Progressive rap

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Progressive rap
Stylistic origins
Cultural origins1980s–1990s, United States
Typical instruments
  • Vocals
  • sampler
  • bass
  • keyboard
  • drums
  • guitar
Derivative forms
Other topics

Progressive rap (or progressive hip hop)

conscious, underground, and alternative hip hop
.

Progressive rap music

Black religiosity. Unlike the genre's more commercially-dominant counterpart gangsta rap, prog-rap artists typically disavow intracultural violence and economic materialism in favor of constructive and educational responses such as consciousness, uplift, heritage
, humor, and activism.

Productions in the genre often take on avant-garde approaches and wide-ranging influences, such as jazz, rock, and soul. Examples have included the works of De La Soul, Fugees, Outkast, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar. The music of such acts, especially in the 21st century, has impacted the mainstream sensibilities of hip hop while countering racist stereotypes pervasive in Western popular culture.

Themes and characteristics

See also:
Hip hop and progressive music

While progressive hip-hop culture functions as the voice of resistance for America's black youth, it also provides a blueprint for the possibilities of social change and has been utilized as a politicizing tool to inform youth about significant social problems.

— Shawn Ginwright (2004)[2]

Progressive rap music is defined by its critical themes around societal concerns such as

structural inequalities and political responsibility. According to Lincoln University professor and author Emery Petchaur, artists in the genre frequently analyze "structural, systematic, and reproduced" sources of oppression and inequality in the world,[3] while Anthony B. Pinn of Rice University describes it as a form of hip hop that examines dehumanizing social conditions and cycles of poverty "producing limited life options and despair".[4] Meanwhile, academics Shawn Ginwright and Julio Cammarota observe critiques of racism, colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy that are intended to raise consciousness of social issues and politicize young people into activism.[5] Petchaur, drawing from her experiences teaching high school, adds that the music frequently makes connections to critical consciousness that can variously shape the intellectual sensibilities of young students who are "deeply invested in hip hop".[3]

In the context of other rap forms, progressive hip hop is identified as a thematic subset alongside "status rap", which expresses concerns about

Black religiosity".[6] In a corollary analysis, fellow scholar Evelyn L. Parker says that progressive rap "seeks to transform systems of injustice by transforming the perspective of their victims" while demonstrating "the clear prophetic voice reflecting the rage caused by the dehumanizing injustices that African Americans experience".[7]

Progressive hip hop has been noted for often overlapping with counterpart forms such as gangsta and status rap, as "rappers may display characteristics of more than one category on a particular album or during the course of their career", according to the CERCL Writing Collective.

hip hop's golden era
:

It can include everything from jazz-like improvisation to rock-ish noise, from hard-edged politics to avant-gardist abstraction. What these artists have in common is moving beyond hip-hop's obsession with materialism and turf wars, and making good on its initial promise of experimentalism and adventure.[12]

Patronage

Progressive rapper Kendrick Lamar (left) alongside US President Barack Obama (center) and prog-soul singer Janelle Monáe, 2016

Intellectuals and

people of color" otherwise elusive educational resources while mitigating differences between the various groups inside and outside the culture: "It is in those halls where philanthropists, benefactors, and supporters of the arts, will not only appreciate this history but also witness first-hand the innovative work being done to enhance humanity through the world's most dominant youth culture."[11]

Fashion

As with

valorization of African cultural heritage.[13]

History

1980s–1990s: Early developments

Cover print of De La Soul's 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising

Public Enemy are cited by both Pinn and Parker as formative examples of progressive rap.[6][7] Parker specifically highlights "The Message" for how it communicates anger about chaotic urban life, particularly in the refrain: "Don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge / I'm tryin' not to lose my head / It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under."[6][7] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, political hip hop emerged with an intellectual paradigm of Afrocentricity that shaped the element of discourse in progressive rap.[14]

At the turn of the 1990s, groups such as

Mos Def.[17]

While highly successful with critics, the progressive rap music of this period failed to capture a sizable audience within hip hop's traditionalist base of artists and fans, who gravitated more toward hardcore stylings in the genre. De La Soul's 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, with its mix of collected sounds ranging from soul to psychedelic music, received widespread acclaim and sold well outside of the rap market. But the group's success was soon overshadowed by the sudden rise of gangsta rap in the early 1990s. "De La Soul went from the front of the hip-hop pack to the back of an appealing and colorful dead-end street", as Chris Nickson recounts.[18]

As hardcore and gangsta rap forms progressively dominated commercial hip hop in the 1990s, groups such as A Tribe Called Quest,

The Score and its supporting singles "Fu-Gee-La" and "Killing Me Softly". Seeking to restore a sense of musicality they believed had been lost among the Black underclass, the trio incorporated soulful melodies, harmonic refrains, and live instrumentation (bass, keyboard, drums, and guitar) that drew on reggae, doo-wop, and Latin influences, while performing tough-minded raps about socially conscious and urban realist ideas.[16]

I was so stupid, fighting for a block that I didn't even own, getting shot at and being near a lot of my friends when they got killed. I got lucky, because God felt like that wasn't my true role. I'm not gonna rap about that, like a lot of other rappers do in the name of 'keeping it real.' If you went through Vietnam and have flashbacks, you don't always want to talk about that stuff. I just want to live, be happy and chill.

— Pras of the Fugees (1996)[16]

The Fugees' individualistic style attracted a variety of audiences outside of the trio's hardcore fanbase while affiliating them with alternative hip hop, a designation they hated for suggesting only a fringe appeal to their music. "If we were truly 'alternative,' brothers in the 'hood wouldn't be getting with our music", Fugees member

P-Funk" samples, misogynistic attitudes, and luxury fantasies, while remaining distinct from "critically acclaimed but commercially cold [alternative] acts" such as Arrested Development, P.M. Dawn, and Digable Planets. "By redefining the creative center of hip-hop", Coker explained, "the trio is stepping out as the freshest and possibly most important progressive hip-hop act since De La Soul".[16]

By the late 1990s, progressive rap acts like Black Star and Juggaknots were helping inspire and shape what would become the underground hip hop subculture of the years that followed.[21] The underground scene in New York's West Village in particular helped establish the careers of future solo progressive rappers such as Black Star members Mos Def and Talib Kweli, as well as Jean Grae, although as a female rapper she struggled to attract interest from record labels.[22] Meanwhile, Fugees member Lauryn Hill had embarked on a solo career,[20] duetting with Common on his single "Retrospect for Life" (1997)[23] and releasing her hugely successful debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). XXL magazine said at the time that the album not only reveals Hill to be "the most exciting voice of a young, progressive hip-hop nation, it raises the standards for it."[24]

2000s: Competing in the mainstream

Mos Def
in 1999

In the early 2000s, some progressive-rap acts achieved mainstream success with records that "ruminated on hip-hop's

Grammy Award for their song "You Got Me" (1999), while Mos Def's acclaimed debut album Black on Both Sides (1999) received a Gold sales certification.[23] Both acts were frequent collaborators with Common and appeared on his commercially successful Like Water for Chocolate (2000).[23]

Drawing on influences from jazz,

Afrika Baby Bam expressed support for the younger artists and believed they were close to accomplishing their goal.[23]

They're not watering themselves down with the mainstream. They're strengthening their influence from within, and it's making people believe in what they're saying and what they're doing and look their way.

—

Afrika Baby Bam of Jungle Brothers (2000)[23]

Groups such as The Roots, Jurassic 5, and Dilated Peoples continued to release minor commercial breakthroughs during the first half of the decade.[12] Among the most eclectic prog-rap successes from the early 2000s, in Lewis's opinion, were Outkast's Stankonia (2000) and The Roots' Phrenology (2002).[25]

In 2003, Outkast released the experimental and eccentric double album

pop-soul hits "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move", the double album was a pivotal release in both rap and pop music, according to The Independent's Andy Gill, who predicted its standing "alongside the likes of 3 Feet High and Rising, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and The Marshall Mathers LP – the kind of album that changes the game completely, that renders its competitors suddenly obsolete and old-hat."[26]

André 3000 of Outkast in 2003

Later in the decade, Common and fellow Chicago hip hop artist Kanye West achieved further success with progressive rap records that explored contradictions in identity.[27] Particularly in West's case, it often gave "expression to positive rage against systems that oppress communities" in a way that Parker compares to Arrested Development.[28] On his debut album The College Dropout (2004), the rapper-producer infused pop music sensibilities into an otherwise "conscious or progressive hip-hop" which "melded intelligence and awareness with a stylish sense of cool that appealed to a broad range of fans", according to Darling, who also notes the contemporaneous success of the West-produced Common album Be (2005).[12] Highsnobiety writer Shahzaib Hussain recognizes West's opening trilogy of education-themed albums, including Late Registration (2005) and Graduation (2007), as "a triumvirate of uber-successful records that cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor".[29]

As industry sales declined past the mid 2000s, and other rap stars resorted to pop collaborations for mainstream appeal, West remained a highly profitable yet experimental artist impacting both pop and hip hop markets with progressive records like the Daft Punk-sampling "Stronger" (2007).[30] His commercial success during this period encouraged more rappers to gravitate toward the center of mainstream and alternative hip-hop forms,[12] "when this visionary megalomaniac was remaking the rap mainstream in his own image", as Stereogum's Chris Deville details.[31] Toward the end of the 2000s, while suffering losses in his personal life, West began to alienate the pop-culture audience with notorious on-air incidents and a polarizing departure in the downbeat and Auto-Tune-processed sounds of 808s & Heartbreak (2008), although that album too proved commercially successful and influential on the stylistic direction of hip hop.[31]

2010s–present: Varied directions

Kanye West performing in 2011

In 2010, West returned from an elaborate recording process with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which set the rapper's egocentric meditations on his fame against an instrumentally varied and layered maximalist production that utilized samples, rhythm tracks, keyboards, guitars, orchestral arrangements, and a host of additional vocalists. His use of samples from progressive rock records on songs such as "Power" in particular lent the album the "prog-rap" epithet, although Deville argues that the music as a whole "borrows more from prog's pageantry and bombast than its maze-like compositional structure".[31] According to Robert Christgau, the album "rescued [West's] faltering music from his staggering celebrity" and articulated his "personality disorders far more subtly and satirically" than his next album Watch the Throne (2011), a top-selling collaboration with his former major-label recruiter Jay-Z that West produced in a "funkier and less ornate variant" of its predecessor's prog-rap.[32]

While My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was widely acclaimed and publicly redeemed West, much of the rapper's musical work through the rest of the decade would prove inferior to fans and become progressively overshadowed by stories surrounding his celebrity family life, provocative public statements, mental health issues, and nonmusical ventures.[31] Faces cites West's "highly publicized controversies" as an example of factors contributing to the outside perception that hip hop is "any more than an expressive extension of a juvenile, disorderly, misogynistic lifestyle".[11][nb 3]

M.I.A. in 2014

During the 2010s, a progressive hip-hop and electronic music scene emerged along the US West Coast centering on musicians such as rapper Kendrick Lamar, producer-DJs Flying Lotus and the Gaslamp Killer, bassist Thundercat, and rap duo Shabazz Palaces.[33] American studies and media scholar William Hoynes points to Lamar with his progressive rap music for being in a tradition of African-American artists and activists that have "worked both inside and outside of the mainstream to advance a counterculture that opposes the racist stereotypes being propagated in White-owned media and culture".[34] Lamar's Los Angeles-based independent label Top Dawg Entertainment became known for producing album-oriented progressive rap, being home to fellow rappers Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and Schoolboy Q.[35] Mello Music Group, another independent label based in Tucson, has hosted a community of progressive-rap acts, including veteran artists Kool Keith, Pete Rock, and O.C., alongside younger musicians like Open Mike Eagle, Oddisee, Apollo Brown, and L'Orange.[36]

In 2016,

new-age brown woman to lead us."[38]

See also

Notes

  1. elitist postures of earlier European traditions by creating high/low distinctions within the culture."[1]
  2. ^ The Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) is a rotating group of graduate students at Rice University who have written in collaboration with their founding director Anthony B. Pinn, including Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats (2014), a collection of essays examining the intersection of hip hop culture and religion.[9]
  3. ^ a b Writing in 2019, hip hop journalist and advocate Manny Faces explains that "outsiders" see hip hop culture reductively as rap music and only "through a limited filter – music on the radio, social media and memes, gossip, and news media – which more often than not amplifies the more outrageous aspects of the art form", specifically with "lyrically raucous songs and hypermasculine videos, news coverage of violence and criminality, and highly publicized controversies".[11]
  4. ^ The CERCL Writing Collective also confirms "conscious rap" as being synonymous with progressive rap.[4]

References

  1. ^ Hill 2010, p. 102.
  2. ISBN 9780807744314
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 9781136647710
    .
  4. ^ a b c CERCL Writing Collective 2014, p. 50.
  5. ISBN 9781135927806
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 9780520932579. Retrieved March 1, 2021 – via Google Books
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 9780829821031
    .
  8. ^ CERCL Writing Collective 2014, p. 46.
  9. ^ Shilcutt, Katharine (January 12, 2018). "Pinn and CERCL Writing Collective collaborate on new book". Rice University News & Media. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  10. ISBN 9781317915508
    .
  11. ^ a b c Faces, Manny (March 6, 2019). "Libraries, Museums, and Universities Must Welcome Hip-Hop Into Their Halls". LinkedIn. Retrieved August 1, 2021.
  12. ^ a b c d e Darling, Cary (July 24, 2005). "Stylish hip-hop thrives". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Retrieved July 15, 2021.
  13. ^ CERCL Writing Collective 2014, pp. 46, 48.
  14. ^ Hill 2010, p. 111.
  15. ISBN 9781466810464
    .
  16. ^ a b c d Coker, Cheo Hodari (March 31, 1996). "Lots of non-hip-hop fans groove to their complex beat, but they'll tell you their roots are firmly in the 'hood". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 27, 2021.
  17. ^ Johnson, Kevin C. (December 23, 2011). "Q&A: Local artists pay tribute to Native Tongues rap acts". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  18. ^ Nickson 2004, pp. 51–52.
  19. ^ Huey, Steve (n.d.). "Arrested Development: Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  20. ^
    ISBN 9780429963254
    .
  21. ISBN 9781351391320
    .
  22. ^ Wiltz, Teresa (December 31, 2004). "Ladies Last". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
  23. ^ a b c d e O'Connor, Christopher (March 29, 2000). "Common Moves Toward a Progressive Hip-Hop". MTV News. Retrieved July 15, 2021.
  24. ^ Anon. (October 24, 1998). "Succeed". Billboard. p. 99. Retrieved July 25, 2021 – via Google Books.
  25. ^ a b Lewis, Miles Marshall (August 9, 2007). "Common". Dallas Observer. Retrieved July 14, 2021.
  26. ^ Gill, Andy (October 3, 2003). "Album: Outkast". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 7, 2009. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
  27. ^ Flynn, Joseph E. (2007). Reel Dialogues: Using Film to Discuss Race and Whiteness with Teachers. Michigan State University, Department of Teacher Education. pp. 140–41.
  28. ISBN 978-0827205789
    .
  29. ^ Hussain, Shahzaib (November 23, 2008). "Renegade Man: The Legacy of Kanye West's '808s & Heartbreak'". Highsnobiety. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  30. ^ Caramanica, Jon (August 26, 2007). "The Education of Kanye West". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 14, 2013. Retrieved July 20, 2021.
  31. ^ a b c d Deville, Chris (November 20, 2020). "Kanye West 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' 10th Anniversary Review". Stereogum. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  32. The Barnes & Noble Review
    . Retrieved July 31, 2021.
  33. ^ Larsen, Peter (September 13, 2016). "George Clinton talks about working with Kendrick Lamar and other young artists". PopMatters. Retrieved July 20, 2021.
  34. ISBN 9781071819319
    .
  35. ^ Ducker, Eric (July 23, 2014). "A Rational Conversation: The Sound Of TDE's Success". NPR Music. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  36. ^ Green, Dylan (January 14, 2020). "8 Record Labels & Their Hollywood Movie Studio Counterparts". DJBooth. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  37. ^ Vinti, Mike (January 29, 2016). "Beyond Grime: Why You Need to be Paying Attention to Britain's Other Rap Scenes". Vice. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  38. ^ Dowling, Marcus (November 22, 2013). "M.I.A. and the Challenge of Marketable Diasporic Trap Music". HipHopDX. Retrieved July 15, 2021.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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