Hip hop headz and skratch kidz

Simon Reynolds, who I recently mentioned on this blog and whose work I have written about before for various reasons, has just written an interesting article about J Dilla’s legacy in recent years for the Guardian’s music blog.

While the title of the piece (The cult of J Dilla) might be a bit alarmist as a friend pointed out, it’s a really good read even if I do find the tone slightly patronising at times and some of his arguments/examples rather strange/baffling. The only thing I’ll mention, and which I discussed briefly with Beatnick earlier today, is the seeming fixation on backpack hip hop, especially when Dilla has always publicly stated his interest for things far removed from the whole backpack stereotype – see lyrics on the unreleased ‘Cars’ or even those on ‘Game Over’ from Dabrye’s ‘Two/Three’ album. And also because some of Dilla’s most lasting productions, for me anyways, are actually anything but backpack hip hop gold – his remix of DJ Cam’s ‘Love Junkie’, his remix of Spacek’s ‘Eve’ or his remix of D’Angelo’s ‘Those Dreamin Eyes’.

That’s neither here nor there though right now, despite what some purists/fans might think (and I guess I count myself as one of them) Reynolds’ piece is informative, well written and more to the point serves as a great point of entry for anyone not familiar with Dilla’s work and who, as most people end up realising, might actually already know some of it but not have realised the extent of the man’s influence and reach.

And the reason for this post? Well beyond the above, the piece actually links to this here blog and the ‘Return of the Boom Bap’ feature I wrote last summer for Serie B magazine. Simon mentions ‘hip hop headz talking of Dilla as the catalyst for a return of the boom bap’ which is pretty spot on and makes me feel rather chuffed. So thank you Simon, though I’m not sure about spelling headz with a z though! ha ha

I’m well overdue on following up my own hijacking of Reynolds’ Hardcore Continuum theory which I started a few months ago. I’ll try and get back to it soon, though it’ll probably wait until I’ve finished a mix to go with it. Currently about half way done, it’s a ten year retrospective look at the evolution of this boom bap continuum from 99 to 09, and done half and half with the one and only 2tall aka Om Unit.

Another thing wot came up amid the twitter noise today was this blog post about the evolution of hip hop. I’ll keep it brief because as far as I’m concerned, and I know many others agree, this subject is deader than a dead horse having been beaten regularly for the past few years. While it’s nice to see the argument of the turntable as an instrument mentioned again, the thing about it that annoys me most is that if the turntable really was an instrument, than the whole thing wouldn’t need to be brought up.

Joe Muggs who I think retweeted the link above said this with it “In all discussions of “Wonky” so far, nobody’s mentioned the possiblity the “wonk” comes from turntablism”, which I can totally get with and which I and a few others have actually mentioned before. It’s no surprise quite a few of the DJs and producers heralding the current beat/hip hop meets electronic music revival have their roots in and around tablism: Hudson Mohawke, Gaslamp Killer, Nosaj Thing and plenty others. To which Joe responded, once more on point, that “I think a lot of w*nky is about underlying b-boy sensibility – electro/electro-bass/drexciya sound pallette is common.” I couldn’t put it better myself.

One of the things, among others, which tends to get very often forgotten when discussing the recent beat revival, wonky, whatever you want to call it, is just how some of the tablist stuff around the late 90s/early 00s was actually a definite precursor to what is happening now. Whether it’s the inherent ‘lurch’ from tablist patterns as Joe put it, the eerie resemblance between the template of early 00s scratch beats and the halfstep templates of dubstep and some of the darker/more out there beat stuff or even the fact that some productions from the ‘golden era’ of turntable/scratch music were actually beat/wonky stuff before it ‘existed’ (and I use that last term loosely).

Part of the process of putting this retrospective mix together with 2tall has been to go through a lot of stuff I haven’t listened to in a while, and one track which popped and made me realise this last statement is Ricci Rucker’s ‘Dirty Larry’, a track that was truly ahead of its time, as Ricci claimed at the time (a claim that was brushed off by most, me included, due to his overbearing online persona). No Youtube rips of it seem to be around, so I’ve uploaded one instead. I can’t recommend the EP enough, it’s really pretty timeless actually.

Ricci Rucker – Dirty Larry

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