Hip hop and Metadata
Connecting Together the Social Genre
Hip hop makes up one of the largest sectors of the music industry today. In 2004 it created over $10 billion dollars per year, and in 2013 there were four hip hop albums in the top selling digital albums in the US, with Jay-Z, Eminem, Drake & Macklemore representing the hip hop breadwinners. Justin Timberlake & Beyonce landed in the top two spots, and some may argue that these albums would cross over between R&B and hip hop. So it’s justifiable to say that hip hop has taken up a large part of the social consciousness since its humble beginnings in the streets of late 1970′s New York.
As a genre, hip hop was founded on the innovative use of modern technology. The genre’s genesis came about from free and public street parties thrown by the likes of DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, with soundsystems powered by electricity “borrowed” from city streetlights. By purchasing two copies of the same record, setting them up on two turntables and scrubbing back and forth between different sections of music, DJs like Grandmaster Flash could “do things to the record that the record should have had”. Turntablism was born.
Essentially turning the turntable into an instrument itself, this creative use of decks by hip hop founders set up the fundamentals of the modern DJ, as well as founding the basis for an entire new industry of music hardware designed for DJs. Countless other pieces of equipment have shaped the sound of modern hip hop. Groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul could never have achieved their feelgood, sample-heavy sound in the “Golden Age” of hip hop without the use of digital samplers. Likewise, without the use of the phenomenal bass and rollicking hi-hats of Roland’s TR-808 drum machine, southern hip hop artists like OutKast could never have achieved their unique — but now widely imitated -sound, contrasting with East and West coast hip hop of the time.
Clearly hip hop is a genre that evolves alongside technology. So how can technology aid the genre in today’s day and age? Looking at things from a data-analysts point of view, the scale of data discernible from hip hop releases is vast. Let’s take one song off one album, m.A.A.d. City off of Kendrick Lamar’s modern classic, Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City. First off, we’ll focus on the production of the track (here meaning the instrumental to go alongside the lyrics). The track was created by three producers; THC and Sounwave for the first section of the music, and Terrace Martin for the second.
The drum beat of the second section of the song is taken from the intro of Don’t Change Your Love from soul group the Five Stairsteps. An reinterpretation of a riff from a B.B. King song, Chains and Things makes up a major part of the melody of this section also. And samples aren’t strictly restricted to within the beats, in hip hop rappers often repeat lyrics from other songs, or sample them directly to include within the lyrics. For example, withinm.A.A.d. City, Ice Cube, Kanye West and Compton’s Most Wanted all have lines from their own original songs repeated by Kendrick, as well as a vocal snippet from a Schoolboy Q (a member of Kendrick’s Black Hippy crew) song included within the lyrics. On top of all this, MC Eiht, a member of Compton’s Most Wanted provided vocals on the track. All the sample information for this track came from whosampled.com, an absolute treasure trove of knowledge for hip hop heads.
So within one individual song from one album, we have eleven separate artists involved:
Kendrick Lamar — writer & performer
MC Eiht — provided vocals
THC — producer
Sounwave — producer
Terrace Martin — producer
B.B. King — was sampled from
the Five Stairsteps — was sampled from
Schoolboy Q — had vocals sampled from
Compton’s Most Wanted — had lyrics borrowed from
Kanye West — had lyrics borrowed from
Ice Cube — had lyrics borrowed from
If that’s a bit mind boggling, here it is in visual form.
On top of all of that there are five other writers and three labels involved with the song. And for every artist involved in the song, odds are that they connect to another ten artists, and those ten connect to another ten, and so forth.
Hip hop as a genre is founded on relationships. From the early hip hop groups trying to bring people together, to modern collectives like Odd Future and Pro Era made up of young buddies who started off messing around making music, it seems the best way to get anywhere in hip hop is by working together. Countless artists (Kendrick Lamar included) made their first proper strides in the hip hop industry by featuring on other labelmates tracks. Songwriters and producers as well can be involved with multiple artists and projects throughout a career. There’s an acute sense of sociality within hip hop as a genre that just isn’t as prominent within other modern genres. Tying together these links isn’t only an interesting way to connect artists, labels, writers and more, but it can lead to listeners discovering music, new and old.
This post was originally published on the Decibel Music Systems blog.
