Poking my head in...

Truth is, rap was originally supposed to be guerilla street theatre, a kind of performance art.

I'm not sure I would define it as street theatre. Rap was originally just MCs keeping the crowd going. (Put your hands up! Make some noooooise!) The bboys were the performance artists. Over time, the MCs got better and more creative and rap became more than just a backdrop for the dancers.

Gil-Scott Heron, to me, is not a true founding father of rap. I think he was the precursor to rap. I feel the founding fathers were the MCs who pulled all their various influences together and started spitting over the breaks. People like Grandmaster Flash and Mellie Mel. They created the template and, while the sound has certainly evolved in the past three decades (omigod, I'm old), modern day hip hop music still closely follows that template.

Now, admittedly, if you ask a dozen people who the founding fathers of rap were, you're probably going to get a dozen different answers. Though if anyone cites The Sugar Hill Gang, you should disregard their answer and mock them heartily.

Jamaica fathered rap. You know, with the dancehall toasting and stuff.

Of course, it depends on who you ask.

And it has nothing to do with Deb's excellent opportunity. It's just something I like to bring up.

Huh.

I know Nu. thing. about this stuff. Less than nothing. Zip. Less than zip, even. Which would be zi. Or possibly z. I haven't the faintest idea who Daymond is, for example, but I gather he is A Well-to-do Chap, and that he is related to hip hop in some fashion. And, more importantly, he is putting interesting, challenging and financially rewarding work Deb's way, which is all good. Yo.

So - utterly ignorant of the subject matter, but I'm very excited by how this is unfolding. Go you.

Meanwhile, I've just started the first few paragraphs of this kids' book thing, and I'm still enjoying it MASSIVELY. At some point I may post you a wee bit, but in the meanwhile I'm more likely to be asking questions about things like tall ships and libraries and celtic traditions for different kinds of trees and gnosticism and random shit like that. Maybe.

So. Much. Fun.

Gil-Scott Heron, to me, is not a true founding father of rap. I think he was the precursor to rap.

Either way. I can do the definitions any way they come, and I can even appreciate some of the stuff lyrically, but the rap I first heard defined as rap - that would have been right around the early eighties - was still very much street stuff, and I mean street in the actual dictionary definition: out in the street, people getting progressively more pissed off about something and willing to make noise about it.

All of which I am right there for - shit, it's where everything from Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and early (pTUI!) Bob Dylan came from, all the way through the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers": we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything they say we are, we are, and we are very proud of ourselves - up against the wall, motherfucker! Public Enemy and Tupac didn't invent anger, and changing the spelling of motherfucker to muthafucka doesn't make it new. It's simply the evolution of a real and justified anger at the shit going down, not an original species.

None of which invalidates a word of it. But I have huge issues with it viscerally (Allyson, I totally get the football analogy, you bet), and viscerally is how I write. It's my wellspring and my source. So this is going to be tricky.

I loved Gil's stuff. Still do. But Public Enemy and damned near all of what followed?

Lost me. Because music has a couple of firm requirements for me, not to be defined as good (lyrically, there's some killer lyrics out there), but to be defined as music in the first place. Numero uno?

Hum it. Play it on an instrument.

And I can't, not with rap. It's angry noise, monotonal poetry with a scratchy reversed turntable passing for harmony and structure. And for me, that's not music, it's performance art.

post-toasties:

It occurs to me that, once the deal is signed off on, I'm going to have to do some serious immersion in the roots of the current scene. Keeping in mind that Todd KC (the "Todd" was Daymond's choice for an avatar name, not mine) was born in 1971, he would have founded FlyByNight in his mid-twenties (also historically factual; FUBU was created when Daymond was in his mid-twenties), right around 1996.

That defines the period I really want to start with, in terms of complete familiarity: the sounds, the slang, the people getting listened to, the club scene.

Immediate sources are there for me, but if anyone can toss off some names and/or sites I can check into without having to make the calls to Grim or Jared or my daughter, that would rock my world. And BTW, everyone participating in this conversation is getting thanked in the acknowledgements.

Kristen? Plei? Gar? Allyson? Jess? ita? Anyone who was listening and watching in 1995 - what was happening back then? Who were the stars of the marketplace? Anyone out there go clubbing in the mid to late nineties?

and eta because my brain is made of Alpine lace reduced fat cheese: Fay, remember to watch how much you post, if you're planning on selling it to a publisher. That's what your WIP readers are all about.

I know nothing about rap/hip-hop. I actually liked "Rapper's Delight".

::hangs head::

Deb--I have your problem with most hip-hop myself. Check out Michael Franti and Spearhead, very political and melodic; Outkast, fun and musically interesting; Kanye West, incredibly smart and listenable. Not 1996 hip-hop, but it is stuff I think you'll actually dig.

Fay, remember to watch how much you post, if you're planning on selling it to a publisher. That's what your WIP readers are all about.

nods

Yeah, I pretty much figured as much, but thanks for mentioning it anyway.

Spearhead and Franti, new to me. Outkast is hysterically funny to watch, but I can't identify them or tell them apart from anyone else doing similar stuff (see below). Kanye, alas, leaves me cold; like Jay-Z, he's a friend of my daughter's and I've given him a shot.

One major problem I have is, literally, telling a lot of these guys apart. The drone structure has been what's stopped me, every time, on the visceral level.

Best example was watching the Grammies, the year Eminem released 8 Mile. It started out well: his backing band for the show was AMAZING, just killer musicians. They were out there alone, just tearing it up, a a rhythm section that reminded me of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare and some groin-twisting jazz rhythms going on with the guitar. Kewl, says me, maybe this is going to break through the sameness, because these guys, whoever they are? Hot. Just killer stuff.

And the crowd is polite but it's obvious they're waiting for the Big Name. And here he comes, and you know what?

Same physical moves as every other rapper I've ever laid eyes on. Same vocal structures. Same damned vocalisms, for that matter: there is nothing unique or even musical about "Yo!" or about manipulating your audience with a semi-circular hand wave. His voice was pitched to the same drone and breath stops as basically every other male rapper I've ever heard. Only thing remotely different about him? White dude. That, and a killer band.

Didn't get through one full verse into the song, and it was probably a great song. I just couldn't tell it apart from anyone else. Had I heard it on the radio, without a visual reference, there was no way I could have said who was singing.

Daymond was talking about how, where he came from, it's about respect. I need to find a meeting ground and arrange a hookup between some portion of my innards and the music itself. Because even though the book is not about the music itself, the music is the bridge between the street anger and the mainstream, which is why Daymond, by filling a crossover market niche with FUBU, can have his girlfriend's mother chauffered around in a Maybach and offer me Kristal to drink.

All of which needs to be part of the flavour of the book. Gah.

Oh, duh. Did not understand that he was Mr. FUBU. Should be interesting books. Actually, I don't want to overexaggerate my level of hiphopness...I came to what little I know through my taste for urban drama, so kind of backwards.