The Unknown Pleasures of Hip Hop and Post-Punk

I’ve been listening to a lot of post-punk lately. It’s probably my favourite genre, it’s the one I go back to when I’ve got nothing to listen to and many of my favourite bands are closely related to the genre. Of course there’s Joy Division and by proxy the early New Order material, but then there’s the likes of Talking Heads, the Cure, the Birthday Party and anything Nick Cave related that I turn to when my music feed is running dry. I’ve also been listening to more rap than I have ever listened to over the past year and delving deep into the history and lineage of hip hop. There’s a pretty good Netflix doco about the evolution of hip hop that peaked my interest and taught me a fair bit about its roots, some of which I’d already figured out through heavy sessions in Spotify.

For someone who grew up only hearing Kanye West songs on the radio and being told he’s the star of modern hip hop, I began to steer away from the genre and delve deeper into others. I don’t like Kanye by the way. Jazz, folk, blues and punk rock have always been keen interests of mine from a young age, so when I began thinking thoughts about music rather than just believing Triple J, I went back to these genres and fully immersed myself in their music. Somehow I started listening to more rap, probably with the rise of Kendrick, especially with To Pimp a Butterfly, and it was my knowledge of other genres that helped me understand that album more than your standard hip hop aficionado. You know, the guy who always quotes Kanye lyrics, thinks Drake is a god and now listens to trap. So I started listening to more hip hop and understanding more of the intricacies in the genre, from the jazz laced funk fusion of A Tribe Called Quest to the whacked break-beats of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, to the phenomenal production of MF Doom and the abstract lyrics of Aesop Rock. Even a little bit of Lil Yachty. But that one is a guilty pleasure. Now when I listen to more of the abstract rap that’s being released, I can’t help but hear the different influences in the music. Particularly, the strong post-punk influences bleeding through the medium.

Punk and hip hop have always had a similar lineage. Both were born from the undergrounds of their respected scene. Punk acted as an anti-establishment movement against anything really, and hip hop emerged as a voice for the socio-political injustices against the African American and Latino people, primarily in 1970s New York. Both genres are cut from the same cloth. They started from the bottom wanting to rise up against the establishment, ultimately threatening those who didn’t understand. For punk it was the fans of clean cut, three chord/guitar lick filled rock and roll and for hip hop it was pretty much any group of white Americans. As punk began to develop, bands began to experiment with production techniques and other musical styles that were absent in generic rock songs. Bands began using elements of funk, dub, electronic and jazz to create this avant-garde fusion ultimately coined post-punk. Post-punk it too broad of a category to bring it down to one central sound. The idea was to bring in elements not commonly used and to subvert the convention and commercial formula of rock music. But it still had the raw, gritty flavour found in punk rock, with an added dreariness thrown in thanks to UK post-punk pioneers Joy Division. And it’s these themes that can be found in the alternative rap that is raising the eyebrows of the generic hip hop fan in a genre I’ll call Post-Rap.

Tyler the Creator called himself the next Ian Curtis in an Odd Future song Leather Head. He was wrong. Tyler has created an aura around himself that no one can take seriously, but Leather Head did have the dreariness found in early post-punk songs. Mainly because he’s rapping over the tune Leather Prowler by noise punk (a spawn of post-punk) band Liars. But this example is too obvious to say that post-punk is bleeding into the modern alternative hip hop scene. For that I’ll have to turn to Californian rapper Vince Staples.

Staples’ 2015 album Summertime ’06 pays homage to Joy Division’s first album Unknown Pleasures. Look at the album art for one, it’s shares a similar aesthetic and design. Staples has said previously that he finds the post-punk pioneers as an inspiration for his music. The album opens with a lifelessly creepy intro with distorted bass notes and eerie synth chimes. It swiftly moves to Lift Me Up, an utterly gut wrenching deep bass kicks in against more eerie minor synth chords. The bass is as low as Peter Hook’s in Day of the Lords, the second track on Unknown Pleasures. There’s a hopelessness to the instrumentation in Staples’ music on Summertime ’06 that brings upon the same notions that Joy Division bring. The beginning of Norf Norf, hell, all of this track, has another bleak synth line that miserably slides between notes. It’s Staples’ flow in the song that gives any motion to the song. If you take that away, it’s depressing as fuck. Track 3230 has another minor flair to its instrumentation, but the drum beat against the bass sounds straight out of She’s Lost Control. Staples’ experiments with abstract minor melodies throughout the album, paired with dreary bass lines that are so low they distort (see Street Punks). It’s this ideology behind the production of the album that screams post-punk influence.

Another example is Danny Brown’s 2016 album Atrocity Exhibition. Yes, another Joy Division reference here, the album is named after the opening track to their final album Closer. But the album shares much more similarities to post-punk rather than a title association. I’ve heard many rap fans say they can’t get into this album, yet many music critics site this as one of the best albums of last year. What is it about Atrocity Exhibition that makes the average hip hop listener cringe? Brown’s vocal timbre is already hard to get used to on the best of days. And the album is obviously not the electronic club anthems Brown produced from his past albums. Take opening track Downward Spiral. This song should not work by the conventions set by modern hip hop. And in that sense, we already have the spirit of post-punk in our veins as we listen. Downward Spiral has a bending double bass line that slithers in the background against a freestyle jazz drum beat. Brown’s whacked vocals spit line after line, each more depressing than the last. “Cause when I’m all alone, feel like no one care. Isolate myself and don’t go nowhere.” It feels like a line straight from the mouth of Ian Curtis. The instrumentation gradually thickens as dragging dissonant guitar licks ring out and electronic sounds twirls. Really Doe, one of the best singles of 2016, has an eerie child-like chime sporadically descending and deep bass notes plucked in the background. This track is the easiest to listen to on the entire album, and still stands out against the norm of modern hip hop.

Ain’t it Funny begins with extremely dissonant horn blasts, something the Birthday Party perfected, and more distorted bass similar to Staples. The rhythms and melodies through the album, especially on Ain’t it Funny, White Lines, and Make It Rain are so fucking crazy, the average rapper would steer well away from this shit. The drum beats are usually the only constant in the songs, acting as an anchor as we drift through an eerie, terrifying and disturbing album. There’s syncopation in certain songs, like Pneumonia, but the instrumentation is so dissonant that it brings upon a sense of anxiety. Danny Brown is either a fearless MC, or just high as fuck. Regardless, the instrumentation on Atrocity Exhibition is so broad, spanning from heavy electronic beats, to free jazz bass lines, to simple minor piano melodies like on Hell For It; they all encompass the idea behind punk and post-punk — they subvert conventions and break the cliché norm. Atrocity Exhibition does this more than any album has in years. So much so, it’s a challenging listen for many fans of hip hop.

We can also look into the heavier styles of hip hop that have emerged in the underground scene. Death Grips, for example, don’t share the dreary, depressing nature of Brown or Staples, but rather lean on industrial metal and electronic music as their backbone. And still, they subvert the expectation of what makes modern hip hop. Once again we see them extremely popular with critics, and less so with the average rap enthusiast. So what does that say about the average listener? Is it a lack of knowledge of other genres that means they can’t enjoy or understand the more challenging music? Are they more interested in the commercial side of hip hop where Drake, Kanye and trap artists now reign supreme? Probably, but you’ll have to ask them.

I’m not saying I’m a conveyor of all genres, and I don’t claim to understand the ins and outs of them. I just listen to a lot of different shit. This is probably what allows me to appreciate the music others turn a blind eye to. I’m excited for more post-punk themes to enter rap. The genre began on a similar path, it’s only natural that the two intermingle. The genre of post-rap, if you can call it that, will grow further as more artists find they can’t fully express themselves amongst the tropes of modern hip hop. And as the trend leans more on trap music, I can see many artists making the transition. Though I can talk about rap, I feel like I’m playing catch up on the whole hip hop scene after years of neglect. But it was years of neglect for one genre that allowed me to open up and appreciate others, and in turn hip hop itself. I guess I can thank Kanye West for all this?