[HN Gopher] Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Hip hop historians who are racing to preserve its story
        
       Author : Geekette
       Score  : 129 points
       Date   : 2023-08-14 11:30 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | aatd86 wrote:
       | A whole lot of stuff on datpiff.com from the mixtape era.
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I believe when it all became
       | known about what Afrika Bambaataa had been up to the whole
       | foundations of hip hop as a credible art form fell away, and it
       | has been in decline ever since. Maybe the offshoots are more
       | commercially popular than ever but that serious audience seems to
       | have given up on the core product.
        
         | haste410 wrote:
         | Who is the "serious audience" and what is the "core product"
         | they've given up?
        
         | atentaten wrote:
         | What was he up to ? When did it become known?
        
           | fidotron wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrika_Bambaataa#Child_sexual_.
           | ..
        
             | atentaten wrote:
             | Ok. That's abhorrent, but I can't make the leap to
             | discredit the entire genre of Hip Hop based on the actions
             | of an early pioneer.
        
         | michaelt wrote:
         | Given that a lot of 80s-90s hip hop music the musicians claimed
         | to perpetrate murder, drug crime and sexual exploitation -
         | would you expect the audience to much care?
        
           | bdcravens wrote:
           | Country music talks about drugs more than other genres
           | 
           | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/why-
           | country...
        
           | qbasic_forever wrote:
           | Absolute garbage comment. Go listen to some 60s rock and it's
           | nothing but the same themes. Jim Morrison and the Doors wrote
           | songs about explicitly killing your father, doing drugs, etc.
        
         | joshuakb wrote:
         | Afrika Bambaataa undeniably played a significant role in the
         | early days of hip hop, but his sound hasn't influenced the
         | genre for over three decades. If we start discrediting half a
         | century of art based on the actions of a single individual,
         | we'll be left with very little. Should we consider techno and
         | all its offshoots invalid because of Derrick May's sexual
         | assaults? Write off rock as art because Jerry Lee Lewis married
         | his 13-year-old cousin? Invalidate punk because Sid Vicious
         | killed his gf? No serious fan of hip hop stopped listening
         | because of this.
        
           | dvngnt_ wrote:
           | not at all. most listeners have no idea who he is. nor is he
           | relevant in contemporary hiphop
        
       | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
       | Also its 50 year anniversary according to the BBC:
       | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66471617
        
         | ojbyrne wrote:
         | The 50 year anniversary hype is everywhere.I personally agree
         | with the last paragraph of the article:
         | 
         | 'He also mentions that he finds the 50th anniversary of hip hop
         | mile-marker a bit disingenuous. The birth of an entire movement
         | can't be attributed to one act. "I'm definitely not a person to
         | shit on hip hop's anniversary, or its founders," he says.
         | "These influential figures are extremely important. They
         | changed the world and they deserve recognition and they deserve
         | compensation. One hundred percent, underlined, big cap, bold
         | letters. Capitalism, industry, commerce require neat stories.
         | But we also have to be like, is this the whole story, or is
         | this a convenient story?" Likely the latter, and it's
         | incomplete.'
        
           | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
           | There's certainly precedents in terms of black political
           | poetry in music (The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron) and there
           | was clearly a need for the disenfranchised to have a voice,
           | but there's the other aspects such as graffiti, dancing and
           | DJing that all came together over time.
        
       | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
       | I remember back in the day, listening to Tim Westwood on pirate
       | radio was about the only exposure that hip-hop got in the UK.
       | 
       | For people interested in the history of hip-hop, there's a series
       | of excellent comic books:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_Hop_Family_Tree
        
       | Exmoor wrote:
       | I've thought about this quite a bit. I'm a big fan of the record
       | label Bear Family, a German label that specializes in releasing
       | boxsets from R&B/Rock&Roll/Country artists from the 20's-70's.
       | Want to hear every song The Carter Family ever recorded in their
       | original incarnation? They have a 12 CD boxset for you! They
       | generally do this be acquiring the original master tapes from the
       | labels, which often include a lot of previously unreleased songs
       | or alternate takes, and remastering them.
       | 
       | Hip-Hop probably has a higher percentage of this material than
       | almost any other genre, especially once you get to the
       | mixtape/blog era. Unfortunately, most of this material was only
       | released in unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s and often
       | with some random dude shouting over the intro. A lot of these
       | tracks were also recorded over unlicensed beats/samples, so even
       | if clean recordings were available official release would be
       | impossible.
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | > Unfortunately, most of this material was only released in
         | unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s
         | 
         | I know nothing about audio - is it possible to upscale the
         | quality somehow? Improve the quality via some process?
        
           | giantrobot wrote:
           | Audio compression literally throws out data. It's audio the
           | human ear isn't likely/able to hear but it's still gone.
           | Different codecs and even different implementations of codecs
           | throw out different audio data.
           | 
           | Any sort of upscaling is going to involve a lot of guesses
           | about what was thrown out. For every codec and implementation
           | there will be a lot of possibilities of what the original
           | data might have looked like. At the end of the process you
           | likely aren't going to get a result that necessarily sounds
           | better than the low quality encoding. There will likely be a
           | lot of artifacts introduced by the upscaling.
           | 
           | It's not impossible but something you'd need a specially
           | trained AI to do I would think.
        
             | lostlogin wrote:
             | I work with a system which extrapolates data in the
             | frequency domain to reduce noise in medical images and then
             | doubles the images resolution in the x and y direction (so
             | 4x the pixels). It's absolutely amazing.
             | 
             | It'll be interesting to see if audio ever gets a similar
             | treatment and in what areas it can be applied.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | Noise levels in contemporary audio is vanishingly small,
               | and has not really been the target of any audio
               | technology for quite a long time.
               | 
               | Of course, restoration of older recordings is a separate
               | issue, and that technology is 20-30 years old, at least
               | (and very, very good).
        
           | jl6 wrote:
           | Technically no, pragmatically maybe...
           | 
           | If the information has been lost through using a lossy codec
           | like MP3, there's no getting it back.
           | 
           | But there are "AI upscaling" techniques that use models to
           | fill in the missing pieces. It isn't really restoring the
           | original, more like painting over a crack in a style that is
           | typically used by similar artists in similar contexts. Such
           | models could produce a result conceptually similar to what a
           | cover band might produce.
        
         | WesternMAGeek wrote:
         | Bear Family is amazing!
         | 
         | I have a bunch of their box sets. Pure archival gold -
         | including Jerry Lee Lewis making really crude jokes in between
         | takes of a song.
         | 
         | We need a Bear Family equivalent for hip-hop!
        
         | michaelt wrote:
         | _> Unfortunately, most of this material was only released in
         | unofficial forms, often on low-quality MP3s and often with some
         | random dude shouting over the intro._
         | 
         | If that's the art form as it was experienced, do archivists
         | _need_ to make a  "better" version?
        
           | tyre wrote:
           | This is like asking if a recording of the 1996 Olympics
           | should have to include all of the commercials.
           | 
           | For historical purposes, sure, have that as an option, but
           | lil wayne's mixtapes are not better off for the random DJs or
           | website advertisements yelled over them. That's not the music
           | he made.
        
             | w-ll wrote:
             | Lil Wayne does have producer tags on his offical mixtaps,
             | its just a lot of sites add their own crap even on top of
             | that.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | It is those very versions which need preserving if that is
           | what exists
        
         | whinenot wrote:
         | > A lot of these tracks were also recorded over unlicensed
         | beats/samples
         | 
         | That's the killer, right there. For example, the Beastie Boys
         | album _Paul 's Boutique_ probably could not be released today
         | as it samples an incredible number of other artists.[0]
         | 
         | [0]https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kI8XoDoiHcrG0aGmtvq1g
        
           | zhengyi13 wrote:
           | On a similar note, Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" remixing
           | Jay Z's The Black Album over samples from The Beatles' White
           | Album... Amazing.
           | 
           | It's pretty findable, but it's unfortunate that there's no
           | canonical source.
        
           | S_A_P wrote:
           | A lot of hip hop still has unlicensed samples in it but the
           | slices just keep getting smaller and less recognizable. And
           | believe it or not a lot of the samples in Paul's Boutique
           | were licensed. I do agree with you though that (maybe until
           | recently as I think the price of sampling is softening
           | somewhat with sites like tracklib) Paul's Boutique would be
           | expensive to release today. Then there are stories like the
           | Mark Ronson song ooh wee that he owns -25% of[0] because the
           | boney m string riff took 100% of the publishing and Dennis
           | Coffey drums took another 25%. So he theoretically lost money
           | each play. Public enemy's it takes a nation of millions to
           | hold us back is another album that would lose money to make
           | today.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_Wee_(song)
        
             | PerryDigital wrote:
             | Just to note for the two posters above, and anyone else,
             | Paul's Boutique is now on Spotify :)
             | 
             | (So is three feet high and rising by De La Soul)
        
       | stronglikedan wrote:
       | Tangential, but I think the streaming services are preserving the
       | story just fine on their own. No matter how many times I skip or
       | dislike a hip hop song, they all keep shoving them down my throat
       | with their recommendation engines. Very frustrating. /rant
        
         | jmopp wrote:
         | The article spends a great deal of time explaining why
         | streaming services can't be relied on to preserve the history.
         | 
         | Not to mention that a lot of early hip-hop might not have its
         | samples cleared. These songs would not likely be on streaming
         | services due to copyright issues. There is also the issue we've
         | seen with streaming services disappearing huge chunks of the
         | catalogues to avoid paying residuals. If we don't put effort
         | into saving history, it can very easily get lost.
         | 
         | On top of this, there's a distinction to be made between
         | Top-100 pop music, and the artists who influenced them in their
         | youth. If a random mixtape from the 80s had a huge influence on
         | you as an artist, those who enjoy your music would love to get
         | a listen of it.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Please, stop.
         | 
         | If you don't like the genre, then you are _absolutely in no
         | position_ to comment usefully or intelligently on whether it is
         | being preserved properly.
        
         | rolobio wrote:
         | I'm glad I'm not the only one. Apple's top music is always R&B,
         | Rap, etc. I have never seen a song or radio I actually wanted
         | to listen to. Guess its up to me to find all the new music?
        
         | bazeblackwood wrote:
         | So you don't pay a fair price for your music consumption and
         | still complain about the quality of service?
        
           | flangola7 wrote:
           | They didn't imply anything about piracy.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | lawgimenez wrote:
       | I don't know if I am right but Twitter's growth back in 2010-2012
       | had a huge boost in the datpiff hiphop era. I remember back then
       | that when Twitter's fail whale crash logo will appear it means
       | that Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Drake or Kendrick dropped a mixtape.
        
       | chayesfss wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | mikrl wrote:
       | I don't know the original source, but it is the intro to one of
       | the tracks on The Prodigy's 1998 mixtape 'the dirtchamber
       | sessions'
       | 
       | "Do you remember the days,
       | 
       | When Kool Herc played,
       | 
       | With a following of bands?
       | 
       | If you don't, well then you won't
       | 
       | (That's right!)
       | 
       | Real hip hop, my man"
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | D.ST. The Home of Hip Hop
         | 
         | https://genius.com/Dst-derek-showard-the-home-of-hip-hop-lyr...
        
       | dep_b wrote:
       | The blog era, that was so cool. The most rare stuff you could
       | find, including some background. Now it's usually on YouTube
       | mostly devoid of context and only single tracks.
        
         | NickC25 wrote:
         | There is some rare stuff on YouTube - check out this channel -
         | https://www.youtube.com/@OGDonNinja
         | 
         | Guy is a collector of old hip hop records and tapes from the
         | 80s until early 2000s. They are all available on his channel in
         | their dusty-sounding glory. Amazing.
        
         | cing wrote:
         | Heck yes. Music pirates have done a whole lot to help preserve
         | hip-hop history by ripping/archiving countless rare/underground
         | 12" and cassettes that are definitely not available on
         | streaming platforms; we're talking alternative versions of
         | songs like clean edits, remixes, acapellas, instrumentals which
         | supported hip-hop producers and DJs in the early days.
         | 
         | For example, check the posts in the early 2010's of sites like
         | this, https://hiphop-thegoldenera.blogspot.com/, of course all
         | the links are broken now.
        
           | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
           | Double Dee and Steinski mixes - their existence is due to
           | pirates
        
       | WilliamBerglund wrote:
       | Only tangentially related, but this documentary is quite good
       | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2475454/
        
         | debo_ wrote:
         | I also really loved this documentary miniseries by Canadian
         | artist Shad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip-Hop_Evolution
        
       | dsir wrote:
       | I think what's equally as important as the archiving is the
       | aggregating of the information. It's one thing to have a story,
       | or piece of content documented somewhere, but at the end of the
       | day, people still need ways to find it.
       | 
       | I think that's where social, discussion based platforms come in.
       | I'm a huge hip-hop fan and have been running a page dedicated to
       | giving people a space to discuss and share all things hip-hop.
       | 
       | https://sociables.com/community/TheJive/board/trending
        
       | jimt1234 wrote:
       | Back when I first started listening to hip hop music (around
       | 1982; i'm old), it wasn't easy to get your hands on it if you
       | lived in the suburbs. Record stores in the suburbs didn't stock
       | hip hop until the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" and Run DMC's
       | "Raising Hell". I had a circle of friends that could get me
       | bootlegs - basically, mixtapes from people with hip hop records.
       | I threw all of them away years ago. And I've been kicking myself
       | ever since. I miss those old mixtapes so much. One of them was
       | Afrika Bambaataa's "Perfect beat", over and over, both sides of
       | the cassette, for 60 minutes. I loved it, listened to it
       | constantly, never got tired of it. Another was entirely "Roxanne"
       | songs - "Roxanne's doctor", "Roxanne's a man", etc.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | I think people often recorded off the radio on to cassettes.
         | Local stations played local artists. Or your friends would
         | drive in to the city and you could come across the music.
        
           | jimt1234 wrote:
           | For me, it was Magic 108 in St. Louis, Missouri. However, I
           | was so far out in the suburbs, Magic didn't always tune-in
           | very well. I had lots of tapes with static. Also, in the
           | early days, they played rap only late at nights, for a few
           | hours before the "quiet storm".
           | 
           | There was another AM radio station in St. Louis, a city
           | college station, that used to have a segment called "The
           | Rappin' Hour", where dudes would call-in and rap about their
           | high school or whatever. I used to write rhymes in class,
           | dreaming about calling into "The Rappin' Hour." LOL
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | I remember that time, living in a suburb of Detroit. My first
         | exposure to hip hop was on the radio, driving to my summer job.
         | A lot of it seemed like it was being made on the spot, for
         | instance there were references to recent local events and
         | politics.
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | Roxanne - that name takes me back.
         | 
         | I taped a pirate radio Tim Westwood show that was wholly
         | dedicated to the Roxanne saga.
         | 
         | Found this example of his show:
         | https://archive.org/details/TheHipHopShow-19850917
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | A big thing in the background of all of this; America, perhaps
       | the world, myself included, really hasn't come to properly reckon
       | with the extent to which we all subconsciously think of Black
       | American art (including hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or
       | "used" or generally not culturally owned by Black folks, usually
       | Americans.
       | 
       | The example that sticks in my head: if I, a black guy, were to
       | get into Irish step-dancing, that's great. I would never, though,
       | suggest that it's "not just Irish, it's universal." I'd respect
       | where it comes from.
       | 
       | Yet we have ALL heard the well-meaning, but ultimately a bit
       | harmful, exact same thing said about Hip-hop.
       | 
       | I think this ends up having real life consequences; see e.g. the
       | rise of (Rap)Genius.com. They got big on the back of rap lyrics
       | without much respecting the artists AT ALL.
        
         | nsajko wrote:
         | > we all subconsciously think of Black American art (including
         | hip-hop) as something to be "taken" or "used" or generally not
         | culturally owned by Black folks, usually Americans
         | 
         | It's a bit silly to try to prescribe or restrict "ownership" of
         | culture. Culture is and always has been a product of sharing
         | and mixing of existing traditions.
         | 
         | EDIT: I think there's also some hidden issues at play here. You
         | basically want people across the world to directly acknowledge
         | "black citizens of USA" as an ethnicity (to protect "your"
         | culture). Some problems with this:
         | 
         | * You don't straight out say this, probably because skin-color-
         | based ethnicity/nationalism is a touchy subject (e.g., white
         | nationalism is basically taboo). But then how can you expect
         | your request to be taken in good faith?
         | 
         | * Your request is somewhat US-centric, as a "Black American"
         | ethnicity would after all be just a US minority, presumably not
         | even independent from the mainstream to the degree that, e.g.,
         | many European minorities are in their countries.
         | 
         | I'll admit I'm putting words into your mouth, but clearly
         | there's lots of things being left unsaid every time these
         | discussions come up, so I don't feel too bad.
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | Wow.
           | 
           | First response literally DOES THE THING I'm specifically
           | warning against. That's AMAZING.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | hluska wrote:
           | You managed to take a simple statement and twist it into
           | something ugly. In doing so, all you did was prove their
           | point.
           | 
           | Finally, your finale about how you don't feel too bad was in
           | unbelievably bad taste. Social skills don't seem to be your
           | forte.
        
         | aesch wrote:
         | Look at the influence of sampling in hip hop. Sampling is
         | literally taking music from different time periods, genres,
         | cultures and making something new from it. If the mothers and
         | fathers of hip hop had respected cultural ownership hip hop
         | would never have been born in the first place.
         | 
         | For any piece of culture to stay culturally relevant it must be
         | "taken" and "used" and evolve.
         | 
         | I agree that we should respect and acknowledge the founders of
         | the culture, but once it is set free in the world it has to be
         | shared to grow and thrive.
        
         | jl6 wrote:
         | What does it mean for hip-hop to be culturally owned by black
         | folks? What does it mean for non-black hip-hop artists?
        
           | mmx4332 wrote:
           | It doesn't mean anything. Nobody can "own" something like
           | that. And nobody "owes" anything either to anyone else.
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | It means that you should acknowledge the culture of the
           | people who started it, not too much more than that?
           | 
           | It can get dicey and weird at times, and there's a lot of
           | details that one could get into, and that's good homework to
           | do -- but I definitely find that the vast majority of popular
           | white rappers do a good job of this, e.g. Eminem.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | > the people who started it
             | 
             | what constitutes the start? DJ Kool Herc? If you asked him,
             | he would list his influences and predecessors... do they
             | not count ? If you try to demarcate some sort of cultural
             | "break" where X becomes Y, how do you do that? And how do
             | you handle subsequent cultural "breaks" that presumably, by
             | the same logic, create something new. How do you handle
             | parallel flows that then converge (such as electro-funk
             | evolving under the influence of kraftwerk, and then
             | becoming the first thing actually named "hip-hop") ?
             | 
             | This is all nonsense. Culture is not "owned".
             | 
             | Almost all the best culture in the world is mongrel culture
             | that arose from someone who grew up in one culture(s) being
             | exposed to other cultures and mixing them together in a way
             | that generally reflects as much upon the individual as or
             | more than the source cultures.
             | 
             | Hip-hop is no different in this respect to any other form
             | of human expression. If there's an art form that seems
             | "pure" to you, the most likely explanation is that you
             | haven't gone far enough into the past to understand how it
             | is also just another mongrel form.
        
         | qntty wrote:
         | A piece of culture is important in proportion to the reluctance
         | of people to assign an owner to it, whether legal or otherwise.
         | No one would criticize a Frenchman for using Newton's Laws
         | because it belongs to the British. Someone who is really
         | enthusiastic about something will emphasize that it is
         | universally appreciated. E.g., Shakespeare being put on by
         | diverse cultures, Islam trying to spread itself to every corner
         | of the world, Chinese silk being exported to anyone who will
         | buy it, etc.
         | 
         | If I was a hip hop artist, there would be no bigger insult than
         | assigning ownership of my art to a specific culture. If it's
         | really so great, it should speak to everyone. If this isn't
         | true of Irish step dancing, it's because it's a relatively
         | trivial art form. You can trivialize hip hop too if you want,
         | but it's not necessarily doing hip hop artists any favors.
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | Would you _really_ make this argument with any other cultural
           | contribution? Come on.
           | 
           | You think it's _insulting_ to assign the Hula to Hawaiians?
           | This makes NO sense.
        
             | qntty wrote:
             | I don't know the significance of hula, but if it doesn't
             | aspire to be something great, then assigning it to
             | Hawaiians wouldn't be an insult, since it doesn't
             | contradict their own view of it.
             | 
             | People will often times contextualize things to downplay
             | it's importance. For example, if I think it's disrespectful
             | to talk about hip hop in a certain way, you can
             | contextualize my view by saying it's an outgrowth of early
             | 21st century American progressive legitimation narratives.
             | I want my views to be universal, but by placing them in the
             | context of a certain country, time, and ideology, they are
             | downplayed.
        
         | cookie_monsta wrote:
         | As a white guy I am aware of the minefield I am skipping
         | merrily into here, but here goes:
         | 
         | I can see the general point here, but don't think it applies as
         | strongly to hip hop. Maybe it's just the circles I move in, but
         | hip hop fans and artists seem to be quite aware of the origin
         | stories and hold a particular reverence for the old school.
         | 
         | Compare that to rock fans who wouldn't look further back than
         | Presley (the king, lol) or green day fans who have never even
         | heard of the stooges.
         | 
         | Maybe it's because hip hop is a relatively young genre and ties
         | to the old school fade as generations pass.
         | 
         | If we're talking about money then yeah, sure - I'd be surprised
         | if any of the creators made anything out of it compared to what
         | corporate America does, but that's nothing new either. I don't
         | know anything about (Rap)Genius.com, but I guess my question
         | would be: what would you prefer to be happening that would
         | respect the genre's origins but still allow it to grow?
        
       | cheekibreeki2 wrote:
       | I found a bunch of someone's abandoned belongings which included
       | a number of vhs tapes. Some were hours of hip-hop TV recordings
       | from those dial-your-favorite-song channels. It's crazy how the
       | whole mainstream genre was full of positivity and peace and now
       | it's been reduced to genocide and drugs.
        
       | y-curious wrote:
       | This is very relevant to me. There's a great song I heard on The
       | Wire from HBO called "Analyze" by Sharpshooters [1]. Info on this
       | group is almost non-existent; Only a brief synopsis repeated on
       | Reddit and a few other sites. This was a song used on one of the
       | most popular TV shows ever, I cannot imagine the amount of info
       | being lost on lesser groups/songs.
       | 
       | Also related, I LOVE MF DOOM. Collecting his discography is a fun
       | little task, considering he appears on various albums using one
       | of many monikers.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMlCLw4aCqA
        
       | yardie wrote:
       | I'm just going to plug the non-profit whose mission is to archive
       | and teach the history of hip-hop as well as mentor young artists.
       | Until I got involved with them, I didn't realize how much history
       | was being lost to time and neglect. If you grow up in it, you
       | assume it will always be there.
       | 
       | http://www.pathtohiphop.org/
        
       | 10729287 wrote:
       | A little off topic but funny enough to mention. Here in France,
       | Skyblog.com is closing its doors in the next days. It was a blog
       | platform ran by the #1 hiphop radio. It's not related to hip hop
       | at all, even the radio only play crappy mainstream rap since 30
       | years ago, but back in the days, it was an easy way for a lot of
       | teens to have a voice on the Internet. It wasn't deep at all,
       | often really dumb, and it was mocked even in 2000, but 20 years
       | after remains the symbol of an era and there's still some nice
       | joys that came out of it. It was worth archiving for all those
       | reasons and we are glad INA (National Audiovisual Institute)
       | saved all the content.
        
         | cookie_monsta wrote:
         | For the record (ha!), French hip hop is my favourite of all the
         | "international" flavours. Some excellent DJs and producers and
         | there's something about the smoothness of the accent that
         | coincides very well with my tastes. Not understanding French
         | and so not having to worry about problematic lyrics may add to
         | the appeal;)
        
           | zhengyi13 wrote:
           | For anyone following along at home, MC Solaar might be a
           | really good entry point into French Hiphop.
           | 
           | Give La concubine de l'hemoglobine a try - talk about smooth.
        
         | Hanschri wrote:
         | ArchiveTeam is also currently archiving Skyblog!
         | 
         | https://tracker.archiveteam.org/skyblog/
        
         | aatd86 wrote:
         | Just a nuance: the true number one hiphop radio was always
         | generation 88.2 :-P
         | 
         | SkyRock even has rock in its name.
         | 
         | Just being playful :o)
        
       | rurban wrote:
       | Still missing Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol
        
       | VikingCoder wrote:
       | Hip-Hop Evolution on Netflix is really, really good. [1]
       | 
       | Hip-hop is for sure not my favorite genre - but this series was
       | fantastic.
       | 
       | [1] : https://www.netflix.com/watch/80141893?trackId=200257859
        
         | Ductapemaster wrote:
         | Historically, I've only casually listened to the genre through
         | friends or events. However, watching this show gave me such a
         | new appreciation for the stories of the performers, the
         | inspiration for their music, where the different styles come
         | from, and the sheer brilliance of the producers and artists. It
         | completely changed my opinion and respect for the genre.
         | 
         | I can't recommend the show highly enough. My partner and I have
         | watched it through at least twice.
        
       | steve76 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | arkaic wrote:
       | The same goes for lots of the underground hardcore music. So much
       | of it isn't even on spotify or it is but with the wrong year.
       | Thankfully there are still existing blogspots that still house
       | those rare LP rars
        
       | darig wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | Lolaccount wrote:
       | https://archive.li/DtOVI
        
       | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
       | Rap is like a set-up, a lot of games
       | 
       | A lot of suckers with colorful names
       | 
       | I'm so-and-so, I'm this, I'm that
       | 
       | Huh, but they all just wick-wick-wack
        
         | porterbeats wrote:
         | Hip-hop can be bland and shallow (like any other genre) but
         | there's lots of unique and interesting music if one takes the
         | time to get into it. Deltron 3030 (self titled) and MF DOOM's
         | MM...FOOD are fantastic on a lyrical and production level
        
           | harrylove wrote:
           | The parent comment is quoting a classic bar from "My
           | Philosophy" by Boogie Down Productions[0].
           | 
           | [0] - https://genius.com/376131
        
             | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
             | Thanks. Seems like my comment's getting downvoted which I
             | hope is just people not familiar with KRS-One.
             | 
             | Edit: Never mind, it's gone positive now.
        
               | chiefalchemist wrote:
               | Which in the context of this thread / OP is proof that
               | the history must not only be preserved, but must be
               | promoted, honored, etc.
               | 
               | I could of year ago I work at an agency and one of the
               | new dev starter and said something about being into hip
               | hop. I mentioned Rakim and the reply was, "Who?" Don't
               | get me wrong, I respect Nas, Eminem, etc. (i.e., all the
               | lyrical magicians) but they stand on the shoulders of The
               | R.
        
               | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
               | Not knowing Rakim would be fighting talk round my way.
               | 
               | A friend asked me a while ago to give him a list of the
               | top ten (or fifteen) hip hop tracks that are important to
               | me or the development of hip hop. I wasn't sure whether
               | to include Last Poets as one of the first "rap" groups or
               | whether Gil Scott-Heron should be considered the jazz
               | ancestor. However, I then got stuck around the Tribe
               | Called Quest and Busta Rhymes era.
               | 
               | Obviously, "Follow The Leader" was my choice of Rakim
               | track, but I'm having trouble with picking a single Tribe
               | track - should really be the whole of Low End Theory
               | along with a cheat sheet of the significant jazz samples
               | that Q-Tip used.
        
               | chiefalchemist wrote:
               | Because it samples Grace Jones' "Slave to the Rhythm", I
               | would have to go with "Bonita Applebum" (UK Remix). OK,
               | maybe there are better ATCQ efforts but the vibe, sample
               | and length (9+ minutes) make it a gem.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXeJA5plkD8
               | 
               | p.s. While there are so many memorable Rakim tracks and
               | lyrics, I always like to point out the overlooked "What's
               | on Your Mind". It's fookin' poetic genius. The images so
               | vivid.
               | 
               | The line about Liz Claiborne...you can smell it.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlm2E4fb7E
               | 
               | Edit: Video w/ lyrics:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ENkIho8m4
        
               | harrylove wrote:
               | If I had to pick one ATCQ track that satisfies the
               | condition, I'd pick "Jazz (We've Got)" which has a couple
               | of samples from "Green Dolphin Street" plus the drums
               | from "Don't Change Your Love".
        
               | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
               | I was more thinking of choosing between Check The Rhime
               | (Grover Washington Jr. and a sublime use of Minnie
               | Ripperton) as it's got such a kicking beat or Scenario
               | (Brother Jack McDuff and a bit of Hendrix) due to its
               | influence and being such a stand-out introduction to
               | Busta Rhymes.
               | 
               | Or Award Tour (Charles Earland, Weldon Irvine) or maybe
               | just cheat and go for Excursions and Buggin Out (what a
               | way to start an album).
        
               | harrylove wrote:
               | Agree on all fronts. Would also add Oh My God just for
               | the Busta Rhymes inclusion.
        
               | giantrobot wrote:
               | Fuck. You guys made me want to grab my ATCQ albums out of
               | the garage. My ears will be far happier than my lower
               | back.
               | 
               | *shakes fist*
        
               | chiefalchemist wrote:
               | Mind if I drop by...and break into your garage? :)
        
               | giantrobot wrote:
               | You can dig through the top layer of junk. It'll save my
               | back for going through the second layer.
        
           | lawgimenez wrote:
           | There's a lot of great producers too on hiphop if one just
           | takes time to appreciate the difficulty of creating a beat.
        
             | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
             | There was a cool website featured on here a little while
             | back about Dilla-time.
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36189583
             | 
             | https://pudding.cool/2023/06/groove/
        
         | mytailorisrich wrote:
         | Too many MC's take that word 'emcee' lightly.
         | 
         | They can't Move a Crowd, not even slightly.
        
         | aswanson wrote:
         | Kris Parker on Hacker News. The planets have aligned.
        
           | jimt1234 wrote:
           | You might get a kick out of this:
           | https://www.youtube.com/@djkennyparker/videos
        
           | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
           | Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone
        
             | jimt1234 wrote:
             | The Teacher!
        
               | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
               | In about four seconds, a teacher will begin to speak
        
               | aswanson wrote:
               | Let us begin...
        
       | kawsper wrote:
       | In Denmark we had MyMusic.dk, which later rebranded to
       | Bandbase.dk, they were active from 1998 to 2013, they stored a
       | lot of free underground music for a lot of up and coming artists.
       | 
       | They died when their data host Nirvanix went bankrupt, they lost
       | all of the media files (with no backups), but according to
       | Wikipedia customers were given 14 days to move their data.
       | 
       | A lot of culture disappeared that day :(
        
         | FirmwareBurner wrote:
         | _> customers were given 14 days to move their data_
         | 
         | 14 days is not nearly enough for private customers to react.
         | Often vacations can be longer than that, and people don't
         | usually vacation with their laptops and external HDDs to places
         | with fast broadband, just in case they need to make a
         | spontaneous external backup of their cloud data. Imagine by the
         | time you come home all your data is irrecoverably gone. That's
         | fucking nuts.
         | 
         | Should be at least 30 days by law.
        
           | ilamont wrote:
           | I recently got a <24 hour notice of a major price change from
           | a Shopify app developer. On a Sunday.
           | 
           | While not a backup-related issue, it forced a scramble on my
           | end. I am sure hundreds of others didn't see it or couldn't
           | react until well after the fact.
           | 
           | Shopify said this is allowed per its developer TOS.
        
             | FirmwareBurner wrote:
             | _> Shopify said this is allowed per its developer TOS._
             | 
             | Without any kind of legislation saying otherwise, these
             | companies can put whatever the fuck they want in the TOS,
             | which is the cheat code that allowed tech companies to
             | extract obscene profits while completely skipping on
             | customer support costs and legal liability.
             | 
             | But this could always come to an end if there's political
             | will to legislate. In my home country a new law was passed
             | that says companies can't keep you on hold for more than 10
             | minutes before you talk to a real human when you call
             | customer support, and now companies are scrambling to hire
             | enough customer support to deal with the new law because
             | previously they'd leave you in a queue for 45 minutes on
             | hold hoping you'd give up.
             | 
             | So it's definitely possible to not fuck over consumers, all
             | it needs is the proper regulations in place since you can't
             | always rely on the good will of for-profit corporations.
             | Yes, that will make it more expensive for tech businesses
             | to operate and reduce their profit margins, but if your
             | business was supposed to be profitable only when skirting
             | the law, not offering customer support, and fucking over
             | your customers on a whim, then I don't need your business
             | to exist in the first place.
        
               | mywittyname wrote:
               | Perhaps companies who are effected need to class action
               | this behavior, since there's clear economic damages that
               | can result.
               | 
               | The spectre of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit is probably
               | going to be much more effective at encouraging "fair"
               | behavior on these platforms than any sort of legislation
               | could ever be. If legislation says 30 days, then 30 days
               | it shall be. But if a court rules whatever is reasonable
               | amount of time for a customer to act without suffering
               | economic damages, then we might see some due diligence to
               | ensure smooth migrations.
        
               | FirmwareBurner wrote:
               | Many global jurisdictions don't have the class action
               | lawsuit framework system, it's mostly the US/Anglo
               | countries that do.
               | 
               | That's why the law baseline is important. It's how
               | warranties must be 2 years across all EU.
        
         | lexandstuff wrote:
         | In Australia, we had ozhiphop.com/forum.
         | 
         | It was a super active forum between 2001 - 2010. Really the
         | only online meeting place for local hip-hop until social media
         | took over. It was the launching place of many careers
         | (including Action Bronson's albeit indirectly).
         | 
         | Sadly all seems to be lost to history too.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-08-15 23:01 UTC)