If I Could Just Teach This to You
August 12, 2013 7:08 PM   Subscribe

"Women in hip hop are more important than men in hip hop". KRS-1 recently gave a lecture at Fresno State detailing the very beginnings of hip hop in the early 1970's. Even if you've been following hip hop your whole life, you will likely still learn something incredible about the history of this art form.
posted by cashman (12 comments total) 60 users marked this as a favorite
 
InfiniteWindow linked to an ongoing comic series on the Hip Hop Family Tree. Good companion read.
posted by anthill at 7:57 PM on August 12, 2013


It starts getting really good in part two when he starts imitating Kool Herc.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:36 PM on August 12, 2013


Thank you for sharing this. I had the opportunity to see KRS-ONE at Fresno State during my undergrad. He's wonderful to listen to.
posted by andendau at 9:37 PM on August 12, 2013


i think something just happened
posted by jojomnky at 11:22 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


The end was heavy on the subculture woo. Hip-hop will save your soul and make you a millionaire, etc, etc. Kinda grossed me out, and made KRS-1 look really dumb directly after looking really knowledgeable.
posted by smidgen at 12:05 AM on August 13, 2013


agree with smidgen, he kind of goes off the rails a bit at the end there, and the first part took awhile to get going

the middle section though, parts 2&3, were fantastic
posted by mannequito at 12:57 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


KRS is a pretty impressive human being who managed to be successful in hiphop despite pretty long odds. IIRC he was homeless for most of his teenage years and hiphop really did save his soul and make him a millionaire. A lot of live hiphop is pretty disappointing (I'm looking at you, Wu-Tang Clan), but KRS's live shows are far superior to his albums.

However, going off the rails is sort of par for the course for KRS. He strikes me as a guy who's a voracious reader and loves learning, but isn't particularly good at critical analysis, so the pamphlet from the weird storefront church down the street is given the same weight as a well researched historical text. His lyrics are peppered with Nation of Islam alt-history stuff and some religious pastiche of Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. It's weird, but that's just KRS.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 5:27 AM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


A lot of live hiphop is pretty disappointing

Pretty big definitively stated generalization there. You could say the same about literally every genre of music.
posted by windbox at 5:55 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


There's been millions of words written on the terrible state of live hiphop, written by journalists that only cover hiphop. If you haven't been to a show where the headline act was not notably terrible, my guess is you haven't been to that many shows.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 6:19 AM on August 13, 2013


Ham Snadwich: If you haven't been to a show where the headline act was not notably terrible, my guess is you haven't been to that many shows.
Once you remove fan-idolatry, I'd say that still holds true of most mainstream acts.

"ARE YOU READY TO ROCK, CITY WHERE WE HAPPEN TO BE PERFORMING*?" *only not really that city, but the nearby suburb that houses this ampitheater, sports arena, or festival.

Plays 2nd-biggest hit.

Plays new songs their promoting, hyped up.

Plays biggest hit.

Leaves stage, comes back for encore, plays "surprising" medley of something off-genre, pulled into their genre, with a pastiche of their hit lines added in if possible.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:05 PM on August 13, 2013


I'm not talking about hacky or cliched, I'm talking about groups that didn't bring their headlining members (Wu-Tang w/o Meth, ODB or the RZA), groups that started a show 4 hours late (De La Soul), rappers that either didn't know the words or were too drunk to remember them (DMX, Onyx, ), or most often had a a bunch of dudes who aren't on the album or even really in the group up on stage shouting out words to the song out of time.

Even some legendary groups who should know better, like Eric B and Rakim, did a stadium show where Rakim showed up drunk and Eric B just played the album including the vocals and Rakim tried to rap over it. Badly. That's maybe not unique to hiphop, GnR had plenty of shows like that, but I've been to a lot more terrible hiphop shows by national acts than terrible rock shows.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 7:46 AM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is just a theory, and it more applies to older rappers that came up before rappers did festivals and really toured a lot, but I think the type of technical rap, lets say traditional lyric based rap, is just too hard to do while jumping around on stage unless you really work at it.

Aside from maybe organized battle rappers like eminem, these dudes don't come from a performing background. They spit bars in a cypher maybe, then they record the shit and all of a sudden they are out doing shows.

There are other issues too. I've seen wu-tang and onyx, they got dudes that have maybe one verse on a posse track and nothing else. They are stuck up there dancing around. These guys ain't dancers, it has to be tiring.

That brings us to the backing track with vocals. You already got guys that aren't performers, jumping around on stage and trying to spit. That isn't going to work for most guys that don't work at it. So they have to use a track with vocals

I think they are slowly figuring it out though.


On another note. This Kendrick verse on Control seems to be reaching critical mass. He named just about every traditional rapper, he only left out new underground types, trap guys, and youtube rappers, in his "hit list". Her also declared himself the king of new york. People already caught feeling and started dropping response tracks. No big names yet but I'm waiting for a Pusha T track really. I don't think A$AP Rocky or Drake even give a shit. Jay Electronica probably disappear for a few years back to whatever he does. Wale, I don't even know what the fuck that guy does and Big Sean been making the rounds saying the track was on his song so he gets partial credit for summer 2013 goat verse.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:20 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


« Older The tallest points in Florida: more than...   |   "Two drafts later somebody would say, ‘Does he... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments