Hip Hop Hip?

Hip hop, to me, is like Indian food: I’m embarrassed to dismiss it almost completely, I’ve got to say.

I believe in art, I really do. I think envelopes need to be pushed, listeners need to be challenged, and stagnation equals death.

And the evolution of hip hop fits the musical ideals I cherish, seeing as how it evolved out of necessity, out of inner-city black youth’s desire to create something. They used the tools at hand (records, turntables, mics and words) to create something unique. Being a fan of a little bit of music that’s outside of the bounds of Western scales, like Pakistani and African stuff, I bristle when people turn their noses up when music doesn’t fit their preconceived notions.

I saw an interview with a reggae musician once, and he talked about how music can be everywhere. I forget who he was, but he said that even car keys on a table can create music. I agree. Find sounds, blend tones and rhythms and vocals (or not) and see what the hell comes out, you know?

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Hip hop, however, almost never moves me, and frankly, for a man who tries to be broad-minded where music is concerned, this is embarrassing.

I’m not apologizing though. Taste is taste, ultimately. You like chocolate, I like vanilla… No one wins a subjectivity debate.

But there’s something about hip hop that, top to bottom, doesn’t work for me.

Who killed hip hop? The suspects:

I suspect the lack of melody. Deconstructing music is a terrific idea, but when you reconstruct it without melody, I guess this Beatles baby gets left out.

The subject matter. God knows some bright, creative wordsmiths are out there today, but for every group like the Roots there are 50 buffoons talking about who’s a ho and bling bling and 40s. Hell, I’m not exactly part of the demographic, right?

Artificial sounds. I know loops and samples and drum machines and the like are, in theory, endlessly creative. Snip this, nick that, stretch everything else… And maybe you’ve done something creative by building a new beat from a Curtis Mayfield sample melded with a Maceo Parker sax lick, with doomsday bass rattling underneath. But it sort of works out like jazz jams: To everyone except the music fanatics who can pinpoint how clever what you’ve constructed is, it’s just a pastiche of weird sounds.

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And you know, the most effective musical sounds, to me, are “organic.” That is, they originate from vibrating sources, like drum heads and guitar strings. Dating back to the 80s, when canned synth sounds took over the world while I spent hours murdering my fingers, falling in love with guitar strings, I concluded that real sounds resonate physically and emotionally. Turntable scratches (which don’t even lend rhythm to most songs and in fact sound like we’re listening to R2D2 contract laryngitis) are about as soulful as all those Flock of Haircuts synthesized sounds. Ditto for drum machines.

Hip hop is supposed to have soul, but it’s built from sonic blocks not far removed from some of the whitest, blandest music ever.

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Again, I’m not apologizing. I’m just saying that I continue to be a bit surprised that my broad taste in music, which takes me from Texas to Timbuktu, almost never includes hip hop, and I find that strange.

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THEBOY'S friend Sterling is coming for a sleep-over tonight. I think they’ll have a grand time, though I’m not sure how much sleep anyone in the house is going to get.

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Kelli may take the kids to Corsicana tomorrow. It could end up being the only day I have completely to myself until the Christmas break between semesters.

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Friday afternoon… life is getting better by the minute.