Part 2:
Hopes For An Organic Symbiotic Relationship Between EDM & Hip Hop
“What a way to go out, no clout is what the fans will shout / Cause you got gassed and took the wrong route / Came on the scene, chillin', freakin' a funky dope line / But when they finish wit you (beep) flatline...” -EPMD “Crossover.”
Somewhere in Rap arguably being too staid and greedy to relax, jam, groove, dance and move, the space exists for Hip Hop culture and Rap music’s divergence. Just Blaze, who has embarked upon a recent tour with EDM DJ Baauer, shares this notion.
“When I was a teenager, things were very much in a box, and they were very much compartmentalized,” Just Blaze told HipHopDX. “You were either into Hip Hop or you were into Techno, or you were into Deep House, or you were into Heavy Metal. Whatever music you identified with, that’s what you represented. And I feel like these days, those boundaries aren’t there anymore. You pick up someone from the younger generation’s iPods or whatever and see what they’re listening to, and you see Daft Punk or Justice, but also Kendrick Lamar or J. Cole, and Florence And The Machine. It’s cool to be different and to have different influences now, and that’s something that I’ve always wished for because that’s how I came up—with a little bit of everything.”
I think that if Rap and Dance are to work together, the relationship must again become symbiotic, organic and truly creative in nature. The idea of working with a Dance producer (such as Calvin Harris) must not intrinsically come from a place of noting that he made $50 million dollars in the past year and plays at festivals that gross $5 billion in revenue. Ideally, the space must be nostalgic, resembling something more along the lines of early Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa working together in the ‘80s on the aforementioned “Renegades Of Funk.” Created to connect “people with their own philosophies, the people who make history and everyday people like you and me,” if there was actually any commercial impetus behind the song it came from each side of the table wanting to work with each other to equally push their interests to similar degree of exposure.
A seemingly inevitable reality that we should consider accepting is that when the moment comes that Rap cedes to Dance (and all indicators from a culture that from a democratic standpoint is far more commerce driven than art-led that this will be the case), and Hip Hop culture is actively guiding what Electronic Dance Music is to become. When this happens, the one great hope we should all have is that EDM’s lowest hanging fruit—underground producers of non-mainstreamed sounds—can reach out to the Rap industry which would be positioned at the bottom of EDM, and the two can find a middle ground. If we want to again discover that organic essence that fueled what Rap music became before commercialism and greed reared their ugly heads, that would be the most likely location for that necessary discovery.
The relationship between Rap and EDM at the moment should be a delicately handled situation. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Instead, it comes off more like the relationship between the Titanic and the iceberg, as Rap—which fallaciously still may believe itself to be an unstoppable force—hits growing in commercial strength EDM, with Rap having the potential of sinking into the depths. Of course, as with all things, this could be avoided as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But, Rap’s (and most of mainstream music’s for that matter) currently less-than-ideal financial situation may unfortunately be so concerning that it is allowing for not-so-well-formulated stop-gaps to be considered. Rap and dance engaging for the purposes of creating appealing new sounds is an idea that has worth, but is a notion that should only be approached from the standpoint of art over commerce, or else.
Hopes For An Organic Symbiotic Relationship Between EDM & Hip Hop
“What a way to go out, no clout is what the fans will shout / Cause you got gassed and took the wrong route / Came on the scene, chillin', freakin' a funky dope line / But when they finish wit you (beep) flatline...” -EPMD “Crossover.”
Somewhere in Rap arguably being too staid and greedy to relax, jam, groove, dance and move, the space exists for Hip Hop culture and Rap music’s divergence. Just Blaze, who has embarked upon a recent tour with EDM DJ Baauer, shares this notion.
“When I was a teenager, things were very much in a box, and they were very much compartmentalized,” Just Blaze told HipHopDX. “You were either into Hip Hop or you were into Techno, or you were into Deep House, or you were into Heavy Metal. Whatever music you identified with, that’s what you represented. And I feel like these days, those boundaries aren’t there anymore. You pick up someone from the younger generation’s iPods or whatever and see what they’re listening to, and you see Daft Punk or Justice, but also Kendrick Lamar or J. Cole, and Florence And The Machine. It’s cool to be different and to have different influences now, and that’s something that I’ve always wished for because that’s how I came up—with a little bit of everything.”
I think that if Rap and Dance are to work together, the relationship must again become symbiotic, organic and truly creative in nature. The idea of working with a Dance producer (such as Calvin Harris) must not intrinsically come from a place of noting that he made $50 million dollars in the past year and plays at festivals that gross $5 billion in revenue. Ideally, the space must be nostalgic, resembling something more along the lines of early Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa working together in the ‘80s on the aforementioned “Renegades Of Funk.” Created to connect “people with their own philosophies, the people who make history and everyday people like you and me,” if there was actually any commercial impetus behind the song it came from each side of the table wanting to work with each other to equally push their interests to similar degree of exposure.
A seemingly inevitable reality that we should consider accepting is that when the moment comes that Rap cedes to Dance (and all indicators from a culture that from a democratic standpoint is far more commerce driven than art-led that this will be the case), and Hip Hop culture is actively guiding what Electronic Dance Music is to become. When this happens, the one great hope we should all have is that EDM’s lowest hanging fruit—underground producers of non-mainstreamed sounds—can reach out to the Rap industry which would be positioned at the bottom of EDM, and the two can find a middle ground. If we want to again discover that organic essence that fueled what Rap music became before commercialism and greed reared their ugly heads, that would be the most likely location for that necessary discovery.
The relationship between Rap and EDM at the moment should be a delicately handled situation. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Instead, it comes off more like the relationship between the Titanic and the iceberg, as Rap—which fallaciously still may believe itself to be an unstoppable force—hits growing in commercial strength EDM, with Rap having the potential of sinking into the depths. Of course, as with all things, this could be avoided as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But, Rap’s (and most of mainstream music’s for that matter) currently less-than-ideal financial situation may unfortunately be so concerning that it is allowing for not-so-well-formulated stop-gaps to be considered. Rap and dance engaging for the purposes of creating appealing new sounds is an idea that has worth, but is a notion that should only be approached from the standpoint of art over commerce, or else.
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