Cultural Cowardice

[mvuent]

Heres what might be the quintessential boom bap beat. The stairway to heaven of freestyle circles. It begins around the 30 second mark.
You can feel the accents and swing. It makes the Head Nod. You got the kick drum couplet that snaps your head down on the first beat, and a hi hat on the off beat before the third that brings your head up and primes for the incoming snare, making it hit all the harder. The loops are short and feel like they're just floating there. When we do hear new sounds, they're of the same simple, looping style. The beat 'changes' by adding and dropping the piano loop, the drum loop, and the siren loop, little else.

I typed 'trap' into youtube and this is an early result
Completely different sound pallet, but similar rhythmic tricks. We've got an open high hat on the off beat before your snare on the third, two off beat snare/claps following that first hit and a detuned hi-hat beneath the primary that hits on off beats as well. Its these syncopated sounds that give both boom bap and trap music the Head Nod- where the head snapping up is as essential, if not more, than the head snapping down. The way trap beats use melody is similar as well, the circular arpeggios and and droning pads create the same hypnotic feel that tight boom bap loops bring, the melody doesn't progress through a serious of chords but rather hangs out generally in the melodic center, and likewise the beat remains largely the same throughout the entire song.

i think it's hard to attribute many specific rhythmic innovations to 90s hip hop since its so rhythmically simple (specifically, again, the beats). but yeah i know what you mean, there is a hypnotic, often heavily swung, classic "head nod feel" that came out of 90s beats, and to your point it's still strongly associated with hip hop. but to me that increasingly feels like backpacker territory. conservative and old fashioned. the early 808 drum machine logic has sort of come back in a changed, upgraded form.

anyways what i was talking about in the post you seemingly took issue with wasn't exact patterns of syncopation. i'm more getting at the densely pointillistic, machinic quality of the beats. busy yet mechanically precise. you have to sort of unfocus your ears and pay attention to rapid changes in information across the lows, mids, and highs in order to get how it all flexes together into a groove. in my experience it's a different game than the beats (e.g. extremely static and predictable hi hats) on illmatic et al. both in terms of listening and making. so that's what i meant by rhythmic language. and maybe some would be skeptical of that kind of abstraction, fair enough. but it's how i hear things.

songs like this don't have the same rhythms as mantronix, but they have the feel that i'm talking about:

 

[mvuent]

I typed 'trap' into youtube and this is an early result

this is what i get. and not to be rude or anything, but i don't think it proves your point at all.

 

[linebaugh]

Oh sorry! Did not mean for that to come out like I was trying to contradict you. No issue taken, was just having some fun typing thoughts out @mvuent

 

[mvuent]

oh cool. likewise m8

 

[CrowleyHead]

Is Paul's Boutique plunderphonics?

IDK about all that but let me tell you what Paul's Boutique is....

it's bad.

 

[version]

Do you like any of their stuff at all?

 

[CrowleyHead]

I'm most certainly a Beasties agnostic though maybe I like them more than I'm admitting, idk. That album feels exceptionally divorced from anything I'd like from them.

 

[CrowleyHead]

"Intergalactic" is kind of cute, then you realize it's the beginning of Rappaport's Disease and you realize how insidious these men are.

 

[mvuent]

never listened to the beastie boys and never will

 

[linebaugh]

oh cool. likewise m8

I was talking around the fact that I believe the snappy, up beat head nod modern hip hop gives became what swing/7th and 9 chords are to jazz, speedy break beats to jungle, warble bass to acid and etc. Its the syncopated accents and emphasized hits, the 'drops' that define how I enjoy the music. Think traps biggest contribution to that specific feeling is working in massive 808 hits to extend that physical, pulsing full body feel. Those beats do sound alot like megatronix, but I feel like I enjoy megatronix stuff in an entriley different way than I enjoy those. Lights up different parts of the brain for me.

 

[linebaugh]

I like ill communication and beyond beastie boys, never really given anything before a chance. Always really liked this one with Q Tip

 

[version]

I like this one off Paul's Boutique.

 

[luka]

explain this thread. whats the message

 

[CrowleyHead]

Do The Work

 

[mvuent]

i'd say that a lot of mid 80s electro era beats are closer to hip hop's current rhythmic language than any classic illmatic era beats (which harken back to how groove worked in the 60s and 70s). you'd almost think these styles happened in reverse order.

i think it's hard to attribute many specific rhythmic innovations to 90s hip hop since its so rhythmically simple (specifically, again, the beats). but yeah i know what you mean, there is a hypnotic, often heavily swung, classic "head nod feel" that came out of 90s beats, and to your point it's still strongly associated with hip hop. but to me that increasingly feels like backpacker territory. conservative and old fashioned. the early 808 drum machine logic has sort of come back in a changed, upgraded form.

anyways what i was talking about in the post you seemingly took issue with wasn't exact patterns of syncopation. i'm more getting at the densely pointillistic, machinic quality of the beats. busy yet mechanically precise. you have to sort of unfocus your ears and pay attention to rapid changes in information across the lows, mids, and highs in order to get how it all flexes together into a groove. in my experience it's a different game than the beats (e.g. extremely static and predictable hi hats) on illmatic et al. both in terms of listening and making. so that's what i meant by rhythmic language. and maybe some would be skeptical of that kind of abstraction, fair enough. but it's how i hear things.

songs like this don't have the same rhythms as mantronix, but they have the feel that i'm talking about:

oh yeah the hi hats in modern rap, also. you tend to get this sprinkler-like 16th note feel like in electro instead of the 8th note feel of the 90s. remembered this thread and it was bothering me that i forgot to mention that.


this is what's become of 90s style production


(admittedly that's an unfair example lol)

 

[linebaugh]

oh yeah the hi hats in modern rap, also. you tend to get this sprinkler-like 16th note feel like in electro instead of the 8th note feel of the 90s. remembered this thread and it was bothering me that i forgot to mention that.


this is what's become of 90s style production


(admittedly that's an unfair example lol)

Ironically enough I thought about using that same Drake song, specifically the beat Future raps over, for my trap-as-boom bap argument. Looking back, probably a silly argument to make. Better said that theres a seductiveness to trap inherited from boom bap thats missing in 80's production, probably some of the least sexy music ever made, in part because the beats march along like a high kicking, feather capped drum major.

 

[mvuent]

Ironically enough I thought about using that same Drake song, specifically the beat Future raps over, for my trap-as-boom bap argument. Looking back, probably a silly argument to make. Better said that theres a seductiveness to trap inherited from boom bap thats missing in 80's production, probably some of the least sexy music ever made, in part because the beats march along like a high kicking, feather capped drum major.

to me, drums wise, "like is good" is more reminiscent of electro than it is of "shook ones". but yeah that's a good point about seductiveness imo. most of the 80s hip hop i've listened to feels like children's music (and i guess it kind of was). and not in the weird creepy elsagate way you get in like, 6ix9ine. that probably contributes a lot to the sense that its lame, outdated--not matter how much i might like some of it sonically.

 

[linebaugh]

to me, drums wise, "like is good" is more reminiscent of electro than it does like "shook ones". but yeah that's a good point about seductiveness imo. most of the 80s hip hop i've listened to feels like children's music (and i guess it kind of was). and not in the weird creepy elsagate way you get in like, 6ix9ine. that probably contributes a lot to the sense that 80s hip hop is lame, outdated--not matter how much i might like some of it sonically.

yah, the sonics are definitely more comparable to 80's stuff.

Childrens music is a good way to put it. I wonder if it was originally heard as juvenile or that grew with age. Theres something repulsive about its clunky, happy go lucky adolescence. Its almost a physical reaction. I like the stuff but I had to get over that first and I dont think most other past era genres really deliver that same initial feeling, in fact now that Im thinking about it it may be an exclusively 80's phenomenon

 

[luka]

barty can't listen to the 80s either. another 20 something that just cant take it seriously.

 

[linebaugh]

barty can't listen to the 80s either. another 20 something that just cant take it seriously.

I like it but theres a learning curve.

Who is barty? why did he leave? will we ever recover?