displacement of the
rhythm in favour of the rhyme which comes from the earlier
black toasting tradition and which virtually characterizes
rap and hip-hop to this day.

[Al B. Sure!]

The point is the hip hop producer took an obscure and forgotten song, creatively fashioned it into a hip hop track with a rapper's lyrics (which itself adds value), and created new music while also re-popularizing a song lost on a vinyl record from 1975.

[Thoth]

So any thoughts on my sample example or are you just going to stay a close-minded bigot?

I have several others I could use to further my point.

??? You posted some empty elevator music. I might be a little drunk, but if you have a point I'm missing it.

[Al B. Sure!]

Rapper Nas with his father, Blues/Jazz musician Olu Dara:



"Bridging The Gap from the blues, to jazz, to rap
The history of music on this track"

[Al B. Sure!]

I don't like Rap or Opera. Anything else, I can find things that I like.

If you like Blues and don't like rap, you have unfounded biases, which I hope you will transcend if you actually listen to some of the rap I post and get out of your outdated mindset that rap is all about guns, drugs, and *****es.

Joe Tex back in the 1960's referred to his style as 'rap'

His style of speaking over music, which he called 'rap', made him a predecessor of the modern style of music.

Think if you sped up Blues singing and had more emphasis on rhyming combinations... you will have rap.

Rap is today's Blues.

[Al B. Sure!]

Same producer, J Dilla... took a 5 or so second long sample (found at 4:49) off of a song on Curtis Mayfield's famous Superfly soundtrack:


and made the beat of this song to which Elzhi added his technically sophisticated and meaningful lyrics:

[SlowwHand]

I don't like Rap or Opera. Anything else, I can find things that I like.

[Al B. Sure!]

So any thoughts on my sample example or are you just going to stay a close-minded bigot?

I have several others I could use to further my point.

[Thoth]

Could you say that a little louder? Thoth's ears are a little shot from listening to all that punk rock. He seems to think that I'm very close-minded musically and was touting how you and him like the same music or something.

The set of all music that I like intersects the set of all music that Sloww likes. Only an ignorant provincial Yankee would assume that intersection = unity.

[Al B. Sure!]

I have Clarence Carter - The Dr.'s Greatest Prescriptions; The Best of Clarence Carter (1992).

Could you say that a little louder? Thoth's ears are a little shot from listening to all that punk rock. He seems to think that I'm very close-minded musically and was touting how you and him like the same music or something.

[Thoth]

[IamSamSamIam]

[Al B. Sure!]

Here I'll give an example...

Producer J Dilla crafted the beat to Common's lyrics on this song:



The sample is from a 1975 song by the Modulations a group with origins in Jacksonville but that recorded in Philadelphia under the Buddah label. The Modulations have no wikipedia page and information about them on the internet is scant. This song was not a single and never charted... as far as I can tell, no songs by the Modulations ever charted, although front man Glenn Jones did have a moderately successful solo career many years later.




You see what J Dilla did there? He breathed new life into an obscure and long-forgotten song and he put his own creative flair on the music. Common supplied lyrics (which I dare you to say are stupid lyrics) that never existed on the original song.

In the process, it popularized the Modulations. That youtube song had 5000+ views and 21 comments, all about the J Dilla sample. The music of the Modulations would have vanished off the face of the earth if it was not for J Dilla finding that song and allowing it to re-emerge on the digital medium.

And what's wrong with sampling?

[SlowwHand]

I have Clarence Carter - The Dr.'s Greatest Prescriptions; The Best of Clarence Carter (1992).

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm thinking to do a sample exercise... post a rap song and post the song or songs that were sampled so you all can see how producers combine samples, change them, cut and splice, and other creative processes to make a song, often using long-forgotten and obscure samples. Sure, you sometimes have the straight sample or even the straight song (Ghostface rapped directly over a Delfonics song once), but for the most part, hip hop producers do at least a little work.

And then on top of that, the rapper adds new substance with his lyrics to the song, immediately placing that above a simple cover.

The only thing is, the audience for this are all close-minded bigots who wouldn't ever want to admit that they're wrong.