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Abstract
Since the late 1970’s, young people of color have created hip-hop by applying the adaptability of oral culture to consumer technologies. The tradition of spirited competition in hip-hop culture rewards innovation in sound, language, dance, and visual presentation. Unfortunately, many of these innovative practices find themselves subsumed by a totalizing view of pop music or pass by largely unseen; artifacts ephemeral and lost to history. Examining this culture of innovation reveals a technical sophistication and cultural literacy among young people of color (in particular, young males) that belies their statistical underachievement in conventional education environments. By taking advantage of the access to niche trends afforded by social-networking services, this thesis will explore three recent phenomena: the rise of the mixtape economy, the acceleration of regional dance crazes, and the unexpected deployment of pitch-correction software among hip-hop vocalists. This research will then be mobilized to consider how serious consideration of technical innovation in hip-hop culture might influence educators and affect achievement among young people of color.
Methodology, defining terms
Sources
- Analysis of specific contemporary phenomenon via digital trace/ephemeral artifacts (CD-r, mp3, blogs, comments, streaming video...)
- Comparison with related histories
- Archival challenges and solutions re: digital artifacts
Young black men
- Imagined
- Implications for changing imaginaries
- Rose's slippage between youth of color and hip-hop
- Role of gender in this thesis
Hip-hop approach
- Hip-hop as discussed in this paper is...
- Culture
- MTV/ BET/ Hot97/ etc.
- Not terribly concerned with mainstream/underground distinctions
- P2p
- On Youtube, MySpace
- In K-12 and university schools
- Not a machine producing media effects
- A place in which learning happens
- A discourse in which myths and histories are rewritten
- Self-referential
- sell goods and services
- Transnational
- Multi-lingual
- Full of contradiction
- Street hustle / boardroom, CEO
- "Benz and a backpack"
- Living the good life, ghetto fab
- Important distinction from other DIY musics (esp. indie rock / hardcore punk)
- Why focus on "mainstream"? Isn't it...
- Sexist? Misogynist?
- Glorifying Violence?
- Encouraging criminal behavior?
- Discouring kids from going to college?
- Promoting conspicuous consumption?
- "Fake" hip-hop? Unlike the "real" underground?
- "Hip hop is dead"
- Outline the arguments for and against using Rose, The Hip-Hop Wars.
- Nostalgia
- Regionalism (re: rise of the south)
Fiske's popular culture
- Contradiction
- Expressive
- Raw material
- Relevance
Lessig's RO/RW distinction
- defining culture by its regulatory systems
- the term "permission" in this case as opposed to others
Jenkin's participatory culture
- (draw on nml white ppr def)
Hip-hop culture
- distinctions
- mainstream v. underground
- producer v. audience
- "conscious" v. "gangsta"
- confounding some of the marxist assumptions in fiske
- diminished distance between producer,
- Producerly, welcoming artifacts, commodities
- welcoming "gaps" inscribed explicitly into artifacts
- HOWTO, highlighting points of entry
- self-defined, inclusive
- Changing styles are contested but nevertheless (perhaps begrudgingly accepted.)
- Even if something is disliked, it can still be recognized as hip-hop
- e.g. slow acceptance of Southern hip-hop into LA/NYC dominated mainstream
- Resistance to its own products
- Cycle:
- Competition
- Innovation
- Appropriation, Commodification
- (Repeat)
- (Should I use Kelty's "recursive public" here? How does hip-hop's self-critique fit?)
Hip-hop approach
Working def: The hip-hop approach is a way of thinking and making that accepts and refreshes old, disparate, or seemingly incongruous fragments of material culture.
- Hip-hop values originality
- Yet there is nothing materially new about hip-hop.
- What does it mean to be original in this context?
- FRESHNESS == a special kind of originality?
- Hip-hop takes things that already exist and puts them in new context
- RE-FRESH-ES existing objects, practices, language
- Recombinant
- Innovation that materially recognizes the shoulders upon which it stands
- soulja boy doesn't know nas, BIG, GZA. this hurts the older gen.
- does it conflict with the approach?
- Repetition and transformation
- Snead, Rose on repetition in Black/AfAm culture
- Hip-hop takes advantage of new media technologies (turntable, sampler) to enact a folk/oral tradition
- Rose's experience in the hip-hop studio
- Using tape and the mixing board in unexpected ways
Mixer example for hip-hop approach to technology, material culture
- Summarize the hip-hop approach by discussing the DJ mixer
- Turntable is often the iconic hip-hop tool
- Scratch the iconic sound
- But the MIXER is the tool that embodies the hip-hop approach
- Mixers are input agnostic:
- CD, vinyl, microphone, keyboard, drum machine, sampler, etc.
- Mixer from 1970 will work with an iPod
- The sounds and their playback devices will change
- Mixer architecture defines an approach, not an aesthetic
- Cue
- Blend
- Cut
- Modify (EQ)
- Balance (levels)
- Hip-hop uses technology to
- treat tangible, physical media as though it were intangible, oral
Alternate hip-hop history as told through DJs and mixtapes
The purpose of looking at mixtapes is to demonstrate how hip-hop practices shift and adapt to shifting contexts. The hip-hop-ness / hip-hop approach endures even as every material component and technique is altered. This section will be structured chronologically and utilize Lessig's four forces framework for analysis: Architecture, Law, Market, Norms
Defining, framing, the "hip-hop mixtape"
Overview of the formal characteristics. This section is largely to differentiate the mixtape from the mixed-tape as written about by Moore and others.
- Framework for presenting audio recordings (not nec. songs)
- Fixed version of live DJ mix
- Multitrack recording technology permits layering, blending, and other interventions not (easily) performed by a DJ in a live setting
- Parallel, alternative, grey economy, distribution
- Interdependence with traditional music industry and bootlegging
- Welcomingness, participatory rather than authoritative medium
- Fixed version of live DJ mix
- Lack of existing scholarship on the form
Comparison with traditional pop album
- Pop album
- LP, CD, cassette, downloadable
- of course, bootleg versions exist on CD-R as well as unauthorized download
- Collection of recordings divided into tracks
- Credited to single artist or group
- LP, CD, cassette, downloadable
- Hip-hop mixtape
- CD, CD-R, cassette, downloadable
- Often many generations of dubbing along the way
- Collection of recordings divided into tracks
- Credited to a DJ as editor, curator
- Occasionally includes a featured artist or other figure as the Host
- If not a host, frequently a Theme
- CD, CD-R, cassette, downloadable
Mixtape DJ
- Draws on several interrelated traditions
- Radio
- Club
- Turntablist
- Producer/ arranger
- Remixer
- Studio engineer
- Editorial "voice" present in a combination of
- Selection
- Sequence
- Turntablist disruption
- Audible "tags"
- "Drops" from other artists
- Shout-outs, interviews, solliloquys
Party tapes (Grandmaster Flash)
- Record of a live event
- Ambience of the party, talking, dancing, flirting, singing along
- Only way to hear hip-hop outside of the party
- No radio, no records
- Who is there?
- Dancers
- DJs
- Rappers, MCs
- Fans
- Art people
- What technology is in play?
- What records are the DJs playing?
- "There weren't no hip-hop DJs back then, just DJs" - funk flex in 92
- No hip-hop records
- What makes a DJ choose a record? How does this selection process hip-hopize a record?
- Role of the MC, the rapper
- Call and response
- Rhymes
- Tape dubs
- Double cassette deck
- Radio rips
- Pause tapes
- Downstream duplications, re-dub/dupe
- this is the only recording-based commodity-exchange in the hip-hop industry of the time
- Flash live tape
- Competition:
- Style, fashion, dance, rap, DJ, selection, juggling
- DJ + dancers
- Rare breaks, soaking labels off (sauce?)
Pop singles (Sugarhill Gang)
- Why didn't Flash (or B or Cold Crush) make the first single? (Chang)
- Challenges bringing hip-hop into the recording studio
- Difficulty locating the hip-hop-ness in the music (he's just playing someone else's records, afterall), focus shifts to the rapper
- Re-creating the break-beat juggling
- Hiring a band
- Using a DJ
- Buying a sampler
- What do sampler/sequencers do?
- Not just recording sections of music like a break-beat juggling DJ might
- But recording single notes
- Playing back multiple samples
- Create new rhythms, patterns of overlapping, looping playback
- What is the role of the mixtape in an era of hip-hop radio and records?
- Hip-hop shifts from being solely a performance to a genre
Blend tapes (Kid Capri, Ron G)
- Demand for party tapes down
- Hip hop on the radio
- Hip hop albums, singles
- Describe a typical home studio
- Ron G - "Mixes 1" tape
- Instability of the track
- Album, Radio, TV, Clean, Dirty
- Acapella, Instrumental
- History in disco, dancehall
- Despite the suggested fixity of tangible media, recorded processes, songs continue to evolve
- Competition:
- DJ to DJ
- Tech skills
- Flipping familiar tracks in new ways
- DJ in age of sampler
- New moods
- Beyond the party
- Digging culture
Closer analysis of Ron G "Mixes 1"
Mixtapes as street radio (DJ Clue)
- Rising visibility, falling diversity
- Soundscan 92
- Data breaks previous notions of mainstream/niche
- Telecomm Act 96
- Urban radio consolidation, shrinking playlists
- Yo! MTV Raps, BET
- Payola (Rose)
- Soundscan 92
- Leaks
- Exclusives
- Promos
- DJ as a personality
- Vocally present
- Tagging tracks
- Clue shifts point of competition from tech skill to select + sequence
- Emphasis on context rather than content
- Contrast Clue tapes with Premier Crooklyn Cuts tapes
- aesthetic, subjective innovation v. contextual, economic, framing, structural innovation
Note on mainstreaming, commercialism in hip-hop
- Present Byron Hurt clip
- Review Rose's analysis
- Provide alternate analysis
- Suggest proactive economic action in selecting gangsta pose
Mixtapes as demo tapes (DJ Drama/Lil Wayne)
- Reduced visibility of the DJ
- Mixtape as demotape
- Mixtape as alternative entryway to conventional industry participation
- Mixtape appropriation complete in "Get Rich" DVD scene
Summarize mixtape formal elements
Use DJ Drama / Lil Wayne Dedication 2 as an example for illustrating the history of mixtapes in a single artifact
Raid on DJ Drama
- Indicative of a shift in mixtape politics, economics
- Reveals continuing tensions, uneasy relationship among hip-hop practice and traditional music industry
Innovation in a post-mixtape era
Personal computing, hip-hop approach
- juxtaposition
- refresh, renew
- recombination
- cut, copy, paste
Rapstation
- Chuck D anticipating digital distro
- Napster
- Terrordrome remix contest (Watkins)
Whoo Kid/G-Unit, 50 Cent
- Mixtape as demo tape
- DJ fading
- circumventing traditional industry gatekeepers
- industry appropriation, as seen in Get Rich DVD
Lil Wayne
Brief discussion of Wayne's mixtapes between The Carter II and III.
- Jenkins transmedia, world-building
- Lack of control, leaks, spreading material
- Fans must follow Wayne across numerous mixtapes,
- ARG-like game, "digital digging"
- Confounding the album as the premier artifact
- Wayne yielding authorial, editorial control
- Granularity shifting to the size of a song, rather than an album or mixtape
- Confusion over which are "authorized" tapes
- Wayne's behavior contradictory
- Leaking his own tracks
- "Fuck mixtape DJs" (Foundation mag)
- Suing mixtape DJs ??
- Wayne's songs are raw materials with which other folks can create mixtapes
- Insider pleasure (sauce?)
- Fans giggle, ironic pleasure when critics marvel at Wayne's "out of nowhere" "comeback"
Soulja Boy
- Role model 50 Cent
- Mixtapes fail SB
Crank Dat phenomenon
- Using SNS (YouTube, Myspace) like tapes, turntables, samplers, CD-R
- SB has no single artifact
- Wayne is looking at a single, a song, a verse
- SB is looking at a framework, a phenomenon
- Philosophical shift as much as a material one
- Like Clue's move from technical competition to exclusivity
- SB alters the terms of competition
Importance of relevance
- Why did Arab Money fail?
- Stolen dance
- Offensive lyric
- Late, did not involve the community
- A participant to Crank Dat is creating crank dat
- A participant to Arab Money is consuming it
- What does it mean to do Arab Money? What does it mean to do Crank Dat?
- Why did Single Ladies succeed?
- Importance of genderfucked male fan video
Inventing new producerly commodities
- Ringtone
- Open-ended phenomenon v. closed artifact of the pop single
- New gaps, new tears
- Jehfree reverse engineering
- Another new commodity: Lil Jon countdown mp3
Learning implications
- Seeking modding, meta-gaming, reverse engineering
- Not finding it in games, but perhaps in hip-hop?
- Dance crazes
- Fashion
- Refiguring the hip-hop participant as a tech innovator