The Literary Roots of Hip-Hop Lyricism

The Literary Roots of Hip-hop Lyricism

Introduction Rap is easily heard as a play of words, a sampling of music rhythms and melodies, and for the passers-by, a taunt against another taunt. But for those who will listen closely, rap lyrics may be full of history, a love story, political critique, innuendo, sarcasm as well as wit (Rose, 1994, p 14). The past decades had hip-hop fill up a cultural lexicon of vocabulary, characters and culture. Accordingly, the lexicon has been fed by hip-hop artists that return to certain archetypal images as well as conceits. While many forms of popular music that reinvent or subvert tradition for the sake of novelty, hip-hop culture values and cultivates memory using decades old lyrics and images for current crops of new hits, singles or albums. The past decades saw hip-hop music display various forms of musical borrowing they call sampling and mixes. During the early days of hip-hop, DJs from the Bronx and Harlem manually scratched vinyl records into a seamless mix of dance music (Rose, 1994, p 18). It was noted by Demers (2002, p 107) that DJs preferred a classic collection of soul, funk and R&B Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes and George Clinton for their pieces. The digital age also provided growth for their sampling as hip-hop added an assortment of music ranging from heavy metal to country. However, many DJs and producers still unearth and return to soul and funk as they pay tribute to respected past musicians. It is to be noted however that the melody of scratching and sampling from classics added with the invention of new sound is just but one activity amid the hip-hop music production.

A rich variety of multimedia collections, references and parodies is inherent to hip-hop music as a whole. This paper will try to establish the literary roots of hip-hop lyrics as an off shoot of words and culture from the period between 1965 and 1980 in American Society.
Discussion
The mid-1960s to 1980s is known as a time in when African-American identity coalesced as a new form of political consciousness was born. In fact, it had been observed that the word “rap” originally meant among the African American community as referring to romance or sexual interaction initiated by a man to win affection and sexual favors of a female. However, by the late 1960s, the term crossed over into mainstream public language and has discarded the sexual reference. It soon came to mean strong, aggressive and energized talk. Today, both uses are used in the Black speech community as rappers embody these meanings in their artistic images (Rose, 1994, p 19). According to Rose (1994), rap is a social movement popular primarily among Black and Latino races and during the 1980s, and by the 1990s, catapulted musicians such as Run DMC, LL Cool J, Salt n’ Pepa, Beastie Boys, among others not only among Latinos and African Americans but among White adolescents and even global music listeners (Rose, 1994, p 21). However, Lipsitz (1998) presents a popularly accepted narrative that rap and hip hop originated from the ghetto neighbourhood of the Bronx in New York city in 1970s. The ghetto is a marginalised group of Black and Latinos and the youths in this section created an informal way of expressing themselves as inspired from the Caribbean-style toasting. It is their way of having fun, share experiences, as well as criticize social inequality and poverty. It provided a creative outlet for DJs, MCs, graffiti artists and Bboys and Bgirls to a frustrating and difficult life while encouraging competition and achieves something positive replacing street corner conflicts into competition dancing, and shooting to paint spraying.
It soon became widespread and every locality in the globe has adopted each own, including European immigrants from Turkey, Morocco and North Africa (Bennett, 1999, p 75).
The reasons for the rise of hip hop according to some sociologists and historians, are found is the changing urban culture within the United States during the 1970s. Perhaps most important was the low cost involved in getting started: the equipment was relatively inexpensive, and virtually anyone could MC along with the popular beats of the day. MCs could be creative, pairing nonsense rhymes and teasing friends and enemies alike in the style of Jamaican toasting at blues parties or playing the dozens in an exchange of wit. MCs would play at block parties, with no expectation of recording, in the way of folk music. The skills necessary to create hip hop music were passed informally from musician to musician, rather than being taught in expensive music lessons (Samuels, 2000, p 11).
Another reason for hip hop 's rise was the decline of disco, funk and rock in the mid- to late 70s. Disco arose among black and gay male clubs in America, and quickly spread to Europe. Disco provided much danceable beats which hip hop took advantage of while providing a musical outlet for the masses that hated disco (Saunders, 1996, b29). Rap music is said to originate from Black or African oral tradition of tonal semantics, narration, signification, the dozens, Black syntax, as well as other communicative practices. It is also noted that the oral tradition rooted from the surviving African tradition of “Nommo” and the relevance of the word among the living. For the Africans, the rapper is a postmodern African “griot” or verbally gifted storyteller. He is also a cultural historian in traditional African society lyrically and linguistically fluent. Traditionally, he is expected to testify, to speak the truth in certain terms. The rapper was also anticipated to speak fast (Decker, 1993, 55), this is why the quick utterance of words.
“The rate of speech in rap must be constant in order to correlate it with the beat of the music… A rap song averages one hundred forty-four beats per minute… each beat of the music can be correlated to a stressed syllable. If the number of unstressed syllables is equal to the number of stressed syllables in a rap song, the rapper utters a minimum of two hundred and fifty eight syllables per minute (Yasim, 1995, p. 38). According to Smitherman (1994, p 192), rap music is a contemporary response to conditions of joblessness, poverty, and disempowerment that blend reality and fiction. It represents the norm for the Black working class. It is a cultural critic with the rappers on the “front lines of the White Struggle…It is a rebellion against white America’s economic and psychological terrorism against Black people” (Upski, 1993, p 49). The mission of rap was seen to “disturb the peace” although much of rap music has moral lessons. It has become the principal medium for Black youth to and outlet of their views of the world. It also tries to create a sense of order out of the turbulence and chaos of their lives (Smitherman, 1994, p 198). The 1990s saw the emergence of guns, violence, misogyny, and taboo language in rap music that led it to negative perception outside the Black and global hip-hop culture. But it is adhered to that the mission of rap remains the same as reflected in Rapper Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s 1982 hit song, “The Message”. For many hip hop rappers, their listeners and their communities, the chain remains the same as in enslavement as uttered by Naughty by Nature.
Rap has its violence, its raw language, and its misogynistic lyrics but still, it is perceived as an art form reflecting “the nuances, pathology and most importantly, resilience of America’s best kept secret… the black ghetto” (Dawsey, 1994, 59). As Demers (2003, p 45) noted, “Hip-hop/rap culture is a resistance culture. Thus, rap music is not only a Black expressive cultural phenomenon; it is, at the same time, a resisting discourse, a set of communicative practices that constitute a text of resistance against White America’s racism and its Eurocentric cultural dominance.”
Hip-hop and “Blaxploitation” “Blaxploitation” is shortening of “black exploitation”. It refers to about two dozen B-rated films for African-American urban audiences filmed from 1970 to 1979. Themes of blaxploitation film focus on a black hero or heroine who had to choose between duties to the law that is usually white-controlled against loyalty to the African-American community. Critic of blaxploitation argued that the movies over-simplified and parodied the ghetto considering that the 1970s is crucial for racial, socio-economic and gender issues (Hartmann, 1994, p 387).
The three elements that made blaxploitation a hit among contemporary hip-hop: * use of theme songs or anthems * overt politicization * allusion to the ghetto or “hood” (Demers, 2003, p 47). Samplings used the characters and situations of the films, and transfer their mystique into hip-hop context as they invoke anthems. Many hip-hop artists tried to capture some of the movies’ glamour and make it their own artist-personas. As Demers (2003, p 48) cited, Jay-Z’s 1996 “Reservoir Dogs” sampled the guitar solo and rhythm from Isaac Hayes “Theme to Shaft”. The song is set to the scene where the well-dressed main character walk the streets of Manhattan disregarding authority as he jaywalks and gives the finger to a taxi that almost run him over. “Hayes lyrics elaborate Shaft’s charisma and intelligence,” (Demers, 2003, p 48). Many film soundtracks are non-diegetic or beyond the narrative frame and only provide support for the emotional tone of a scene. It does not disrupt the action with its own reflections (Gorbman, 1987, 41). But blaxploitation anthems had their lyrics comment on the plot transplanting the glamour of a film plot onto the track. The producers “Reservoir Dogs” used “Theme to Shaft” independence and rebelliousness of its hero to portray Jay Z as cooler and more dangerous (Demers, 2003, p 49). Other blaxploitation theme-song samplings are more drastic departures from a work’s original message such as Smoothe Da Hustler sampling the main groove of Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” (1971) in their “Hustler Theme” (1996). Mayfield decries the black pushers and pimps who deal in vice at the expense of their own community in Freddie but Smoothe Da Hustler overlooked these lyrics altogether, incorporating “Freddie’s Dead” into a vivid celebration of a pimp’s life (Demers, 2003, p 49). Many rappers elevated blaxploitation to canonical status making interpretation of these films unified politically and morally. References to the 1970s alludes to the birth of a new black American political consciousness rejecting assimilation fought for by 960s Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. They incline to separatists such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Hip-hop compressed this pessimistic view of racial relations under the aegis of “Black Power”, represented in films, music videos and albums using afros, dashikis, and raised clenched fists that meant revolution. However, Black Power is a term describing a variety of political stances that can range from radical to progressive. Soul provides useful and facile images of Black Nationalism and political separation but the 1960s assimilation and the 1970s with protest and separation are almost not linked. While ground-breaking work for Black Power in its various forms was accomplished in circa 1960s, the early 1970s had internal dissent. Governmental pressure killed Black Power as an organized movement (Decker 1993 p. 60).
Contemporary hip-hop forgot and often misquotes 1970s black political activism to make it more glamorous and attractive to consumers. The ghetto sound and use African-sounding styles has alludes to the misconception that all black musicians were united under one political cause. While Mayfield’s ghetto orchestrations set the trend for musical Afro-centricisms, Scott-Heron and Iceberg Slim show that black responses to urban problems range from outrage to apathy.
Conclusion
Many current hip-hop artists want to be identified with blaxploitation characters in order to appear credible and street smart. The sampling the 1970s are to define black identity as a reaffirmation of the musical and cultural lineage of hip-hop itself but many hip-hop and rap artists today emerged as their own glorified characters that defy pop music norms outside their range. Most rap artists are out to have fun, entertain their listeners as they taunt and answer one another in a seemingly unending debate to overdo one another. Their lyrics, however, allude to more modern ways of simple rhymes that may be a ballad, an ode, a romantic song, a dance, an invitation to enjoy, with several few that encompass aggression, defiance, even taboo themes. Others border on culture, tales that touch as well as political issues that need to be confronted in their modern time.

Bibliography

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References: Demers, J. (2002). Sampling as Lineage in Hip-hop, Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University Yasim, J Smitherman, G. (1994). Black talk: Words and phrases from the hood to the Amen Corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Upski. (1993, May). We used words like “Mackadocious.” The source, 48-56. Allen, E. Jr. (1996). Making the strong survive: The contours and contradictions of “message rap.” In W.E. Perkins (Ed.), Dropping science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture (pp. 159-181). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dawsey, K, M. (1994, June). Caught up in the (Gangsta) rapture. The Source, 58-62. Hartmann, J. (1995). “The trope of blaxploitation in critical responses to Sweetback” Film History, 6, pp. 382-404 Gorbman, C Green, R., and Guillory, M. (1998). Question of a “Soulful Style”: interview with Paul Gilroy, in Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure, ed. M. Guillory and R. Green (New York), pp. 250-66 Decker, J Medovoi, L. (1998). “Theorizing historicity, or the many meanings of Blacula”, Screen, 39/1, pp. 1-21 Saunders, Michael, “Gangsta warfare.” Boston Globe, 10 March, 1996, b29