The early to mid 90s was a golden period for jazz and hip hop. It’s no secret that hip hop had always sampled jazz music, so the connection was always there. However, this was beyond sampling. There was a clear hip hop and jazz movement. The music was fresh, innovative, creative and on point. Even hip hop detractors couldn’t deny the talent on display. Acts like Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Digable Planets, Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Gangstarr and Guru with his Jazzmatazz series later on all openly blended jazz into their music. This wasn’t underground music. This was as mainstream as you could get. This was music on the radio, music on tv, music people listened to, young and old alike.
If we’re going to talk about the hip hop and jazz movement, we have to first look at Miles Davis. Before he died in 1991, Miles once again was at the forefront of a burgeoning style of music. He collaborated with Easy Mo Bee to release his final album, Doo-Bop. It was released after his death, and was met with heavy criticism from jazz purists, which was pretty much par for the course for Miles since the days of Bitches Brew. However, no one knew this fusion in of itself would be definitive of the east coast hip hop sound in the 90s. Even rappers not in the hip hop and jazz fusion scene had jazz twinged beats. Look no further than “It ain’t hard to tell” by Nas and “Punks jump up to get beat down” by Brand Nubian to hear the influence in the beats. Producers like DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee, Pete Rock, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Diamond D sampled jazz music heavily, so it was reflected on the tracks that they produced. This was the “east coast sound” for almost half a decade.
Obviously hip hop music is nothing like this anymore. Certainly not mainstream hip hop. I don’t expect it to be either. Music isn’t static. It changes and evolves. However, one glaring difference was the emphasis on lyricism and creativity. You had to be a linguist to even be recognized by anyone. Lyricism was paramount. Those were the glorious days when mainstream rappers were able to communicate and actually string coherent sentences together. There was no gaudy jewelry, half naked women gyrating around, blinged out cars, ubiquitous stacks of money and violence for the sake of it. It now seems like stupidity, misogyny, criminality, opulence and excess define mainstream hip hop music today. Thankfully, this is not all hip hop. Unfortunately, “smart” hip hop is not in vogue.
Let’s remember this golden period of hip hop with a few choice cuts below. Listen to what Guru and Donald Byrd are saying towards the end of Loungin’. It’s prophetic.
Filed under: Hip Hop, Jazz, Video, a trible called quest, ali shaheed muhammad, brand nubian, de la soul, diamond d, digable planets, dj premier, doo-bop, easy mo bee, gangstarr, greg osby, guru, Miles Davis, nas, pete rock and cl smooth, pharcyde, rap
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by South Sider and Lee Cain, Ill City. Ill City said: The Hip Hop and Jazz Connection « The Sophisticated Audiophile: The early to mid 90s was a golden period for jazz … http://bit.ly/dk1PPX [...]
There’s a misguided dimension in this notion of “sophistication.” This is not particularly sophisticated rapping, or sophisticated mixing. It’s hip-hop that samples the sounds muted trumpets and rhythm sections, it’s hip-hop that includes instrumental solos played by exceptional jazz musicians. Would you call jazz sophisticated because it made use of the instruments that Stravinsky or Brahms used, or involved musicians talented in older styles? Of course not. You’d want to know something about innovation, skill, craft, creativity … Likewise, sophisticated hip-hop involves those values… in these examples, I don’t hear unique rhyme and meter in speech that works in beautiful or non-obvious ways in conjunction with an underlying accompaniment. For sophistication, listen to Bahamadia, early Snoop Dogg, Treacherous Three, Missy Elliot, Big Daddy Kane. And listen to the rapping like it’s music, not just words.
Ben,
Thanks for the response. I find it fascinating that the examples you gave of hip-hop sophistication are all musicians with 20+ years already in the game, and I’m not even including the Treacherous Three which is really old school as we’re going back to the 70s there. Suffice to say, they aren’t new school artists, and are all from previous generations. When all your examples of sophistication are as old as that, doesn’t that in of itself say something?
It’s the same thing people do when they name drop artists like Talib Kwali, Mos Def, The Roots, Dead Prez, Common, The Coup etc, like they are new musicians. Of course, this doesn’t mean there aren’t great musicians now, there are, but whenever people give examples, they always go back decades, in your case, even over 3 decades like in the case of the Treacherous Three.
Also, you’re conflating and perhaps missing the point entirely by asking me if I would consider jazz sophisticated because it made use of instruments used by Stravinsky and Brahms. That’s doesn’t make it sophisticated. Jazz musicians are innovative and sophisticated in spite of people like Stravinsky and Brahms. Some of the greatest composers are jazz musicians. Look no further than Wayne Shorter and Bobby Timmons for excellence.
Likewise, just because you don’t hear the innovation or creativity in the video examples I put forth doesn’t mean it isn’t there. When your barometer is chiefly “unique rhyme and meter in speech that works in beautiful or non-obvious ways in conjunction with an underlying accompaniment.”, then I don’t expect you to fully grasp or understand the cultural mores of something that you are perhaps addressing as an outsider looking in.
Cheers,
Atane
We’re really crossing signals on the issue of jazz: we agree, though you seem to think otherwise. Violins & timpani aren’t the source of sophistication in a Duke Ellington recording. Benny Goodman playing with Szegeti and Bartok doesn’t make him more virtuosic. We agree that this makes no sense.
But that’s exactly what you -appear- to be doing with hip-hop. One obvious way these examples are bound together is they have jazz “sounds” in them. In your writing, you also seem to like hip-hop that implicitly apologizes for the materialism and violence of gangsta rap. To argue that when hip-hop artists distance themselves from it, they are more sophisticated, is painfully reductionist. You set up a continuum between materialism/violence and its /absence/; this distance between the two becomes hip-hop’s only possible salvation. So it ceases to be heard on any other dimension but in relation to its superficially transgressive reputation. This very common error (among both insiders and outsiders) has the effect of polarizing and obfuscating an otherwise extraordinary and diverse repertoire of music.
Those concerned with “cultural mores” thought Cab Calloway’s music was significantly associated with teen criminality. They weren’t even technically wrong…the problem is not with the association, or even with the hint of causality, but with the reduction of the critical lens, such that swing bands in general always had to answer to it. To be clear: I never said my concern with rhythm and rhyme was the /primary/ concern. But everyone knows hip-hop is multidimensional…it simply doesn’t succeed or fail on its conformity to your moral standard.
I cited early rappers because that’s my generation. You yourself try to tell us how “mainstream rap” has lost its touch, forgetting, perhaps, that you’re cherry-picking the best 1% of an older generation and comparing it to the *whole* of what we have today. So why fault me for a little nostalgia? At least I was avowedly offering particular examples, rather than making a timeless generalization about the good old days and the morally suspect present.