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.

Did not understand that he was Mr. FUBU.

Daymond.

The face fuzz is long gone today, though. And he generally dresses in jeans and tees. Nor did I see any sign of the godawful glasses; I think he was styling for the PR shot.

That's what he looked like when I saw him on TV...it's been years, though. Jeez, it's kind of good my characters are detectives, not me. A little slow, that was, on my part.

What was that song Eminem did just before the last presidential election, Mosh, or something? I saw the video on MTV once and could not take my eyes off of it. The first time I saw a bit of hip-hop/rap that told me this was something that could frighten the establishment--and which I could get behind at that. I had a moment of "this is how it is when you reach the point of no return, this is what makes normal hard-working folks say No more, and take to the streets to demand a change."

Edit out the stuff about how many girls some playa got pregnant or how brave they are to shoot a cop or something, and a lot of rap I can deal with.

Musically--it's still better than country. Except for bluegrass. Bluegrass will always have a home where I am.