everything i say should be a hip-hop quotable

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2007/10/22/071022crmu_music_frerejones

This article has been making the rounds on the blogosphere which is to be expected from an iconoclastic article that essentially is saying that indie rock is boring because it has eschewed black music influences. You can take my word for it, or read it yourself to get the subtleties of the argument.

The article is probably worth discussing in full, but one section of it struck me. Frere-Jones writes:

The segregation occurred in both directions. Beginning in the late eighties, there were several high-profile lawsuits involving sampling. In 1991, a U.S. federal court ruled that the rapper Biz Markie’s use on his album “I Need a Haircut” of a sample from a song by Gilbert O’Sullivan constituted willful infringement. (The album was withdrawn from stores and rereleased without the offending track.) A similar suit led to a decision by a federal appeals court, in 2004, that the use of even three notes from someone else’s work could be a violation of copyright, making it difficult for all but the wealthiest rappers to use samples. For twenty years, beginning in the mid-eighties, with the advent of drum machines that could store brief digital excerpts of records, sampling had encouraged integration. (Think of De La Soul rhyming over an excerpt from the seventies educational cartoon series “Schoolhouse Rock!” or of Jay-Z rapping over a snippet from the Broadway musical “Annie.”) In practice, the ruling obliged hip-hop producers to write their own music, which left them with a larger share of royalties. And, as producers became as powerful and as well known as rappers, having a distinctive sound that wasn’t associated with another genre or artist became an asset. Rap musicians, lacking incentives to appropriate other sounds, began to stress regional differences instead: in Atlanta, the rugged, spare sound of crunk; in the Bay Area, the whizzing, burping, synthesizer-dominated sound of the hyphy movement.

Here, Frere-Jones presents a narrative of hip-hop history that uses the vehicle of sampling laws to explain both the divergence of hip-hop internally into its subgenres as well as its separation from other forms of popular music. I find this explanation problematic, but the questions it addresses to be central to my own interests. This short passage brings to the forefront one of the main objectives of this blog: to rethink some of the common narratives of hip-hop history.

The issue of how hip-hop has been historicized has troubled me for some time. Even more so this has been an issue in the past few years as I have been exposed to some of the work on hip-hop in the ivory tower. The degree to which serious study of the evolution of hip-hop has been replaced by simple explanations to bulwark other political and social positions has in many cases harmed the writing of hip-hop history. Further, when at its best, I have found that hip-hop history is often ignored or cannot reinsert itself into the other more prevalent narratives.

This post is a jump off, but as I proceed I plan to elaborate on these issues and put my own thoughts down on a new hip-hop history as one of the major goals of this blog.