The various missteps by programme-makers in the past (poor choice of pundits, muddled history, glaring omissions of key artists and events) have meant any interest in any show about hip-hop now is tempered from the outset with a massive degree of scepticism. Which usually gives way, about five minutes in, to that annoyingly-familiar sense of frustration.
Last Friday?s ?How Hip-hop Changed The World? was the latest attempt, again by Channel 4, to map out the history and development of hip-hop music and its influence on mainstream pop culture. Presented by the perennially-fly Idris Elba, the initial signs were positive. A strong line-up of pundits from both sides of the pond (Rakim, Snoop Dogg and a very stoned-looking Nas from the US; Tim Westwood and Rodney P representing Blighty) was set against classic TV archive footage (early Bronx deejay Kool Herc spinning at neighborhood parties; graffiti-covered subway trains rattling through New York City; Run-DMC covered head-to-toe in Adidas).
The two-hour show was presented as a countdown of the fifty supposedly world-changing hip-hop moments. The major problem with this list format so beloved of Channel 4 is that we actually saw little of how hip-hop as a genre progressed and expanded beyond those 1970s Bronx block parties to change the world and become the massive global industry it is today. By simply quantum leaping back and forth between hip-hop?s major landmark events, the show felt disjointed and confused, lacking any kind of narrative or structure.
What made Channel 4?s ?The Hip-Hop Years? work 12 years ago was its simple structure. A three-part chronology charting hip-hop?s birth and early development in the 1970s, followed by its 1980s growth and shift which saw artists battling for mainstream recognition while addressing issues such as gang violence, misogyny and censorship, before moving onwards to the conquering of corporate America in the 1990s.
By contrast, the list format of ?How Hip-Hop Changed The World? meant almost nothing was given any kind of context and no attempt was made to link the chain together.� While it?s fine to talk about Jay-Z and Puff Daddy making the shift from being mere musicians to becoming millionaire businessmen heading up their own corporate empires, why not examine how that was the end outcome of rappers fed up of getting jerked around by record labels for years? Before Jay-Z and Puffy, the idea of the rapper-as-mogul was set in motion by the Wu-Tang Clan, who sparked an industry revolution in 1993 by signing a unique agreement with their label, Loud Records, which allowed each of the nine band members the freedom to pursue separate recording contracts and create their own independent labels. This effectively made them competing artists in the marketplace – a move then unheard of in the music industry.
Similarly, the programme failed to note how the New York rap renaissance in 1994 spearheaded by the Notorious BIG, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan was in part a response to the stranglehold that west coast artists such as Dr Dre and Snoop had on the industry at the time. That this coastal rivalry would later spiral rapidly into violence and contribute, some would argue, to the deaths of BIG and Tupac Shakur was also never explained. It was as if each event occurred in a vacuum.
The list format of the show also left the window wide open for errors – and some serious clangers were dropped. Hip-hop?s discovery of break beats, the building blocks of this music, and its pioneering use of the E-mu SP-1200 sampler – two genuine game-changing moments which had a major impact not only on rap but on the development of electronic and dance music globally – were placed at the lowly positions of 25 and 44, respectively. Meanwhile London?s So Solid Crew -� not even a hip-hop act, but a UK garage collective – scoring domestic chart success inexplicably made the top ten. It left the viewer with a completely warped perspective of hip-hop?s history.
Any scant hope the show was going to take any kind of meaningful look at other less visible – but still integral – aspects of hip-hop, such as graffiti art and breaking (or break-dancing), was dealt an early blow. The programme makers seemed to think these wouldn?t fly on their own and needed a celebrity, or some other tedious facet of British mainstream culture, tacked on to make them more interesting to the UK viewer. That meant concocting a pretty tenuous link between the early graffiti movement in New York in the 1970s and 1980s and the hideous London 2012 Olympics logo, along with the obligatory tedious reference to Banksy. Meanwhile it seemed like break-dancing, a vital component of New York?s early hip-hop scene, was used only as an excuse to show clips of ?Britain?s Got Talent? dance troupe Diversity.
Errors and omissions stacked up. As expected in a show charting hip-hop?s impact on the wider world, the music?s marquee names – Jay-Z, Kanye West, the Notorious B.I.G. – were predictably to the fore. But other key artists such as De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, both of which continue to influence hip-hop?s more cutting edge acts today, received little more than a passing mention, while boundary-pushing groups like Gang Starr and the Ultramagnetic M.C.s, which would help spark later avant-garde genres such as trip-hop and big beat, were not even mentioned. Some of the woeful choices for contributors� – Jessie J, N-Dubz, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb – do not even merit discussion.
There were some highlights of course; a brief study of how UK rappers progressed from simply copying American artists to developing their own rhyme style, by tapping disparate influences on these shores. As well as UK deejay Cutmaster Swift spinning Kenny Rogers and children?s nursery rhymes records while explaining the science behind break beats and clips from Public Enemy?s brilliant ?Fight The Power?. But the genre?s genuine world-changing moments – which is what the show was supposed to be about – were fleetingly brushed-over, as if the creators were going through the box-ticking motions without any commentary on how or why these were important. Taken together, the show could have made some insightful comparisons between Run-DMC?s gate crashing of MTV in 1986 following a stodgy diet of 80s hair rock and Jay-Z bagging headline status at Glastonbury some 22 years later. Instead, the two were merely filed alongside each other in the chart, and the show moved on oblivious.
Advertisers? early appropriation of hip-hop culture in the 1980s to sell their products was portrayed by the programme as some kind of breakthrough for hip-hop. Those who were there at the time will tell you it was, on the contrary, little more than a cynical move by the corporate world to attach a sense of edge and excitement to whatever junk they were hawking that week by appropriating hip-hop music and style in their ad campaigns. It signalled the beginning of the rampant commericalisation of hip-hop, prevalent over the past twenty-odd years and which continues to leave a sour taste in the mouths of many fans today.
Source: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/08/16/how-hip-hop-changed-the-world/
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