Drop the bass! (Miami style)

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
The Dave Tompkins set from WFMU that Woebot recommended above is truly excellent. It appears it was him who did the Miami Bass article for Grand Royale many years ago, a fantastic piece of gonzoid music journalism (shake yer booty contests, drinking and driving in a van with "bass" written on the side etc.)
 

dubplatestyle

Well-known member
i've got that dynamix ii <i>electro megamix</i> cd, and it's a mindfuck. i have no idea how much is old and how much was new at the time (1998), but parts of it are so ukg circa late 2000/early 2001 that it's just not true.
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
mms: starsky is some good stuff, i've got a couple of twelves, on databass if i remember correctly? definitely at the forefront of the ghettotech etc genre.

as for the sexism, yeah... when assault says 'b!tch don't cry/when i nut in your eye/let it drip down your face/give that b!tch a taste'... well... there's just not much you can say to that.

but yeah, when i saw godfather play here in melbourne, audience was 70% female and they went nuts when 'ass n titties' came on. the mind boggles, eh?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
puretokyo said:
but yeah, when i saw godfather play here in melbourne, audience was 70% female and they went nuts when 'ass n titties' came on. the mind boggles, eh?

Same thing that allows many women to love 'The Chronic' or 'Doggystyle' while leaving a lot of 'conscious' hip-hop aside - as with most people who like music (I think), if the groove is killer, then the lyrics can be treated/disregarded as secondary. I mean, I don't respect Dre and his ilk on any intellectual level, but goddamn he got a way with a tune.

As for the Dynamix ii, as far as I can gather it covers their career from 1985, but not in chronogical order. eg Give the Dj a Break is from 1987, but has prob been spruced up for the mix. As for UKG comparisons, I'll have to listen again. No doubt tho, Rephlex has been reissuing some amazing stuff while my back has been turned - this, Black Devil Disco Club...any more gems?
 

bassnation

the abyss
baboon2004 said:
Same thing that allows many women to love 'The Chronic' or 'Doggystyle' while leaving a lot of 'conscious' hip-hop aside - as with most people who like music (I think), if the groove is killer, then the lyrics can be treated/disregarded as secondary. I mean, I don't respect Dre and his ilk on any intellectual level, but goddamn he got a way with a tune.

in terms of booty its also very cartoon-like - this alternative porno world which doesn't connect with reality. plus the whole thing with all the gangsta rap is artificial. i don't know if anyone read that book about death row records but the one thing that became clear is that all the rappers had a very tenous connection to stree life. when they actually came into contact with real gangstas they couldn't deal with it - dre trying to record a new album when theres pistol whippings going on in the studio etc.

i guess you could draw parallels with the current furore over homophobia in reggae - do people think its right to censor music because the world it portrays is unpalatable to suburban ears?
 

mms

sometimes
baboon2004 said:
Same thing that allows many women to love 'The Chronic' or 'Doggystyle' while leaving a lot of 'conscious' hip-hop aside - as with most people who like music (I think), if the groove is killer, then the lyrics can be treated/disregarded as secondary. I mean, I don't respect Dre and his ilk on any intellectual level, but goddamn he got a way with a tune.

nah i've had this discussion and they think the lyrics are funny, as well as this the beats bang, it's arguable that someone like peaches pretty much comes out of this music, and that tune going around at the moment, "lick my _my_and my_and my_" :) sung by a woman.
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
In my view the clearest indicator of the gender (non)issue regarding ghettotech etc is that Touchin' Bass is run by Andrea Parker. And the first release...? "Freaky bitches... is whut I need..."
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Re the 'cartoon world' that Marc mentions - I agree to a large extent with that (plus the Death Row book sounds gripping - for some reason I'm still obssessed with the goings-on at that label), certainly as regards gangsta rap. But I also think that it's something to do with becoming desensitised to it all, given that derogatory comments against women have become almost de rigueur in mainstream hip-hop since G-funk took over the world (or even before).

Interestingly (as these are more obscure trax, I have no idea what the female populace thinks about them), I find far more visceral and potentially 'offensive' earlier hip-hop songs such as Slick Rick 'Treat Her Like a Prostitute' and Ice-T's '6 in the Morning'. Or even Ultramagnetics' 'Give the Drummer Some', with its infamous couplet 'Switch up, change my pitch up/Smack my bitch up, like a pimp'. Maybe it's because the music in these tracks is more cut-up and more aggressive itself, or maybe it's because these seem less like fetishised cartoon threats for commercial gain, and more like random misogyny dropped in for the sake of it.

It's doing my head in trying to figure this one out, actually.

I'd certainly distinguish between sexual coarseness (whether by Khia or by Dj Assault) and threats of violence, tho'.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
puretokyo said:
In my view the clearest indicator of the gender (non)issue regarding ghettotech etc is that Touchin' Bass is run by Andrea Parker. And the first release...? "Freaky bitches... is whut I need..."

I see this as a bit of a non-argument, not knowing Andrea Parker. For all I know, she could be okay with,er, really dodgy stuff. ;)

I'm very far from diagreeing with the general tone of tolerance on here for cartoon misogyny, but I think trying to JUSTIFY it is a bit lame.
 

mms

sometimes
baboon2004 said:
I see this as a bit of a non-argument, not knowing Andrea Parker. For all I know, she could be okay with,er, really dodgy stuff. ;)

I'm very far from diagreeing with the general tone of tolerance on here for cartoon misogyny, but I think trying to JUSTIFY it is a bit lame.


andrea parker is down with really dodgy stuff, that's no way to justify why you can't reason with women enjoying it..


one night at the booty bar by disco d has girls pimping boys in it,
also that sperm donor track ..
"he ain't my baby father he's just a sperm donor" nasty stuff.

i think it's pro sex rather than purely mysoginisyt. dirty and sweaty in the proper sense.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Re Andrea Parker, the 'dodgy stuff' comment was just me trying to be wry.... The underlying point was only that one woman's opinion doesn't close the issue.

My viewpoint is simply that it's utterly pointless trying to 'justify' misogyny in hip hop, rock or anywhere else. And of course there's a difference between 'dirty' (always good), 'sexually degrading' (often tolerated) and plain threats of violence against women (sexual or otherwise). You can't justify such threats: don't be silly. If a girl got pissed off by me playing 'Treat Her Like a prostitute', then I couldn't complain, could I? But I still love the song.
 

robin

Well-known member
what does pretty tony mean?
ive heard nas say he's "on some pretty tone shit",i see theres a miami bass pretty tony and then there's the new ghostface
is it slang for something?
 

mms

sometimes
baboon2004 said:
Re Andrea Parker, the 'dodgy stuff' comment was just me trying to be wry.... The underlying point was only that one woman's opinion doesn't close the issue.

My viewpoint is simply that it's utterly pointless trying to 'justify' misogyny in hip hop, rock or anywhere else. And of course there's a difference between 'dirty' (always good), 'sexually degrading' (often tolerated) and plain threats of violence against women (sexual or otherwise). You can't justify such threats: don't be silly. If a girl got pissed off by me playing 'Treat Her Like a prostitute', then I couldn't complain, could I? But I still love the song.

I'm just defending ghettotech and not the getto boys or whatever , i don't think the language of ghettotech is ever threatening or violent towards women, it's just pornospeak, sexually aggressive physical language, from boys and girls,
also the thread as it is started from me saying how many women turn up to ghettotech nights over other fast electronic music nights.
anyway, i've asked a couple of women directly for their opinions on the subject, will get back to you.
 

luka

Well-known member
one of the things i beleive that other people disagree with is that tim westwood has a very good ear. this is a case in point. theres no one here who knew about bass before the grand royal article but i remember westwood playing lots of bass in about 93,94 he was probably playing it before then, its just i wasn't listening cos jungle was still good but then it went shit so i started listening to more hiphop and heard the bass. so there it is, 10 more points to westwood.
 

mms

sometimes
luka said:
one of the things i beleive that other people disagree with is that tim westwood has a very good ear. this is a case in point. theres no one here who knew about bass before the grand royal article but i remember westwood playing lots of bass in about 93,94 he was probably playing it before then, its just i wasn't listening cos jungle was still good but then it went shit so i started listening to more hiphop and heard the bass. so there it is, 10 more points to westwood.

hardly.

i think lots of people knew about miami bass and all the other stuff way before.
i never saw that grand royal thing, never read a copy of it.
 

bassnation

the abyss
mms said:
hardly.

i think lots of people knew about miami bass and all the other stuff way before.
i never saw that grand royal thing, never read a copy of it.

2 live crew were enormously popular, pretty much mainstream - and that wasn't down to westwood (solely anyway). i think the whole genre was bigger than people might think.
 

luka

Well-known member
nah bollocks, i know you lot! grand royal invented a lot of people.. they didn't know lee perry, didn#t know bass, never heard of a mullet. you didn't necessatrily have to read it to be influenced by it just like people never had to read heronbone but still found out about nasty crew cos of it or whatever.
 

luka

Well-known member
2live crew doesnt really count as an exposure to bass though. every schoolkid knew them cos they had dirty lyrics but no one would have identified them as bass, it was just hiphop with extra rude words.
 

mms

sometimes
sorry mate, i never lived in london back then, never read grand royal, never listened to westwood, saw bass music as part of techno as much as hip hop, just a part of things i was into, a bit of digging, we've never met so you really don't know me.
knew about lee perry cos he came down to cornwall in the early 80's as part of the reggae sunsplash festival and my mates dad used to run the place where it was.
 

bassnation

the abyss
luka said:
2live crew doesnt really count as an exposure to bass though. every schoolkid knew them cos they had dirty lyrics but no one would have identified them as bass, it was just hiphop with extra rude words.

it was still that scenes most commercial artist. its like excluding the prodigy from being a rave act just because people might see them as chart dance cos they had a few hits. everyone was into miami bass back in the early nineties from what i remember - the US even more so.
 
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