WEBVTT - Black Music Month with Mark Anthony Neal & 9th Wonder – Lab 068 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:03.600 It's warm outside. It's cookout season. Oh yeah, and you 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:07.840 know I'm ready to gear up the playlists. Oh yes, 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:12.720 the playlist can make or break the vibes of any cookout. Anyone. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.960 You put the wrong song in the wrong order, it's 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.320 a rap. Remember when we made a playlist, a cookout playlist. Yes, 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:20.239 you gave me a little bit of smoke. People gave 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:22.320 me a little bit of smoke because I was adding 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:27.400 some contemporary rap to the plays, like TT, You've got 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:28.760 this all the way messed up. And I was like, 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:30.480 y'all don't like a little dash of. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:35.520 Some As my Auntie there A said, that's where the kickback. Okay, 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.239 the to be okay for all generations. 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:41.640 Fair, fair, fair. Some people didn't like my playlist. I 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:45.879 think that that's just fine. I'm open to criticism. 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:48.400 Well, it's a perfect time to think about the playlist 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:50.400 and the music you choose, and really the music all 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.640 around us. Because this month is Black Music Month, which 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.840 was formally recognized by the United States in nineteen seventy 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.560 nine with President Jimmy Carter. And I feel like it 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:01.280 took too long. 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.680 Okay, Yes, I'm TT and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:27.600 This is Dope Labs. 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.960 Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.760 pop culture, and a healthy dost of friendship. It's Black 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.840 Music Month, so this week we're celebrating black music and 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.120 getting into the history, the culture, the politics, all of 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.240 it with some very special guests. We really wanted to 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:50.360 know more about the roots of hip hop and jazz 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.280 and how black music and artists have been at the 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.520 forefront of popular culture and what's next in music. Let's 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:08.720 get into the recitation. Okay, so what do we know? 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.960 Sometimes you'll hear people say black pop culture or black 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:13.120 culture is everywhere, and. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.079 It's not wrong. But I think we have the level 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.760 set when we talk about black music because terms and 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.480 phrases evolve over time and their meanings do too. Black 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.440 music is not just hip hop, rap and R and B. 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.720 When we say black music, we're referencing the history of 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:33.600 music created, performed, and celebrated by black artists and audiences. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.200 We also know that black music is popular absolutely. I 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:41.080 think we also know that black music influences other genres 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:44.480 of music heavily. We know that you can draw lines 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:49.000 from rock and roll back to it being created by 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.400 black people. We also know music can be a tool 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.400 for politics and has been. There's a rich history of that, 0:02:55.680 --> 0:03:01.160 tracing back to instructional messaging or whether it's obvious at 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:05.320 first glance or at first listen or not, reflections of struggle, 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:11.120 a way to carry on storytelling, particularly storytelling with political themes. Absolutely, 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:13.799 And I think another thing that we know is that 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.960 the hip hop rap scene used to be kind of 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.760 like a fringe genre where it was just like very 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.600 specific people. But now we see hip hop and rap 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.720 being incorporated into a lot of pop, so it's all 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.800 over the pop charts. Yeah, black culture is everywhere, like 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.520 straight up and down anyway you slice it one hundred. 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:33.520 So we understand all of that, and I think we 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.200 have accepted a lot of those things, the pervasive influence 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.640 of black culture in both black music and popular music, 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.920 really music all over, and it feels like that's often 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:46.440 taken for granted in society. But what do we want 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.880 to know specifically tit. I want to know the specific 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:56.000 influences that the black music of the past has on 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.720 to day's black music. Like I know it's there, we 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.240 know it's there, but I want to know in some 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.600 of the ways that might not be absolutely apparent to 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.720 all people that this is rooted in black culture. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.200 Yeah, like you want the footnotes, yes, you want to 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.480 give me all the afran wants the citations, Okay. And 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.320 I'm really interested in not just the people, because sometimes 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.320 folks don't get credited, and we know how history can 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:27.040 be massaged, and so I'm interested in the sonic relationships 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.640 between the music we see today and earlier genres that 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.080 are still booming, like jazz and soul. 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.880 And I'm really curious about how the messaging in hip 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.960 hop has changed in recent decades. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.080 And if we look back, we got to look forward. 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.599 What's the future of black music looking like. We're seeing 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.760 increasing popularity, which also can invite this other cousin, which 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:55.360 is appropriation. And we're also seeing academia take a look 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:56.560 at hip. 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:57.480 Hop and black music. 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.479 And so I think it's really interesting to to kind 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.039 of project and say what might it look like in 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.279 the next ten to twenty, maybe even fifty years. 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:21.680 Let's jump into the dissection. Our guests for today are 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.760 doctor Mark Anthony Neil and Ninth Wonder. 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.279 Mark Anthony Neil, James B. Duke, Distinguished Professor of African 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.360 African American Studies at Duke University. I am born and 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.680 raised from the place that we affectionately call the Bookie 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:38.000 Down Bronx, aka the home of hip hop. 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:43.680 Ninth Wonder, producer, college professor, DJ Avid, basketball junkie, and 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:46.200 father of a French bulldog. 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.000 Doctor Neil and Ninth Wonder are both professors and Duke 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.799 University's African and African American Studies Department. Professor Neil also 0:05:55.880 --> 0:06:00.360 teaches classes in English and gender, sexuality and feminist studies 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.839 and has published several books on Black popular culture and 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:08.080 Ninth Wonder is also a rapper, record executive and producer 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:12.800 who worked with Mary J. Blige, Jay Z Drake, Destiny's Child, 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:17.279 Kendrick Lamar, J Cole, Eric Abadu, Mac Miller. The list 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.600 goes on and on and on. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.320 So when you look across the music genres, and you 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:24.400 don't even really have to look that deep, it becomes 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:28.360 really clear that Black musical artistry and its influence spans 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.039 so many different categories of music. So we can trace 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:33.720 back the spirituals and folk music to blues, to rock 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:35.559 and roll, the jazz, and then the hip hop. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:37.039 The roots of all of these. 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.520 Genres are steeped in black culture. We ask doctor Neil 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:42.839 to explain just how strong those roots are. 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:47.160 It is everywhere we talk about classical music, right, and 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.640 we think about European cats with white wigs and Beethoven, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.480 all those kind of folks, But that's not in the 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:58.240 music that originated in the US. America's classical music is 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.320 Black music, and most specifically, jazz music is America's classical 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.880 art form. There's very few examples of popular music in 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.400 the US in twenty twenty two that have not been 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.880 touched by the influence of black roots music. In some aspect, 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.720 it's been the soundtrack to not only black struggle, but 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:21.880 American struggle. It's been the soundtrack to American patriotism, whether 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:23.880 or not black folks wanted that to be the case 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:26.200 or not. And of course it is a soundtrack to 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:27.880 buying and selling in America. 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:28.200 Right. 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.680 You can't watch a McDonald's commercial or any other commercial 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.800 without some sort of reference to black musical styles in 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:35.600 that context. 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.960 Those are some really great points, especially about how classical 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.560 music in the United States is black music, and today's 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:49.240 popular music is at least influenced by black music and culture. 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.320 If it isn't that explicitly. It really is. Even what 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:56.480 he's saying about the McDonald's commercial that R and B 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:01.280 is not random behind them to night, It's really not. 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:04.000 And what we're doing now is thinking about music as 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.720 this soundtrack to struggle or commerce or just everyday life. 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:09.520 And so it makes a lot of sense that music 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.920 can serve as a historical signpost for what's going on 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:13.960 in the culture. 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:18.200 Music is a signal, a capturing of things that are 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.920 going on in the culture. Right, So if you want 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.520 to know what's happening with black people, all you have 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.240 to do is listening to the music at any given error. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.320 If you are marching from outer space and you landed 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.960 in nineteen sixty four and you heard Curtis Mayfield and 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.640 the Impression singing keep on Pushing, or you heard Sam 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.360 Cook singing the Change is going to come, or without 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.640 knowing what was going on, you would immediately know what 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:44.000 was going on in that moment. 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:49.880 Okay, stop. Not so many ways that stories or messages 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.480 get passed down, and music is one of those. And 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.480 when you look at music, there are so many ways 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.439 within music that we pass down stories and messages. And 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.000 we're going to get into that later. In the episod. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.040 So, but first we wanted to take a closer look 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.800 at some of the foundational elements of black music and 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.440 trace how those ideas have evolved throughout genres over time. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.600 Before we start tracing these I think we have to 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.360 acknowledge a major part of Black music that we're not 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:17.480 going to talk about TT right right, and that's the influence. 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:18.440 Of the Negro spiritual. 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.560 So when we think about musical devices, particularly African musical 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.840 devices that are part of Black American or African American culture, 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.840 So rhythms, melodies, and beats, that's what people who were 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.240 stolen from Africa, that's what they had. They kept what 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:33.120 they could of their culture, and we see that in 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.319 the music. And we definitely see that in like Negro 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:39.640 spirituals and that influence work songs, you know, the songs 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:42.600 people saying while they were working in fields and doing 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.559 this really hard labor. Gospel music and also in blues 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.240 and those things influenced jazz. I'm interested in that concept 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.520 of barring, remixing, sampling, referencing, and reframing that is integral 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:58.240 and intentional to Black music. 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.480 Yes, that feels like the first brick of building the 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:07.040 house of hip hop, Doctor Neil breaks it down. 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:11.439 So whenever you hear black music, you're hearing musicians very 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:16.720 consciously sampling and drawing from traditions that came before them. 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.400 If you're listening to Bebop in the nineteen forties, it's 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:22.720 a Childiebird Parker pulling a tune from Tin Pan Alley 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.640 and doing a little improvisation. Most of what we know 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:30.080 as hip hop is sample based hip hop, drawing specifically 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.840 from existing recorded music, and at least in the early 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.560 days of hip hop, that was specifically these things that 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.240 we call breakbeats, these kind of highly rhythmic parts, James 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.800 Brown probably being the most notable example of that tradition 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.760 and being able to extend them in a loop. At 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:49.440 the time, it was a DJ right who was doing 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:51.960 the loop. These days, obviously it's all kind of tech 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.040 machines and samplers. 0:10:54.559 --> 0:11:01.160 Set up, thanks set up. It makes a lot of 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.080 sense that funk and soul has a huge impact on 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:07.319 hip hop. A lot of the elements from funk and 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:11.480 soul show up in hip hop. James Brown, aka the 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.800 Godfather of Soul, is the most sample artist of all time. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:18.160 And then the drum break improvised by Clyde Stubblefield, who 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:20.640 often worked with James Brown, and he's on James Brown 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.679 song Funky Drummer is one of the most sampled songs 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:28.679 in hip hop. The name of those tunes up on Drama, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:34.240 imp on your drama. It's such a connected web. 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:36.520 Once you start looking at how many times somebody has 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:38.360 been sampled, you know you have to ask her. 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:39.720 Are you talking about just sampling the beat? 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.640 Are you talking about sampling the lyrics and quoting those right? 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.800 Are you talking about, you know, covering somebody song exactly? 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.360 And when it comes to James Brown, all of the above, 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.000 you know all of the above. And the really big 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.040 thing to note is that if he's a most sampled artist, 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.959 that the second most sampled artist. 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.880 The group is not even close, not even half of 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:04.760 the amount of times that he's been sampled. 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:08.679 Basically, what we hear now is often a refabrication of 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.080 sounds and sites and things that we heard before. Everybody 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:14.840 lost their mind listening to Silk Sonic some new song 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.360 and I'm like, well, you know that's a love train, right. 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:19.600 I'm like, well, I've been listening to the original love 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:24.800 Train right for forty years by Confunction, So everything that's 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:31.800 new is not new. 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.080 Got a listen. Confunction did it first. 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:43.080 And I love Bruno and Anderson aka djp Wee a lot, 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:47.800 but it's hard to fight confunction. Confunction ran so that 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:52.079 they could hobble behind them. So you know, we can 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.679 trace the connection between soul, funk, and R and B 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.320 to hip hop. But there's also this connection between jazz 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.920 and hip hop. Two ninth Wonder, along with a musicians 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.160 Robert Glasper, Ters Martin and Kamasi Washington, released an album 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.200 recently called Dinner Party. And this is an album that 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:20.480 really shows explicit connection between jazz and hip hop, But 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:24.080 what about some of those earlier influences where we see 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:26.280 some of that same borrowing from jazz. 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.880 One of the reasons why myself, Kamasi, Robert Glasper and 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.400 Tares Martin did Dinner Party was to show that kind 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:34.560 of bridge it's always been there because you got some 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.319 jazz cats that don't really job with hip hop like that, 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.200 but you have some new age hip hoppers that know 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.920 nothing about jazz, and we were trying to show in 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:43.800 a section of the two. 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.040 So there's the sampling of music, but then there's also 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.360 musical influence on lyrical delivery. 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.200 When the idea of rap flow started to change, like 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:55.520 in the early eighties, you know, the Curtis Blows and 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:57.440 the Houdini's and all of them had the same type 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:04.360 of you know rap flow, Prince Twish and Braks to 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.480 but when Rock Kim came along, he made the distinct 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.640 relation to I get a lot of my flows from 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.200 John Coltrane, how he plays the sax, and also the 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.640 notorious Big said, I listened to Max Roach. There was 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.920 a older gentleman in his neighborhood who played him Max 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:28.600 Roach records, and he learned different syncopations and different rhythms 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:30.920 with his voice. 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.480 Max Roach was a drummer and composer, and he's known 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.960 as a pioneer of bebop and one of the most 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:40.920 important drummers of all time. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.640 You know, like doctor Neil said, Rock Kim kind of 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.760 changed things. We went from Curtis Blow with these are 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:50.360 the breaks, You're like, what felt like kind of stiff rapping, 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.480 and then we went to kind of floey rapping with 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.280 Rock Kim and someone who's even more recent, who really 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.720 should be credited if he hasn't been enough for his 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.080 ability to kind of change the course of hip hop 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:04.640 is q. 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:09.080 Tip ram truck, what as sea bull point something with 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.720 a gold rode ain't nothing the r I'm the hood 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.320 with it. Ninth highlights q Tip, who is a solo 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.080 artist and also a member of a tricoll Quest. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:20.320 I teach you hip Hop production class and one of 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.600 the guests we had on Zoom one day was q Tip. 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:24.960 From a trib Call quest A trib Call Quest. It 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.920 sound and the musical contributions of the individual members had 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.840 a huge fingerprint on music transitioning in the late eighties 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:33.520 to nineties. 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:34.600 I wanted to know. 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.840 Why in the late eighties hip hop shifted from a 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:41.000 lot of soul sampling a lot of James Brown, James Brown, 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.280 James Brown, to Les McCann and Roy ayres right and 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.160 q Tip is like the genesis of that, q Tip said, 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:50.800 man I grew up in a neighborhood around Weldon Irvine, 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.080 and I'm like, what, like what is that? 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:53.840 Like? 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:56.680 Weldon Irvine and a lot of jazz cast that he 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.960 grew up around influenced the sound that change of generation. 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.800 Weldon Irvine was a musician and artists. He's most known 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.160 for his song Morning Sunrise, which came out in nineteen 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.400 seventy nine, and that sampled on Jay Z's track Dear 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:20.480 Summer and that came out in two thousand and five. 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:22.760 He was a mentor to many hip hop artists in 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.880 New York as well as Nina Simone's musical director. So 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:27.480 you know that's big, just that. 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:28.600 Texture of music. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.040 We call him top of the family tree because with 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:35.200 our Q tip, you don't have common most quality, badu jail, 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:38.600 little brother, slum village, the roots outcast, like I can 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.440 go a whole family tree of people that doesn't exist 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.320 because of Q tip. And it's all because he started 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.080 to dig into roy Airs more than he started digging 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:47.880 to James Brown. 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.240 And so that gives us this transition from music that 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.720 sounded off funky and chopped up like James Brown with 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.280 the funky drummer, to a much smoother sound with Roy Airs. 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:07.320 I say everything begins with Benita Applebum. 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:11.600 Benita apple Bum, like sound wise became the genesis of 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:14.520 every laid back hip hop song that you know. 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:16.840 Benita Applebum is the one. 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:23.600 Banina alta Appaum said to kind of put me on 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:28.280 Beanina Alpam, And that's a roy Airs produced group called Ramp. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.280 It's that feel good time for euphorias. So from the 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.760 way we rhyme to the textures that we use like 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.960 jazz is it. And on top of that, jazz and 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.880 hip hop leans on one thing together and that's improvisation. 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.800 It's all about making stuff up. This is the sixties 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:47.119 and your cold trained the loneliest monk on stage as 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:50.119 the mother cast, Charlieburry Parker and that having like a 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.480 quintet session. You couldn't get up on that stage unless 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.080 you were ready to be able to hang with that 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.240 particular jam session. It's the same thing with them seeing 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:04.960 if you you see Black Thought, Royster five nine, Rhapsody Nas, 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.479 some of the greatest worstments of our time on stage 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:10.959 in a cipher. If you want to call yourself an 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:13.280 MC and get your chops up, you better be ready 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:15.560 to get on stage and get in the cipher and 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:16.399 don't break the cipher. 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:17.760 But definitely hip. 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.800 Hop bars a lot from jazz with that kind of 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:23.359 like vetting system of guards. System is like a badger 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:25.880 honor almost you can't be called one of us unless 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:26.560 you do this. 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.480 So now we're talking about hip hop borrowing from jazz 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.520 in both musical sampling and in the delivery of rap 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.800 flow lyrical flow. And then also we're talking about hip 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.760 hop borrowing from jazz in the process of kind of 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:42.879 like this writes a passage about who gets to be 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.120 called it, who gets to be called a jazz musician, 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.240 who gets to be called a hip hop artist. It 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.320 feels really heavily layered. Hip hop is Black music, and 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.320 it's also some of the most popular music in our culture. 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.440 Like we said earlier, black music is American music, just 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.680 like black culture is American culture. I think we're seeing 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:03.560 that more and more today with the growing influence of 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:05.520 hip hop on popular culture. 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.480 Hip hop has now become scared for a lot of 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:10.760 people to say, but if hip hop is not Americana, 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:15.240 especially because of the consumption of streams and the music business, 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.119 but also by the fashion, by the talk, by the slang. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:23.680 More and more each day I see other racists saying 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.320 things that we made up in the street is everywhere, 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.920 will continue to be everywhere. People are already fascinated with 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:34.200 black bodies anyway, they're definitely fascinated with black rappers still 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.200 to this day that so many older white men they 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:40.720 are fascinated that if they know a young black rapper 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.679 like it puts them in a different space. The thing 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:45.920 I see a lot of people say is street crib. 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:49.199 It's always been a part of America and it's going 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:52.960 to continue to grow when more enlightened people get older, 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.399 especially young white Americans that like the Jimmy Fallers of 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.960 the world, and who has the roots as there Tonight's 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.440 show bands right, all the casts on Sports Center who 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.480 didn't grow up listening to Johnny Cash or grew up 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:07.240 listening to nas I mean, what do we. 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:07.639 Do with that. 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:13.200 It's not even just older white men's America. Yeah, it's 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.719 in general. It's like, hey, I know this thing. I mean, 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:18.960 we see it all over social media where folks are 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:23.480 using African American English and not using it correctly a 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.560 lot of the time, and they feel like it's a 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.560 way to give themselves streetcred, like just to make themselves cooler. 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:31.720 But what they're trying to do is get as close 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:34.240 to black as as they can without being black. 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:36.600 I knew things were really changing when it was the 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.800 Oscars I think of last year, and it was Glenn Close. 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.600 They asked her about DC Go Go and she started 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.000 talking about junk yard band and backyard band. 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:46.600 And rare asses, and I'm like, look at this man. 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:49.920 This is placed in one of the whitest spaces ever, 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:52.920 the Oscars, and just that type of thing shows you 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.680 that in order to be cool, in order to be creative, 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:57.840 in order to be on the cutting edge, you got 0:20:57.960 --> 0:20:59.120 to know what black people are doing. 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.919 And you know, we can't talk about these things without 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:04.760 talking about people who have been a part of this culture, 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.200 who have listened to this music, being outcasts or excluded 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.359 from things because they identified in this way, you know, 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:13.800 And that kind of gets us into like the cultural 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.240 appropriation of music and the culture that goes along with 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.280 black music. It's like who gets recognized, who gets credit? 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.560 And the thing about us that we still haven't figured out, 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.680 and we're just so free with our creative property or 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:31.320 intellectual property that it can be taken in a moment's 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.120 notice and put somewhere else. With so giving is people 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.080 we want to share what everybody not knowing it is 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:37.640 being taken from us every time. 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:41.040 Yeah, in the excitement, a lot of things get shared, 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:42.920 and that's how we get back to that cycle of 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.840 sharing versus then who's getting credit for these things who's 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:51.200 creating versus who's leveraging opportunities from the creation. Even recently, 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:54.280 Bad Bunny he has a hit called sapphi Era, and 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.840 part of the problem was is that he used some 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:01.320 of the beat from Me Elliott's two thousand and one 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:03.280 hit get Your Free Gone. We all know, Get Your 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:07.320 Free Gone, and didn't credit her, and so it was 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:11.760 never properly cleared with Missy and her team. So it's 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:13.760 a really long story. We'll put more about that in 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:16.320 the show notes, But this is something that is still 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:21.720 pervasive today. Culture is political, and music has definitely been 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:24.560