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Published Fall 1998 -
Underground Fire Magazine Issue #4
A lot of time is spent examining the various sociological elements of
Rap and hip-hop. People are constantly focusing on the issues of
cultural identity and the relationship between artist and audience. Rap
is all too frequently categorized as nothing more than a political
entity, and therefore the musical intricacies of the art form are
over-looked. It is crucial that there be dialogue about the complex
musical components within rap, or else music scholars and members of
"high society" will continue to look down their noses at
hip-hop as simply an interesting urban phenomenon with no music merit.
Rap's structural make up can be divided into two main areas: beats and
lyrics. On one hand, rap beats are admittedly very harmonically simple.
Rap beats rarely contain more than three or four harmonic changes, and
these changes are normally very conservative (meaning they rarely
venture outside of common practice tonality). On the other hand, less
can be more. The simple and repetitive harmonies require that the short
repeated segment of music be refined and appealing. It is a very
difficult task to create a five second segment of material that is
interesting even after being repeated over and over, but talented
producers (the artists responsible for making the beats) succeed at
doing just this. Also, rap is mostly electronic and not acoustic, so rap
producers have a huge instrumental vocabulary to work with. A standard
rock band will have guitar, drums, bass, and vocals. A string quartet
must have two violins, a viola, and a cello. But rap producers are not
limited in any way by instrumental combinations. This instrumental
freedom allows for a greater window of creativity, and as we have seen
rap takes on a myriad of different sounds and styles. Finally, although
rap is harmonically simple, the rhythms contained in the drum parts are
very intricate. Much like sophisticated classical music, drums in rap
make use of syncopation, polyrhythms, and the use of 32nd and 64th note
phrases. There is definitely a lot more complexity in rap tracks than
most people seem to realize.
Perhaps the biggest misinterpretation about rap music is that because
the text is spoken and not sung the music is simple or
"primitive". Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone
who believes that a prominent lyrical melody is a necessary ingredient
for a valid song needs to exercise greater open-mindedness and/or brush
up on the number of different factors contained in the definition of
musicianship. What rap lyrics lack in melodic shape, they more than make
up for in rhythmic complexity and highly developed text. In fact, rap
very well might be the most complex rhythmic lyrical music ever. If you
attempt to dictate the exact rhythms of the lyrics in any given rap
song, you will find this to be a nearly impossible task. The human voice
is an extremely diverse musical instrument, and rap makes use of the
voices many devices. In addition to vocal complexity, rap is unique in
the fact that the artist has an excess of lyrics with which to convey
thoughts and ideas. Unlike many genres of music where artists can hide
behind innuendoes and vague meaning, MCs must detail the purpose of each
song. In this aspect, rappers are forced to develop concepts and be
elaborate, and that is a very demanding creative process.
It is my hope, as rap becomes more and more familiar to people across
various demographic populations, that people will begin to examine
hip-hop for it's social AND musical qualities and start to treat rap as
the sophisticated musical art form that it really is.
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