Simon Reynolds e mais achas para a fogueira do hip hop

Nada a acrescentar em relação ao que já escrevi aqui, a propósito do já notório texto de Sasha Frere-Jones em que agora Simon Reynolds também pega, no The Guardian (texto e link mais abaixo). A evidência é clara. E, no entanto, ouvir exercícios de simplicidade absoluta (como o volume de Koushik para as Rhythm Trax da Stones Throw) ou esforços de reformulação dos códigos desta cultura (ainda será hip hop o que Hudson Mohawke faz em «Butter»? É certamente informado por essa cultura, e talvez até sobretudo pelos gestos mais esteticamente desafiantes de gente como Timba ou Pharrell...) levam-me a pensar que algo de novo se aproxima. O hip hop começou por se impor por via do DJ e a promoção dos MCs à boca de cena ficou a dever tudo à necessidade da indústria aplicar os seus parâmetros de alcance de sucesso. Esta nova geração de produtores - FlyLo, HudMo, Jneiro Jarel, Ras G et al - e gente como Madlib, Exile etc - trabalha desse ponto de vista puramente sonoro, em busca de novos estímulos que reconduzam a música que criam a uma nova realidade. Que ainda não sabemos se será estritamente hip hop. Ao contrário do momento formador desta cultura, as coordenadas geográficas estão agora dispersas - Europa, Japão e até África podem agora ser polos tão entusiasmantemente activos como Nova Iorque ou Los Angeles. As contaminações são igualmente diversas - já não apenas o funk e o disco do momento criador, mas também o rock e sobretudo as diversas linguagens electrónicas. Penso ser seguro dizer que o hip hop tal como o conhecíamos morreu, de facto. Penso ser igualmente mais do que uma mera possibilidade que a breve prazo surja uma nova e certamente híbrida fórmula que imponha um som herdeiro do hip hop. Como quando o house e o techno sacudiram a herança disco e se impuseram como novas linguagens.

Simon Reynolds's Notes on the noughties: When will hip-hop hurry up and die?

A month or so ago New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a column about the state of rap, starting with the proposition ("proclamation" would be too bombastic a word) that 2009 was, in fact, the year of hip-hop's death. I read it and couldn't find a thing to disagree with. My only quibble was that he might have called it earlier. Perhaps 2006, when Nas released Hip Hop Is Dead. Or even 2004, when Timbaland "repeatedly voiced … a frustration with pop music, particularly the hip-hop end of it" (according to his New York Times interviewer, one Sasha Frere-Jones) and further declared: ''It's time for me to retire, because it ain't the same … I'm tired of stuff now, even stuff that I do." (He also, said, mindblowingly, that "Coldplay and Radiohead are the illest groups to me. That's music".) That same year, 2004, Jay-Z also confessed – on the eve of his (ha ha) retirement and moving on to bigger, more challenging fields of endeavour – that he too was "bored" with hip-hop. Rap had become "corny", he said, and accordingly he no longer felt peer pressure to raise his game (something underlined by the steady decline of his output after 2001's magisterial The Blueprint).

As I read Frere-Jones's piece, I also knew there'd be complaints and counter-arguments galore. And sure enough they came – droves of pissed-off fanboys brandishing obscure mixtapes and overlooked albums as proof of the genre's continued vitality. Some whined that the sample on which his genre survey was based was too small (Jay-Z's new slab of going-through-the-motions, efforts by Kid Cudi and Wu-Tang clansman Raekwon, unsigned rapper Freddie Gibbs) while others questioned the entitlement of a white fortysomething to pronounce on the vital signs of a black pop genre in the first place. I don't know, but I'd have thought 25 years of attentive fandom would at least justify having an opinion. Plus it's not as though this kind of gloom-and-doomy assessment of hip-hop hasn't been voiced repeatedly by black critics and black fans, not to mention the performers themselves.

Pundits who deem something to be in decline are invariably accused of nostalgia, so another angle of retort was that Frere-Jones was pining for the Lost Golden Age: the late 80s/early 90s, rap in its first flush of artistic maturity, but still a genre primarily oriented around samples and breakbeats. The era of DJ/producers like the Bomb Squad and Eric B, Marley Marl and Prince Paul, Premier and Pete Rock. But you don't need to go back that far to locate a peak now passed. You just have to think of the first four years of this decade, which was the continuation in full force of a late 90s resurgence of mainstream rap that effortlessly managed to be commercial and street at the same time, combining pop hooks and jagged rhythmic innovation, glitzy entertainment and edge. This seven-year-long surge was largely but not exclusively driven by the Dirty South: cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis and Houston; producers like Timbaland, Neptunes, Mannie Fresh, Lil Jon, and Mr Collipark; MCs like Ludacris, Missy Elliott, Three 6 Mafia, Clipse, Ying Yang Twins, and those Cash Money hot boys Juvenile, BG and Lil Wayne. But the rest of the US played its part, from the Ruff Ryders family (DMX, the Lox, Eve, plus producer Swizz Beatz) through Ja Rule and Nelly, to the Dre/Eminem/50 Cent axis.

Underground rap fans sniffed at this brash, bolshy sound, based not on the breaks-and-samples template of classic hip-hop (partly because licensing samples had become too costly) but favouring instead synthesiser riffs and refrains modelled on techno-rave and 80s pulp movie soundtracks. The drum machine rhythms had an 80s vibe too, the double-time hi-hats and 808 bass-booms reactivating that whole other side of early hip-hop based around electro not looped breaks, Bambaataa not JB. Backpackers also complained about all these crossover rap hits with R&B choruses, which they saw as selling out the ideal of hip-hop as a showcase for MC virtuosity. But even as the ascendant street rap sound borrowed R&B's hook power and gloss, the nu-skool rap influenced R&B. By the turn of the millennium the genre were less separate than Siamese twins (something symbolised by the union of Beyoncé and Jay-Z). Together street rap and nu-R&B flooded global pop music with rhythmic pizzazz and in-yer-face attitude. The fall-out, just in the UK alone, includes the "chav-pop" swarm of girl groups and boy bands, MIA, and grime (not so much in the MC-ing, which owes more to jungle and dancehall, but in terms of beats and production, plus what would prove to be false expectations for mega-fame and Puffy/Jay-Z style transmedia empire building).

It's the vigour and invention of the first third of the Noughties that makes the last five years of rap look stalled and sapped, not old-skool days so remote only grey-hairs remember them. By any sensible metric, rap has slipped hugely from where it was when this decade began. It's not dominating the pop charts anymore, and neither is it irrigating the mainstream with new beats, styles, and slanguage. It's not producing major album-length statements, give or take an 808s & Heartbreak (revealingly, not rapped but sung). It's not even coming up with compelling new personalities. The last, by my reckoning, were Lil Wayne (whose debut was released in 1999) and Kanye West (who debuted in early 2004). West has turned out to be a mixed blessing, while Wayne spread his brilliance thin across innumerable mixtapes, plus 2008's uneven Tha Carter III. Some swear by TI and Young Jeezy as charismatic artists, but neither came up with a MC persona we've not seen before. And, for these last three or four years, rap has been a desperately unmemorable procession of cookie-cutter ballers – Jim Jones, Gucci Mane, Yung Doc, Soulja Boy, Lil Boosie, Gummi Bares – whose lyrics trudge a hedonic treadmill of bling and booty, punctuated by the occasional inane dance-craze. Even the sound of rap – always its saving grace in the absence of political engagement or MC-as-poet depth – deteriorated in the second half of this decade. The odd angles and eerie spaces in productions by Mannie Fresh or Mr Collipark were flattened out, replaced by portentous digi-synth fanfares and lumbering beats, a brittle bass-less blare that seemed pre-degraded to 128kbps to cut through better via YouTube and mobile phone ("ringtone rap", some called it), rendered all the more cheapo-sounding and plastic non-fantastic by the endless Auto-Tune fad.

One of the most interesting observations in Frere-Jones's piece is that rap producers are abandoning swing and syncopation for more pulse-based club rhythms (house/trance/electro-pop), resulting in a shift to a European rather than African-American feel. Flo Rida's Right Round, based on Dead or Alive's Eighties Hi-NRG hit, is a good example, and new nadir. Actually, I still hear quite a lot of bump and skitter in street rap but there's a pedestrian familiarity to the beats: they do the job solidly enough but they're the rhythmic equivalent of comfort food, reflexively tugging at your hips and shoulders but never approaching the stark strangeness of early Noughties productions like Ludacris's What's Your Fantasy or J-Kwon's Tipsy.

I quizzed Josiah Schirmacher, a young DJ friend who disagreed vehemently with the New Yorker piece and he replied that there was plenty of life in hip-hop but it was all "on the local level", pointing to styles like jerk, as favored by teenagers in Los Angeles. This was another story of the hip-hop Noughties: the succession of city-based sounds, starting with New Orleans bounce and continuing with crunk, hyphy, snap, juke, etc, which hatch as regional styles but thanks to the marvels of the internet (especially YouTube) are chased avidly by an international cadre of largely white, middle-class beat-nerds. I was one for a while, but then started to feel that underneath the cool local quirks (for instance, in the Bay Area, hyphy MCs shout out to freeway exits, which is how the different neighbourhoods know themselves, as opposed to, say, wards in New Orleans) all these sounds were, at base, the same. Electro variant + goofy dance + bawdy lyrics + (optional) drug-of-choice (E, with hyphy; purple drank aka cough syrup in other places, and so on). In a funny way, the pasty-faced, steroid-popping northwest England scene donk is a distant cousin of all these black American sounds: same anonymous rapping, same humorously boastful/sexist lyrics, same bling videos, same utterly local orientation offset by the occasional nationwide hit. The Blackout Crew, basically, are Cold Flamez.

Haven't talked about underground rap yet, but it doesn't exactly impose itself on your consciousness, does it? Like the lo-fi indie it resembles, this sector puttered on much like it did through the 90s, odd flashes of genius (Cannibal Ox, Dilla, Quasimoto/Madlib etc) amid the crate-digging antiquarianism. Barely creating a ripple in the larger pop culture, undie rap is probably pretty content with its niche, a haven of "quality" in a mercenary world. This stuff bears the same relationship to Dirty South type-rap that someone like Elvis Costello did with rock after 1984 (and, what d'ya know, Costello recently teamed up with the Roots to perform some of his classics on a US chat show). But as with the late-80s "golden age", the late 90s/early 00s surge showed that during rap's heyday phases the most innovative music rises to the top; it's not something you have to seek out, because it dominates radio and music-video channels, booms from passing cars.

The "Death of …" piece is a genre of criticism that's fallen into disrepute (there was a period when you'd be constantly tripping over essays announcing the End of something: art, theory, rock, rave ). People now seem to feel that "no genre ever really dies" (to adapt the Neptunes/NERD motto). Was this in fact one of the problems with the Noughties? No genre went gently into that good night: they all clung on, cluttering up the musical landscape. This not only made it harder for new things to emerge, it's meant that we've all come to forget that, in fact, totally new things have emerged in the past. There was, for instance, a time when hip-hop didn't exist. The refusal to admit that a genre can die (which doesn't mean literally disappear – it may even generate good stuff now and then –but refers to stagnation, irrelevance, becoming uncoupled from the zeitgeist) is a denial of the possibility of change, renewal, the unexpected. The very vitality of a form of music implies the possibility of its eventual death.

I sympathise with the Frere-Jones dissenters; it must be galling, having built up all that expertise and knowledge, to have your subcultural capital voided by some old git in a bow tie (compulsory at the New Yorker, don't you know) airily declaring the area obsolete. One of the cunning rhetorical ruses used in these critical turf wars between enthusiasts versus curmudgeons is to suggest that the latter are projecting their physical decrepitude on to the state of music. But you could just as easily reverse that and argue that the young are projecting their physical vitality on to the senescent body of pop (every fibre of their hormonally flushed being shouts "it still LIVES!"). I won't say that hip-hop is dead. But it does seem to be doing a good impersonation of being at death's door. More to the point, judging by its output in recent years, it's become a deadening force: as a listening experience, but also as something that maintains a deadlock on the musical imagination (and personal ambitions) of Black American youth. I doubt very much that this demographic has no more surprises up its sleeves in terms of sound and style, judging by past form(s) (jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, house, et al ). But that New Thing won't come until they tire of hip-hop themselves and turn against it.

Posted by Simon Reynolds Thursday 26 November 2009 12.54 GMT guardian.co.uk

Hip Hop: a mudança de paradigma

Sasha Frere-Jones está certeiro como sempre no seu mais recente artigo da New Yorker - que reproduzo mais abaixo - onde o hip hop volta a ser objecto de análise. «Hip Hop is no longer the avant garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music» é, provavelmente, a frase chave de um artigo em que Frere-Jones investiga a falta de energia deste género, no ano do seu 30º aniversário. O autor do artigo menciona uma mudança de foco da música que até aqui se baseava no groove dos blues e que agora procura o balanço mais metronómico (e europeu...) de uma electrónica herdeira do disco. O próprio hip hop é herdeiro do disco, mas muito mais próximo das experiências geradas nos estúdios de Filadélfia do que dos avanços registados por produtores como Giorgio Moroder ou Patrick Cowley.
Como é mais do que óbvio, a visão de Sasha Frere-Jones é panorâmica e por isso mesmo descarta - conscientemente, tenho a certeza - as movimentações mais microscópicas que têm mantido o interesse nos circulos subterrâneos desta cultura. Até porque várias dessas movimentações são, elas próprias, de carácter híbrido - a geração wonky e a sua fusão com várias formas de idm ou com linguagens como o dubstep, por exemplo. Há também o caso notório de quem regressa ao passado - e Frere-Jones menciona um dos grandes estoiros do ano, o álbum de Raekwon. Estes "tradicionalistas" assumem o hip hop como linguagem cristalizada e descartam a procura de novos caminhos em detrimento da reutilização de velhos códigos. A história ensina-nos que dois passos atrás podem por vezes ser tão válidos quanto um em frente e por isso faz sentido que se procure validade nestes regressos a uma certa ideia de pureza. Dam-Funk está a fazer precisamente o mesmo com a sonoridade do electro-funk pioneiro, quando os jogos de arcada traduziam uma ingénua ideia de futuro.
O hip hop está de facto a mudar de paradigma, mas talvez lhe faça bem perder o tal estatuto de "timekeeper" da música pop, como Frere-Jones refere. Talvez o abandono desse lastro permita que o hip hop se reencontre, sem que o principal capital em jogo seja essa constante necessidade de inovação. Por um momento, e por causa de gente como os Neptunes, Timbaland, Jay-Z ou Kanye, o hip hop confundiu-se com o mais alargado terreno da pop. Alimentar esse vasto delta com a criatividade do que deveria ser apenas um afluente talvez tenha esgotado a relevância do hip hop como elemento de constante desafio ao status quo. Esse papel pertencerá agora a uma nova geração indie-rock. E os próximos tempos serão interessantes: a observação dos próximos passos dos protagonistas principais do hip hop irá, certamente, ser excitante. Enquanto isso, alheios aos tsunamis que alteram a paisagem à superficie, há uma série de novas visões em marcha a grandes profundidades. Coloquem os fatos de mergulho, sff.

Wrapping Up
A genre ages out.
by Sasha Frere-Jones
October 26, 2009

Disco Weighing in early on what academics call “periodization” is a dicey proposition. If you try to locate the moment of a major paradigm shift, in the moment, perhaps by calling your album “Hip Hop Is Dead,” as Nas did in 2006, you’re slipping into weatherman territory. Will it rain tomorrow? Will another great rap album pop up? The life spans of genres and art forms are best perceived from the distance of ten or twenty years, if not more. With that in mind, I still suspect that Nas—along with a thousand bloggers—was not fretting needlessly.

If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006. Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” and some self-released mixtapes by Freddie Gibbs are demonstrating, in almost opposite ways, that hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music. Hip-hop has relinquished the controls and splintered into a variety of forms. The top spot is not a particularly safe perch, and every vital genre eventually finds shelter lower down, with an organic audience, or moves horizontally into combination with other, sturdier forms. Disco, it turns out, is always a good default move.

Hip-hop, a spinoff from New York City’s early disco culture, has been a commercial proposition since the release of “Rapper’s Delight,” in 1979. That’s thirty years, a long time for any genre. If you want to be conservative and decide that mainstream cultural relevance kicked in toward the end of the eighties, with New York’s golden age and the quick follow-up of gangsta rap, the wildly popular genre from Los Angeles, that still leaves twenty years of cultural impact. This may be a fine time for hip-hop to atomize. The original form has done an awful lot of work.

“The Blueprint 3” falls in line with other recent mass-market successes in hip-hop. Compare it to Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark” tour, or Kid Cudi’s breakout hit “Day ’n’ Nite,” and you will notice that this is hip-hop by virtue of rapping more than sound. The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the rudimentary digital sound of New Orleans bounce or the crusty samples of New York hip-hop: this music wants to swing and syncopate. On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs.

A mildly entertaining patchwork of styles, anchored by lots of guest singers and rappers, “The Blueprint 3” is only tenuously connected to Jay-Z’s best work, and a patient listener will have to accept that. Gone are the autumnal poise and the tightly nested meanings, verses delivered with the bravado of someone who knows he could go all night but will bow out early to appear deceptively human. The new Jay-Z is a relaxed impresario, a Macher with A-list friends making safe choices. On the single “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” Jay-Z mentions rappers that he previously overshadowed, an acknowledgment, perhaps, of a shift in hierarchy: “This shit need a verse from Jeezy, I might send this to the mixtape Weezy.” The latter is a reference to Lil Wayne, who publicly claimed the title of “greatest rapper alive,” while also stipulating that it used to belong to Jay-Z. Wayne was right, for a while, and then went weirdly silent, save for a few odd rock tracks. Wayne’s 2008 release, “Tha Carter III,” which included “A Milli,” a thick, psychedelic ramble tied to a thin, metronomic canter, was the year’s biggest-selling album—and probably the last moment when hip-hop was both popular and improbably weird.

“The Blueprint 3” features nothing as startling or vital as “A Milli.” (Jay-Z albums were once routinely loaded with three or four such songs.) The only tune that interrupted the summer flow of Michael Jackson songs in my Brooklyn neighborhood—not far from where Jay-Z grew up—was “D.O.A.,” a bit of a stylistic throwback, using a generous sample of an obscure 1970 rock record. It sounds more like vintage nineties Jay-Z, and it’s the only track in that mold. The rest of the album veers toward a pop median, giving synthesizers and R. & B. singers the last say. For “Run This Town,” that means Rihanna has to tackle a dreary and aimless melody that could be saved only by someone with a surplus of persona. (Mary J. Blige and Nina Simone come to mind.) On “Empire State of Mind,” Alicia Keys improves matters significantly, sending her voice high and strong: “Let’s hear it for New York! ” Why not?

The album begins, though, with “What We Talkin’ About,” which sounds like a cover of a slow Italian disco number from the seventies with a particularly tuneless chorus. “Young Forever” is genuinely European, a flat-footed remake of “Forever Young” by the German synth-pop band Alphaville. “Off That,” Jay-Z’s duet with the young rapper of the moment, the genial and deft Drake, works over a brisk computerized bubble that doesn’t necessarily sound as if it needed any rapping. None of the beats here are subpar, and Jay-Z is too smart to be boring, but there are few verses you’ll walk around repeating (unlike “The Black Album,” from 2003, which read like an alternate Bartlett’s, all pith and punch lines), and the music simply confirms that Jay-Z knows what’s happening in pop, not that he necessarily belongs there.

Other rappers will likely ride this new wave of club beats better than Jay-Z, but they have yet to emerge. It won’t be Kid Cudi, whose singsongy mumble does nothing to save “Already Home,” a sluggish number on “The Blueprint 3,” and whose début album, “Man on the Moon; The End of the Day,” manages to be both distracted and ill-tempered.

As the marquee names nudge rap into its transitional, synthetic phase, a host of traditionalists are doing strong work in well-known older styles. This movement reminds me of metal and jazz, areas where artists work in a larger number of established subgenres that do small but consistent business with loyal audiences. The claim to shock is traded in favor of a reliable form and a reliable following.

Raekwon, one of the Wu-Tang Clan’score members, just released “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx . . . Pt. II,” the follow-up to his 1995 début, “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx . . . ” It’s a sequel few thought would come and fewer thought would be any good. (Imagine if “Chinese Democracy” had been as good as “Appetite for Destruction.”) Raekwon has drifted between uninspired beats and retreads since the nineties. He seems to have found his voice by simply returning to where he started. “Cuban Linx II” sounds like an old Wu-Tang record: scraggly samples from soul records and rapid, gnomic bundles of rhymes about drug-selling and agitated encounters. Almost every skit involving Raekwon or his partner, Ghostface Killah, involves somebody yelling at somebody else. This is the Wu-Tang vision of living in the projects, “The Wire” before there was “The Wire.” Whether or not it really represents life as Raekwon and his bandmates know it isn’t relevant; this is the life that they know how to describe, and there’s an urgency here that’s entirely missing from the recent work of artists like Jay-Z and Kid Cudi.

Freddie Gibbs is the one rapper I would put money on right now. And, though it may be irrelevant to his gift, the criminal life that Raekwon raps about on “Cuban Linx II” is still very familiar to Gibbs. When I spoke to Gibbs on the phone, he told an unadorned story about growing up in Gary, Indiana. “We don’t even have a movie theatre,” he said. “We don’t even have a mall. I can’t ride around Gary and get inspired—we don’t have anything.” Several years ago, Gibbs was selling drugs out of a friend’s recording studio. He eventually decided he could rap better than the people coming in to record. His efforts found their way across the Web to Interscope Records, and Gibbs was signed. He moved to Los Angeles in 2005, and began to work at a relentless pace. “I was two hundred per cent into this rap thing,” Gibbs said. “Four P.M. to 1 P.M. the next afternoon in the studio.” When Joe Weinberger, the man who signed him, left Interscope, Gibbs was dropped.

Gibbs returned to Gary briefly, falling back into crime. Some friends encouraged him to return to California, and he did. He has now released five mixtapes onto the Internet, some using the material originally intended for Interscope. These are not quite like other hip-hop mixtapes circulating, where the standard practice is to record new material over other artists’ well-known beats. They are closer to fully formed albums, especially the newest one, “Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik.” The beats are almost all original and there is a minimum of filler. (Gibbs’s take on this approach is also a short summation of the music industry’s woes: “These rap motherfuckers giving you twenty-five songs with only five good ones—who is going spend their hard-earned money on that?”) Gibbs rhymes the way he talks, quickly and cleanly, with little sentimentality or exaggeration. After years of bloated expansion and leveraging of fantasies, “gangsta rap” has largely become a meaningless term. Unvarnished reporting delivered with a panache that balanced the pain—this was gangsta rap’s first achievement, not unlike the cry of mid-seventies reggae artists like Culture and Bob Marley. Somewhere along the way, the struggle to escape became a love of accumulation, and underdogs ended up sounding as smug as the authorities they once battled.

“I think rap is about to go back to the early nineties,” Gibbs told me. “You could do whatever you wanted, and radio had to play it.” Gibbs does not currently have a record deal, and he isn’t looking for one. ♦

Máquina do tempo

Tom Moulton no Sandpiper de Fire Island, NYC, em 1974? Frankie Knuckles no Warehouse de Chicago em 1981? Afrika Bambaataa e Jazzy Jay na Kiss FM de Nova Iorque em 1983? John Jellybean Benitez no Funhouse de Nova Iorque em 1984? A lista é imensa e cada entrada representa um verdadeiro tesouro, uma pequena cápsula de um tempo sobre o qual passamos a vida a ler mas que poucos de nós (se calhar nenhuns...!) viveram. Está tudo disponível para download, juntamente com actuações ao vivo de gente ilustre como Grace Jones e vários outros sets absolutamente fundamentais. É clickar no link abaixo.

MÁQUINA DO TEMPO

Holy are you

O gigante Rakim está de volta, finalmente. E ainda por cima com um beat construído em cima de um incrível sample de David Axelrod (de uma produção para os Electric Prunes). Boom bap clássico com uma tremenda força.
Abaixo incluo trailer do dvd de Axelrod ao vivo no Royal Albert Hall de Londres, onde, por volta da marca de 1 minuto, é possível ver e ouvir Richard Ashcroft a interpretar o velho tema dos Electric Prunes a que Rakim agora dá nova vida.

Rakim - Holy Are You

Old School Hip Hop Megamix

Através do blog de Soulman encontrei o espantoso documento que agora partilho com os leitores do 2/4 the bass: um megamix vídeo que representa o verdadeiro espírito da velha escola com todas as marcas certas da cultura. Os responsáveis são os mentores do blog Old School Scholar e fizeram-me ir recuperar o seguinte excertto de um texto já por aqui publicado na íntegra anteriormente:

A ideia de que a nova escola hip hop só se define enquanto negativo da escola original – a velha! – é ridiculamente absurda. Na sua passagem pelo clube Pitch do Porto no âmbito de uma Info Session da Red Bull dedicada ao Cut n’ Paste, Steve Stein, mais conhecido por Steinski, assinou um intenso set a partir de um artilhado laptop decorado com autocolantes da Creative Commons de onde debitava rajadas sucessivas de MP3 que uniam os muito distantes universos de Herman Kelly e DJ Marlboro. Só mesmo os guardiões do centro comercial da nova escola hip hop é que não percebem: o absurdismo delicioso de Lil’ Wayne não é caso singular num devir histórico que conta com Kool Keith ou Quasimoto; e até mesmo as batidas paranoicamente viciantes de “Lollipop” ou “A Milli” têm uma insuperável dívida de gratidão perante o trabalho pioneiro de gente como Lenky ou Bobby Digital (e não me refiro ao desastrado alter-ego de Rza). A recusa da memória em detrimento do que é absolutamente novo tem apenas uma consequência – a eliminação do lado cultural de um género. Essa insistência no romper de laços – que é unilateral e surge do lado do presente em relação ao passado e nunca o contrário – parece ter como objectivo único uma espécie de reset da memória. Mas acreditar que tudo começa agora é um erro tão tremendo como acreditar que tudo terminou em 1992 quando o bom doutor editou “The chronic”.

Madlib na Radio Nova

Madlib parou na Radio Nova antes de uma apresentação ao vivo na capital francesa. Realizou um pequeno set de meia hora que agora está disponível no site da Stones Throw. Obrigatório, claro.

Madlib on radio Nova

Madlib on Hit da Breakz 1

Madlib no Hit da Breakz 2

De La Soul: 20 anos de 3 Feet High...

Tenho cinco versões de 3 Feet High and Rising: uma versão digital que carrego para todo o lado no iPod e uma versão analógica que costumava carregar para todo o lado no walkman (recentemente resisti ao impulso de comprar numa feira de velharias um walkman Sony exactamente ao modelo que tive durante tantos anos...); tenho igualmente uma versão em CD e duas em vinil - a prensagem europeia original que adquiri na Contraverso em 1989 (na verdade foi um presente, mas fui eu que o escolhi) e uma versão mais recente que transpõe o alinhamento para um duplo vinil para melhor qualidade de som. É um disco extraordinário, este 3 Feet High... Psicadélico e inovador, transportou a idade do sampling para um novo patamar e abriu uma ética para o olhar sobre o passado. Da música negra, mas não só.

Há uns anos, escrevi as seguintes linhas como parte de um texto mais alargado que surgiu a propósito de «The Grind Date»:

Apesar dos anos, apesar das suas incríveis capacidades em cima de um palco e apesar de álbuns fantásticos como “De La Soul is Dead” (91), “Buhloone Mindstate” (93) ou “Stakes is High” (96), os De La Soul ainda continuam a ser vistos como os tipos que fizeram “3 Feet High and Rising” (89), sendo continuamente perseguidos pela longa sombra lançada por esse primeiro registo. No fundo, os De La Soul – provavelmente o mais Hip Hop de todos os grupos de Hip Hop – conseguiram inadvertidamente a proeza de assinarem o único álbum de rap que toda a gente que odeia rap adora. “3 Feet High…” é de facto uma obra-prima, mas não pelas razões que normalmente lhe são apontadas (o humor, as rimas technicolor, a aura hippie, os instrumentais dançáveis…). Maseo, Dave e Pos ergueram a sua discografia em cima de um manual de sampling, um verdadeiro turbilhão que resumia a história da música negra em 52 minutos e 44 segundos de retalhos colados com a habilidade de quem tinha passado os dez anos anteriores agachado ao lado da cabine do DJ, a estudar com afinco obsessivo as etiquetas e as capas de todos os discos responsáveis por moverem a multidão. Prince Paul definiu o dogma e o dogma reinou supremo nos dez anos seguintes até que uns jovens de Virgínia Beach começaram a curvar toda uma nação a outro groove. Mas essa é outra história.

Estamos a chegar aos 20 anos de 3 Feet High. É tempo de balanços. A Rolling Stone foi falar com os De la Soul a propósito de tão redondo marco. A leitura é obrigatória e deve começar aqui:

It's been 20 years since De La Soul introduced a funkier, sunnier brand of hip-hop with the genre-broadening classic 3 Feet High and Rising, an album that went on to inspire legions of innovative followers from Digable Planets and Mos Def to OutKast and Kanye West. Mase, Posdnous and Trugoy looked back at 3 Feet and shared some of their plans to commemorate the LP's anniversary in an exclusive track-by-track interview with Rolling Stone.

"We always wanted to be one of those acts that could be considered part of a legendary legacy," says Trugoy, a.k.a. David Jude Jolicoeur. "I remember back in the day, saying it's so cool that the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie are still played. That's what we wanted hip-hop to be, one of those genres that doesn't fade out when whatever's new is hot."

With 3 Feet High and Rising, the trio teamed with producer Prince Paul to create a template for free-thinking, creative hip-hop that wasn't afraid to challenge the still-budding genre's norms. "We appreciated what BDP, Dougie, LL and so many others were doing, but we had something else to say, and we knew there were people out there like us that wanted to hear something else," says Trugoy. "We felt like, if we wanted to look the way we looked and touch on topics we did, we shouldn't be fearful of doing it just because it was the boasting and the bragging and the gold chain era. We always felt that individualism and creativity and expressing it was most important."

To mark 3 Feet's two-decade anniversary, De La are putting together a tour, a book and a album including remasters and remixes of the original tracks, along with some "re-interpretations": In 1989, when the LP was released, samples were a new frontier and many on the album were used without clearances, which would prevent the tracks from being re-released. But De La has an electrifying idea about how they can release those songs.

A parte sublinhada a negro deve interessar a todos os fãs de 3 Feet High e dos próprios De la Soul.

Texto inteiro, aqui. Boa leitura!

Mos Def & Stones Throw

A união de um grande MC a uma grande editora é sempre motivo de interesse. Muito mais quando o MC responde pelo nome de Mos Def e a editora é a irrequieta Stones Throw. O novo álbum tem por título «The Ecstatic» e é um exercício curioso: Mos escolheu uma série de instrumentais dispersos por vários lançamentos da Stones e acrescentou-lhes rimas. Ora, este exercício pode indicar uma de duas coisas:

a) Mos Def é fã dos lançamentos da editora de Stones Throw, tão fã que quis que o seu novo álbum se fizesse apenas de beats já anteriormente lançados com essa etiqueta.

b) Mos Def estava com pressa de fazer um disco e nem se deu ao trabalho de estudar as beat tapes dos produtores da Stones...

Seja como for, esta ecológica atitude de reciclagem é original e poderá até trazer alguma surpresa. Saberemos em breve.

A lista:

Supermagic - Mos Def over Oh No's “Heavy” from the album Dr. No's Oxperiment.
Auditorium - Mos Def & Slick Rick over Madlib's “Movie Finale” from the album Beat Konducta in India.
Pistola - Produced by Oh No, a track made from Billy Wooten's “In The Rain” from the album The Funky 16 Corners. Madlib also flipped this track in his epic Billy Wooten remix, “6 Variations of In The Rain”
Revelations - Produced by Madlib. Previously released as an interlude on the album Madvillainy 2: The Madlib Remix
Roses - Produced by and featuring Georgia Anne Muldrow
History - Produced by J Dilla, from a previously-unreleased beat known as “History”
Wahid & Pretty Dancer - Produced by Madlib

Ras G: viajante do espaço

Ras G é outro viajante negro do espaço, como Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, George Clinton ou Juan Atkins antes dele. Flying Lotus compara-o a Ra e a Lee Perry, sublinhando, ao mesmo tempo, a sua personalidade "out there" e a sua particular relação com o espaço - físico, mental e aural. Na música de Ras G - que já leva algumas edições - uma névoa psicadélica e uma atitude deliberadamente experimental sobressaiem sempre: os temas são curtos, como se rajadas de uma qualquer arma de raios de uma novela de ficção científica se tratassem. Ras G não tem tempo de se alongar porque cada uma das suas faixas é uma declaração de urgência de tradução do futuro. As coordenadas são complexas - Ra e sound systems, hip hop e dub, ruído e silêncio. Cabe tudo nos seus interessantes lançamentos. Entretanto e depois de um 2008 particularmente activo, Ras G já marcou o ponto em 2009 com um novo lançamento na Brainfeeder de FlyLo: Brotha From Another Planet disponível digitalmente no iTunes onde onde vos der mais jeito.

Egyptian Lover: electro warrior

Lembro-me muito bem do que senti quando, atrás do balcão da histórica Godzilla, Mark, o dono da loja, me deixou ser o primeiro a ver uma pilha enorme de maxis (e alguns LP's) históricos de hip hop. Devia correr o ano de 2000 e aquelas rodelas de vinil pareciam-me artefactos de uma época perdida, preciosos exemplares dos passos formativos de uma cultura que, à época, atravessava igualmente uma fase interesante por cá. O meu orçamento permitiu-me adquirir uns 20 ou 25 discos desse lote que ainda hoje permanecem na minha colecção, mas houve um sobretudo que comprei nesse dia que ainda hoje considero como uma das minhas pérolas: Egypt, Egypt, maxi de 1984 lançado na Egyptian Empire Records pelo então misterioso Egyptian Lover.
O fascínio pelo Egipto era algo que já tinha identificado na música negra - de Sun Ra a Afrika Bambaataa, passando pelos Earth Wind & Fire e pelo artwork das etiquetas da Strata East, muitas eram as referências a uma nobre civilização africana em vários quandrantes da música negra. Mas The Egyptian Lover era algo diferente: já há anos que lia referências ao seu electro visionário, mas por alguma razão nunca tinha percebeido que o famoso «what is a dj if he can't scratch» que passava a vida a ouvir em mixtapes e samplado por inúmeros djs (o final dos anos 90 foi a época do Return of The DJ da Bomb Hip Hop e da imposição definitiva do turntablism) estava no lado B deste maxi.



Recentemente, a música de Egyptian Lover voltou a ganhar relevância: aproximou-se da Stones Throw que editou coisas do veterano Arabian Prince ou de Dam Funk e os seus clássicos voltaram a ser procurados. Como se percebe pelo link incluído atrás, Egyptian Lover continua activo e até assinou uma remistura para mais um lançamento de James Pants. Agora, o blog da marca Civil Clothing publicou uma interessante entrevista que reproduzo abaixo. Leitura divertida para o fim de semana que se aproxima. Larguem um bocadinho o jogo dos Space Invaders e investiguem a música de The Egyptian Lover.

Egyptian Lover: A trip into the mind of a True West Coast Electro Pioneer.

From his legendary run with Uncle Jamm’s Army in the 80s performing to touring with today’s young talent such as MIA, Stones Throw, no one can deny the influence Egyptian Lover has had on hip hop, electro and music today. His funky innovative sound with the use of the 808 keyboard, has had an impact on many artists from Dre’s use to create West Coast Gangsta rap and modern synthetics with artists such as Kanye West. “Egypt,Egypt” will forever be embedded on the soundtrack of hip hop’s everlasting history as well as being used as an anthem for bboys, poppers, lockers from yesteryear until today.

CIVIL: Yoo, whats up Egypt! For the younger cats in the game, can you tell us how you got started with music and Djing?

Egyptian Lover: I got started riding a bus to school everyday with others talking about how good they can make a tape. So I went home and made a pause button tape that blew everyone away. I started selling them and putting Raps that I made on them. This was back when “Rapper’s Delight” first came out so Rap was new to us and I had to let everyone know I could do it to! So every month I would do a new Rap Mix Tape and sell them at my School. James Monroe High in the San Fernando Valley. Snake Puppy from L.A. Dream Team and I used to rap together on the Bus and on some Mix Tapes. It was all about the Fun back then. I became so popular as a D.J. and Mixer that I joined Uncle Jam’s Army. I still remember the day Snake told Rodger from Uncle Jam’s Army that I was the best D.J. ever and he needed me to be a part of Uncle Jam’s Army. That is when everyone got a chance to see my Turntable Talent. I was then forced to make a record because of the popular demand. I played my 808 Drum Machine at the Dances and people would loose their minds.

CIVIL: So who were the crazy individuals that inspired you back then to come out with your incredibly unique sound?

Egyptian Lover: I was inspired by Kraftwerk and Prince.With Prince, I always liked his music and style back in the days. My heavy breathing in my music and the lyrics bout women is based on his music. Also my outfit back then, for example the Sailor Cappy I wear in the “Breakin and Entering” movie were leaned on Prince. Later I had the luck to meet Prince and he told me that he truly likes my music – I was surprised and honored.

CIVIL:A lot of artists today get a lot of hype with their recorded material, but when they perform live something is lacking. I notice your live show is sick and goes all out with a dance routine with the music, and incorporates bboys and poppers. How did you come up with this set?

Egypt: It’s what we did back in the day. I used to have a Live Band and go all out like Prince did back in the 80’s, Now I D.J. to show off my mixing skills, Dance to show of my Moves, and play my 808 to show off my Producing side. I try to let everyone know “That I can do it all Baby just like that”.

Let’s play a game, I say a word and answer with a single word what comes to mind:

808 - BASS
Bambataa - Planet Rock
Hip Hop - Don’t Stop
West Coast Style - Egyptian Lover Style
Obama - Leader
Stones Throw - Team
Kool Herc - Legend
Ferrari - Fast
Jerry Curl - Sexy

CIVIL:Are there any new projects you are working on today?

Egypt: Many new projects. I am putting out many new 12″ singles this year to celebrate Egyptian Empire records 25th Anniversary. Many songs on iTunes, a New Album, many collabs and many Videos.

CIVIL:You helped pioneer the west coast 808 sound, and I noticed a lot of producers today are influenced by this. What are you using today to make music?

Egypt:I still use my 808 and I will always use it. It has a sound that will never die.

CIVIL: I noticed you have a picture of yourself in an all Adidas track suit posing by a Ferrari, with the sickest hair. Tell me about those days

Egypt:It was much fun. Money, Cars and Women. Enough said!

CIVIL: How many babes did you get with that Ferrari?

Egyptian Lover: Too Many to count.

CIVIL:What exactly did you mean by “Freaky Kinky Nation”?

Egypt: A Nation of Kinky Freaks. All women as Horny as they can be. I can handle that. And I did not care what people said about it.

CIVIL: How do you want to be remembered as an artist?

Egypt:I want to be remembered as an Artist that did it all from A to Z. I wrote the songs, programmed the Beat, Made the track, laid the vocals, put it out on my label and sold it through my distribution company and performed the songs on stage. Just as my song says:

“What is a D.J. if he can’t Scratch?”
“What is a M.C. if he can;’t Rap”
“What is a Beat without a Live Clap?”
“Well I can do it all Baby Just like That”

Egyptian Lover from gregthedude on Vimeo.

História de sampling com final feliz

O episódio é relatado na mais recente newsletter da Stones Throw e pode ser lida aqui ou, para maior comodidade vossa, reproduzida mais abaixo. Apesar de todos os processos - alguns dos quais movidos contra a própria etiqueta de Peanut Butter Wolf - é ainda possível encontrar quem perceba o real impulso de quem sampla - e neste caso quem samplou foi alguém cuja paixão pela música é indiscutível, Madlib! Num momento em que o hip hop avança para lá da samplagem do passado (ouvindo trabalhos de Ras G ou Jneiro Jarel ou Flying Lotus parece que se está a samplar o futuro!), pensar a forma como a memória foi processada em incontáveis gestos de "pilhagem" via sampler é, mais do que nunca, urgente. Não restam dúvidas de que a imagem que hoje temos do passado - imagem construída entre lançamentos da Strut, Soul Jazz ou Analog Africa e Now Again, entre tantas outras - é a que a lupa do sampling tornou visível. A mudança de interface - do sampler para o sintetizador ou laptop - pode significar que não há mais passados para descobrir? Para perceber que passados há ainda por cartografar teremos mesmo que esperar pelo... futuro.

Egon May 12, 2009

Matthew Larkin Cassell: The Complete Works
Coming on Stones Throw in 2009

It’s not often that a sample clearance claim against a record company turns out to be an altogether pleasant experience. Usually it’s a blustery, puffy-chested affair with lawyers on both sides citing arcane copyright cases and threatening court proceedings as if the year were 1987 and Biz Markie had just released his first album on Cold Chillin.’

We’ve been fortunate to have gained access into the superb Raymond Scott catalog through our association with Basta Audio Visuals and Scott’s musical steward Irwin Chusid and, more recently, we inked a deal with singer, songwriter, pianist and man-in-the-know Matthew Larkin Cassell.

MLC hit us up after he heard his “Heaven,” from his superb (and superbly rare) album Pieces on the song “3.214” from the album Madvillainy 2: The Madlib Remix. At first Madlib had no idea of the import of his decision to lift MLC’s work until he put two and two together and realized that the Japanese bootleg 12” labled “MLC” stood for, well, you guessed it.

Who wouldn’t want access to the multi-tracks to MLC’s break-beat laded “My Life?” Madlib certainly did. And MLC wanted to see his entire catalog (comprised of the Pieces album, an EP entitled Matt The Cat, a 7” single and a recent vinyl EP) issued on CD and distributed digitally. So, I flew to the Bay Area, hung out with the man and committed his story to tape and got down to negotiations. Five months later, here we are. We’re officially announcing the soon-to-be-released Matthew Larkin Cassell The Complete Works and hinting that we might do something special with those multis. With MLC’s permission of course.

Wu-Tang redesenhados

Está tudo aqui e dá que pensar. Até porque a recente investida por território Wu de El Michels não rendeu os melhores resultados. O que aconteceria se alguns músicos da Blue Note se juntassem para criar leituras jazz dos clássicos do universo Wu-Tang? E não me refiro a refazerem simplesmente os loops de Rza com instrumentação live, mas pegarem nos flows de Gza ou ODB para servirem de guia a imaginativos improvisos. Isso seria interessante. Talvez as capas aticem a criatividade de algum executivo da Blue Note.

De La Soul + Nike = Are You In?

O thread mais longo de sempre do Hit da Breakz foi criado no já distante ano de 2005 (o post mais recente data apenas de há algumas semanas) e tornou-se no ponto de discussão de sneakers mais quente desse fórum. O post inicial, da minha autoria, dava conta de uma edição customizada de uns dunks que homenageavam o trio de Long Island. A ligação à Nike volta agora a dar frutos: depois do exercício fantástico dos LCD Soundsystem, a ideia de correr durante 45 minutos volta a render efeitos interessantes (curioso é o facto de tanto James Murphy como os De La Soul não parecerem serem dados a grandes corridas...).

Nike brings us an exclusive release from De La Soul, one of the most influential hip hop groups. In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the classic and outstanding album “3 Feet High and Rising”, De La Soul and Nike collaborates on the release of the 45 minute “Are You In?: Nike+ Original Run” mix, which happens to be the groups’ first released original material in five years and with additional production coming from Chi town DJ/production duo Flosstradamus. Available through iTunes, so grab it and start running!

Nike Sport Music - De La Soul from nikedelasoul on Vimeo.

Chris Read: The Diary Volume 1.5

Chris Read, o homem que se atreveu a colocar 800 temas de hip hop por ordem cronológica numa mix a todos os títulos histórica, tem nova mix na página da Music Of Substance. Desta vez, a tarefa não é menos grandiosa - Chris Read remistura uma faixa de cada um dos últimos 20 anos de história de hip hop, mas com a subtileza adicional de adaptar em cada um dos casos o estilo de produção em vigor na época em que o original foi editado. Dizem eles:

One iconic hip hop track from each of the last 20 years, remixed paying tribute to the prouction style and sampling trends popular at the time of the original release. From the James Brown influenced style of the late 80s, to the jazz sampling trends of the mid '90s, to the iconic and distinct sounds of DJ Premier and Jay Dee, all the cornerstones of the genre's development are touched upon.

Tarefa grandiosa, de facto. Eis o que alguns notáveis têm a dizer:

"This CD just shows how much Chris Read knows about historic Hip Hop production techniques - It's just a shame he wasn't producing this stuff during the eras that he's covering as we would probably rate the man as being up there with Paul C, Pete Rock, Premier and all! - I can't think of another Hip Hop CD I've played so much in years!" (Andy Smith - Portishead)

"Chris continues the rap anthology concept of his super-dope 'The Diary' megamix in the shape of a remix project, re-lacing acapellas from 89-2009 with historically accurate beats. 'The Diary 1.5' serves as a great platform for Chris to showcase his ample beat-making skills whilst referencing those who've inspired him." (DJ Woody – Former World ITF Champion)

"Crazy! This is Rap History in the making. Chris proves his production skills on this one to the fullest. A wonderful and refreshing journey through all eras of hip hop. Double thumbs up!" (Marc Hype – MPM Records / Former ITF Champion)

Chris Read - The Diary 1.5

Chris Read - The Diary (World's Greatest Rap Megamix)

Jazz Bridges # 14: Hip hop loves jazz

O hip hop e o jazz são duas culturas muito distintas, mas que partilham muito mais do que a mesma nacionalidade.

A reflexão sobre a linha que liga o jazz ao hip hop talvez seja o subtexto mais constante desta coluna. Desde o já longínquo texto sobre David Axelrod até ao artigo sobre a compilação “Droppin’ Science” da Blue Note, passando pelos olhares lançados sobre Madlib e Donald Byrd, tem importado por aqui analisar essa porta de entrada na memória do jazz que o hip hop nitidamente oferece. Mas como é mais do que óbvio, o jazz não é apenas memória e o hip hop até tem contribuído para que não seja matéria de museu, provocando muito provavelmente acesas discussões nos jantares de Natal do clã Marsalis, quando Wynton e Branford se sentam à mesma mesa. Sobre o vibrante presente tratam muitas das páginas que se seguem, e aqui na Jazz Bridges quando se espreita o calendário actual é quase sempre para perceber como foi afectado pela memória – ou memórias, não há apenas uma… - de uma determinada escola da história do jazz.
O jazz importou ao hip hop desde o início. Como o bop no particular microcosmos da Minton’s Playhouse, também o hip hop beneficiou de um nascimento em “circuito fechado”, nas festas de um destroçado Bronx dos anos 70 onde o disco sound que abalava as estruturas de Manhattan foi despido de todo o seu glamour até ao osso rítmico que traduzia urgência, vigor, orgulho e isolamento. O hip hop estreou-se em vinil em 1979, mas os primeiros passos estéticos foram dados com bandas em estúdio a emularem o gesto repetitivo dos djs. Só quando os primeiros samplers se tornaram amplamente disponíveis no mercado, a partir de 1987, é que se ergueu a figura do produtor e as aproximações ao universo do jazz começaram a ser regulares.
Como é óbvio – e para lá da discussão dos direitos de autor, que aliás pode nem fazer sentido no contexto de uma linguagem que também se ergueu a reinventar peças alheias – a questão da apropriação do jazz pelo hip hop é, sobretudo, cultural, por muito que isso custe ao senhor Wynton.
Quando os produtores pioneiros levaram para casa samplers como o SP1200 da EMU, os primeiros discos onde procuraram excertos para animar as suas criações eram os que existiam disponíveis no lar paterno. E se o código postal do produtor em questão o situava num dos “boroughs” negros da Nova Iorque dos anos 80, o mais natural era que entre as colecções herdadas dos progenitores se encontrassem títulos reveladores da sua identidade pós-Civil Rights Movement: o soul de Aretha, o funk de James Brown e Sly Stone, o proto-disco das produções de Gamble & Huff efectuadas a partir de Filadélfia, as canções de protesto ritmicamente sofisticadas dos O’Jays (“Back Stabbers”) e dos Temptations (“Message From a Black Man”), mas também, claro, uma alargada selecção do jazz que tocava nas rádios: Miles e Lou Donaldson, Cannonball Adderley e Donald Byrd, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Smith, Grant Green e até, talvez, num lar mais “aventureiro”, um pouco de Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders ou Eric Dolphy.
O jazz atraiu os produtores logo desde o primeiro momento: em 1988, os Gang Starr de Guru samplavam Charlie Parker em “Words I Manifest” e os Stetsasonic apoiavam-se em Lonnie Liston Smith para construir “Talkin’ All That Jazz”. A tendência acentuou-se com a entrada nos anos 90, descobrindo o hip hop de recorte “jazzy” um natural aliado na corrente “acid jazz” nascida em Londres. Não se pense, no entanto, que a ligação do hip hop ao jazz era meramente oportunista e facilitada pela tecnologia que permitia pegar numa frase de piano de Herbie e repeti-la sobre um padrão rítmico de Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. O fascínio do jazz era mais fundo – se um lado do hip hop é programado e calculado – o do suporte rítmico – outro há que apela à invenção: o freestyle do MC favorece a livre associação de ideias, a ginástica com a sintaxe, um pouco como acontece quando um solista de jazz desenvolve a ideia contida num standard. O scratch do DJ também reforça essa ligação ao espírito do jazz: Herbie Hancock nos anos 80 chamou aliás Grandmixer DST para o álbum “Future Shock” e fez dele uma peça central nos seus espectáculos ao vivo, passo “exótico” à época, mas hoje perfeitamente normal – são já muitos os ensembles de jazz que integram manipuladores de gira-discos.
Duas décadas após as primeiras abordagens ao jazz por via do sampler, e depois de incontáveis voltas que viram o hip hop transformar-se numa cultura e num negócio de escala global, as ligações entre as duas correntes continuam fortes. Disso mesmo deu conta no número passado da Jazz.Pt Alberto Mourão na sua recensão crítica ao álbum do projecto nacional Rocky Marsiano, que traduz uma tendência de sincretismo recente que procura a ultrapassagem do mero plano do sampling para a interacção directa com músicos que ajudam assim o hip hop a descolar do plano da citação para o mais interessante desafio da criação e da invenção. O projecto Liquid Crystal do produtor de hip hop J Rawls, as Sound Directions e o Yesterdays Universe de Madlib e, sobretudo, “Clin d’Oeil”, álbum recente de um trio de produtores franceses que recupera a iconografia da editora norte-americana Black Jazz e convoca para estúdio músicos franceses e MCs americanos para o mais entusiasmante momento de regresso à intersecção da matéria-prima jazz com a perspectiva hip hop, são sinais claros de que a cultura nascida no Bronx continua interessada no som da liberdade pura.

(texto publicado originalmente na revista jazz.pt)