Hiphop's 5th Element: Kickin' Knowledge

As mentioned before, hip-hop culture is typically broken down into four elements: emceeing, breaking, DJing and graffiti. Throughout this blog we've examined these artistic aspects and how much they have impacted the globe. However, we haven't discussed one other important element in hip-hop culture: Knowledge.

Knowledge, an element made by Afrika Bambaataa and the Universal Zulu Nation, is the glue that holds the artistic elements within the context of hip-hop. Without knowledge, a person who can rap will never be an emcee. A person who can mix records on a turntable can never be considered a DJ if he or she doesn't have knowledge. Spinning on your head without possessing knowledge only makes you capable of getting dizzy. Tagging the walls without knowledge is just vandalism.

Knowledge is the element that explains the difference between mainstream society and the hip-hop community. It helps the people of hip-hop learn about and embrace their differences, from language to physical abilities. It teaches the hip-hop community how to properly express themselves for the entire world to experience.

Knowledge can be seen in numerous ways. It explains the reason why folks who are in tune with hip-hop can rhyme over any beat about political and social issues. For example, if you put a rapper on the spot and ask them to rap about the health care reform, and this person says one line about health care and seven lines about how great they can rap, then that person lacks knowledge.

Another way knowledge is portrayed is in pieces drawn by graf writers. The famous "Tuff City" piece by Skeme is not just a picture showing off the skills, but a story of corruption in the eyes of a then 17-year-old. A true graf artist won't stop at writing his or her name in the subway train. They want everybody to know who they are and their story.

In essence, that's what knowledge is. It is the element that teaches the hip-hop community about their identity and how to express it. The entire concept of knowledge dates long before hip-hop; it lies within its roots and sheds light on why hip-hop is so powerful.

The Real Hiphop 101: The H2Ed Guidebook Series

Beyond trying to teach hip-hop as a subculture in America, different educational systems (from elementary schools to colleges) are exploring ways to use hip-hop's creativity and energy to help students learn about cultural, social and political issues in today's world. After digging deep in some textbook crates, I found one of the rare books that explains the best ways to use hip-hop as an educational tool - The Hip-Hop Education Guidebook by the Hip-Hop Association.

The Hip-Hop Association (also known as the H2A) is an organization composed of hip-hop artists, filmmakers and scholars such as Mazi Mutafa of Words, Beats and Life, Inc., renowned female battle emcee Roxanne Shante' from the legendary Juice Crew, Associate Director for the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at New York University Marcella Runell Hall, and filmmaker and activist Martha Diaz. The H2A seeks international social change through the use of media, pop culture, education, social entrepreneurship, leadership development and diplomacy.

The Hip-Hop Education Guidebook Volume 1 (edited by Martha Diaz and Marcella Runell Hall under the H2A) is a resource book for parents, teachers and scholars that addresses how to analyze hip-hop's influence in mainstream American society and pop culture from a scholarly standpoint. It doesn't explore the hip-hop arts in as interesting a way as That's The Joint, but it does have creative ways to finally put hip-hop in the classroom. It offers extraordinary ways to develop a student's writing in both poetry (because, of course, rapping is poetry in motion) and storytelling.

Plus, the book shows ways to use breakdancing to explore human anatomy and the laws of physics. In short, this book explains how hip-hop educates its community, and it takes hip-hop outside of the streets by putting it into the schools. It also addresses how to approach things such as diversity, leadership development, cultural heritage and identity in ways the hip-hop culture has done in its past - with its arts.

This 246-page book is now available as print for $26.50 and as a download for $10.55.

The Real Hiphop 101: That's The Joint! The Hiphop Studies Reader

Remember I said last week that the real hiphop 101 has a required textbook? Well, this is what we had to use for our class:


Released in 2004, That's The Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader is a 628-page textbook with hundreds of articles dating back to the 70s, when hip-hop first began. It covers all of the artistic and cultural elements within hip-hop in sections classified by art, race, gender, politics and hip-hop's impact on the world.

The editors of this book, Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, managed to find all types of articles, from newspapers, magazines, radio interviews and even scholarly journals. Some articles are written by different famous hip-hop scholars, including Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Nelson George, Joan Morgan and Bakari Kitwana.

I loved this book when I first bought it for the class. It included interviews with almost all of the hiphop pioneers I discussed previously in this blog, and it is a very easy read. The way this book was broken down into sections gives people a great leeway into discussing the given topics very easily. I use this book for almost every post in this blog, as well as for every forum I organize with Hip-Hop Congress. And although this book cost me about $50, it is one of the greatest investments I have ever made.

AAS 357: The Real Hiphop 101

Every Spring Quarter, the Department of African American Studies offers us OU students a real hip-hop 101 session called Black Music Seminar I.

I took this course my freshman year because when I heard from Anita, then president of the Ohio University Chapter of Hip-Hop Congress, tell us about "the hip-hop class" I was amped. I had never heard of somebody literally teaching hip-hop in a classroom setting!

Yeah, I know you can teach someone about the ins and outs of the hip-hop culture, but never did I know that you could reserve a space on campus, as a faculty member of a university, and let students register and receive credit for learning about a subculture in America, including a curriculum and required textbooks!

Taught by Dr. Akil Houston, this class engages students in discovering and developing critical analytical skills within the context of hip-hop history, culture and politics. Hip-hop culture as a manifestation of Africana visual, performance and oral tradition is studied. Africana cultural practices that have given rise to the numerous manifestations of hip-hop in the United States and abroad are explored, and the class looks at how hip-hop has affected/infected all facets of popular culture from the classroom to the corporate boardroom. The development, contradictions and various representations of hip-hop culture are examined (from OU's online course catalog).

Here is this year's information for the course on Athen's campus:

AAS 357, call no. 00673, will take place on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Morton Hall Room 322.

Don't miss out on a wonderful experience. This is one of the best courses on campus because it's the best way to broaden your horizons within music as well as different cultures. Plus, your final is a performance organized and performed by you!

Still Tippin': A Chopped and Screwed Blogpost

DJing has many dimensions within its own element in the hiphop culture -- the scratching, the blending, the mixing and more. But one dimension is always left out of the bunch, and that is the art of chopped and screwed. Founded and based in Houston, Texas, chopped and screwed is a part of the DJing element of hiphop, relevent for how different aspects of culture comes out in its technique and for its connections to its hometown. It also known as controversial because of how people may interpret it. Being that it is, it is a techniques still finding its fit in hiphop.

The history of chopped and screwed dates back to 1991, where Robert Earl Davis Jr., also known as DJ Screw, was playing around with his turntables (scratching and cutting as all the typical DJs were doing) and found a cool, fresh sound. He dramatically reduced the pitch of a hiphop record (or "screwed" it), making the song sounds mellow and deeper, and the words sound slurred, similar to the style of Black Southern dialect. DJ Screw made mixtapes out of his house (often known as the "Gray tapes" because the mixes were recorded on gray tapes) with the sound, charging extra for folks who wanted a shout-out or who wanted to freestyle over his mixes (the freestyles, of course, screwed like the music). Once people caught on to freestyling over the mixes, the Srewed Up Click grew into a large group of emcees and DJs (including E.S.G., Lil' Keke, and Big Pokey). In all honesty, the rhymes weren't the greatest, but they were highly representative of the sound and the southern city.

But it doesn't stop there.

Once the scene traveled to the northern part of Houston, one particular DJ took Screw's techniques and added the "chopped" to it. Around the mid 90s, Michael " 5,000" Watts heard the tapes from DJ Screw and wanted to get the new movement out of Houston, TX. Aside from just slowing down the song, Watts had two records of the same song on a turntable and would start the first record a few milliseconds ahead of the second record. He would then cut back and forth so that the words sounded like they were repeating, almost as if the record was skipping. The result was more rhythmic and fun mixes than DJ Screw's mixtapes. And just like DJ Screw, Watts started the record label Swishahouse Records, holding a roster with some of the most well-known artists out of Houston (inlcluding Paul Wall, Mike Jones, and Chamillionaire).

A key track from Swishahouse (featuring Bun B) with the chopped and screwed sound and emceeing on it is "Chunk Up The Deuce." If you notice, only the beat is chopped and screwed, and the sample used (from the Twilight Zone) is screwed too. Below is the video. Enjoy!

Bad connotations from this scene in Houston are often associated with the predetermined reasons behind why DJ Screw and Michael Watts chopped and screwed their music -- drugs and alcohol. Around the same time the screw music started, this new trend also started, which involved people drinking Promethazine, a prescription cough syrup that contained codeine. Referred to in hiphop records as syrup, drank and Texas tea, the main and major side effects with codeine are dizziness, change in vision and even loss of consciousness. So people unfamiliar to the sound of Houston were quick to assume the cause of the DJing technique was from the side effects from Promethazine, even though screw music came first. And when DJ Screw died from a heart attack in 2000, there was codeine found in his system, although his death was never officially attributed to an overdose. And along with several songs released in the height of the syrup hype, people were ready to shut the screw music scene in Houston, Texas down!

However, even to this day you can find the hottest hiphop record being chopped and screwed. Although people connected codeine use to the chopped and screwed sound, the music still managed to identify itself with the neighborhood it served. The sound still resonates as the style and life of Houston.

Hiphop Pit Stop: Detroit, MI

While hiphop has rich styles down South in Atlanta, out West in Los Angeles and up North in New York, one city often forgotten about that has a rich hiphop culture is Detroit.

Known for the productions of the late and legendary J Dilla (who we'll save a blog for later), Detroit holds a lot of emcees who have strong lyrical skills but little to no credit. Not to mention the OTHER producers who can compose tunes just as good as Dilla did in his day.

The first artist that comes to mind is Black Milk. Not only does he come with raw lyricism that could get him through 8 Mile (and no, I'm not talking about the movie), but he is also a great hiphop producer. He has done work with J Dilla, as well as Slum Village, Royce da 5'9" and Lloyd Banks.

Speaking of Royce, he has just joined the new hiphop mega-group Slaughterhouse, composed of lyrical monsters Joell Ortiz (hailing from New York), Joe Budden (hailing from New Jersey) and Crooked I (hailing from LA). This group has the potential to be a group that no rappers will approach to battle. Ever. But the story of Royce is an interesting one. He first made his footprint in the hiphop scene under Eminem (who is also from Detroit). They did numerous tracks together (if you check Em's old albums you'll see). After breaking away from Aftermath for personnel issues, he kept a low profile until joining Slaughterhouse.

Another great hiphop artist that represents for the 313 is Invincible. She not only spits hotter lyrics than most men in the rap game, but she does a lot of community work too, which makes her far more hiphop than a lot of artists out of ATL, New York and LA. She currently works with kids in a program called the Live Media Arts Project (LAMP), where they research a problem in the city (ranging from public housing to education), and based on their findings they use one of the elements of hiphop as a tool to report it. This could range from an album to a graffiti mural.

One of the best videos that gives you an idea of the current environmental state of Detroit, as well as a great grassroots effort by Invincible and LAMP, is this docu-music-video called "Locusts," featuring rhymes by Invincible and Finale (another dope emcee from Detroit), as well as interviews from the kids in LAMP.

Hiphop Video Games: DJ Hero

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, then it's a duck - right?

Well, since this looks like a turntable, feels like a turntable, and sounds like a turntable, then it's a turntable - right?

Well, not exactly.

This is Activision's latest venture after their success with Guitar Hero called DJ Hero. It's basically where players are given the ability to spin, cut, scratch and blend classic hiphop, rock, and funk songs. With classic songs by Jay-Z, Eminem, and Daft Pun and featuring guest players that resemble Grandmaster Flash, DJ AM,and Z-Trip, the game was a sure-fire hit among all music lovers!

DJ Hero had to have the best gameplay simulation any hiphop video game has ever had. I mean, turntables aren't hard to replicate, but the developers of this game did a very good job putting the controller together. And not only does it look nice, it also plays just like a turntable. Like, literally, it plays like a turntable!

Whenever a colored note slides into its corresponding matching circle, you hit the matching button. Whenever the squiggly lines slide into its corresponding circle, that means you have to hit the button AND scratch. There are also parts where you have to push buttons that play sound effects to enhance the mix and, just like Guitar Hero has, there are also moments where you play so good, you reach "euphoria". Imitating a DJ mixing "Atomic" by Blondie with "Feel Good, Inc" by Gorillaz on DJ Hero is nowhere near as easy as imitating the guitar play on "Miss Murder" by A.F.I. on Guitar Hero.

Another great thing about this game is the music selection. Now, I have heard every song that could possibly be mixed on DJ Hero, and I am very impressed. It is very club-heavy and lacks the amount of breakbeats and funk records I expected, but I'm still glad it gives classic records like "Bustin' Loose" by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock (which was a huge jazz-hiphop collabo in the early 80s) the credit they deserve.

Now, I understand the game needed to have a club vibe so that the gamers would feel better about their mixes. In this game the background, plot and scenery matched the mixes the gamers replicated. Just as in Guitar Hero, in DJ Hero you battle different characters in the game with your turntable as a weapon. The more you win, the more music, characters, places, etc. you unlock. So why wouldn't the game also have battles that took place where DJ battles originated - in the park.

Of course, the battle of the DJs blew up internationally once they hit the clubs, but they started in the parks where DJs would show off their skills with the turntables. It was also a battle of who had the most records as well. And although DJ Hero does show that significance with the unlocking of a records with each victory, the gamers do lose out on the street scenes as a DJ.

But I still feel that DJ Hero is one of the greatest hiphop games ever made.