Nope, they’re not those stylish yet exorbitantly overpriced
headphones you’re wearing. But they are what you should be listening to in your
Dre-adphones.
Since this blog is focused around the LA Beats scene, I
thought I should write a post laying some general foundation by explaining the
music and the scene for those slightly less informed. So what are beats? Most of
you probably think of a beat as a song’s percussion or rhythm, and that’s not
wrong – at it’s most basic level, a beat is just that, any type of percussion
in a song. But when speaking of Beats (capital B) as a musical genre, a beat is
much more than simply the drums underneath a song.
In the Beats world, the beat IS the song. The concept was
bred in hip hop– as rap developed as a genre and electronic production became
more prominent, there became a stark distinction between the rapping (or vocal
verses) and the music underneath the rap, often including samples from older
music. No longer was the rapper the sole artist – instead, the rapping and the
music production were often done by two (or many more) different people. That’s not to say that this was always the
case; indeed, in many cases rappers are also producers who create their own beats.
But increasingly, the two arts were being separated, both in terms of creation
but also consumption. Rap songs slowly became more and more judged and defined
by their beats, almost as if the rapping was mere icing to the beat’s cake.
This set the stage for hip-hop DJs, who are the real fathers
of the beats scene. Pioneered by legends like Grandmaster Flash, these DJs
began mixing beats from multiple songs live, creating their own samples manually
from vinyl records on the spot (sometimes rehearsed, others totally on the fly).
A short self-serving digression: Wikipedia informs me that
Grandmaster Flash supposedly invented the first crossfader (necessary to mix
between two record turntables) with parts he found in a junkyard in the Bronx.
Damn that’s cool. I actually saw Grandmaster Flash perform in Hong Kong while
studying abroad there, and let me tell you, the man has still got it.
In the hip-hop DJ arena, the beat was king – a DJ’s ultimate
goals were to a) find the coolest (ideally unknown) beats to demonstrate
supreme musical knowledge and awareness and b) to mix those beats to create
new, more interesting and more inventive beats. DJs began recording their mixes
and releasing them as stand-alone music.
But, as you can see by that video’s quality and Grandmaster’s
Eddie Murphy-esque style, DJing (and therein, beat-making) has been around for
a long time. So why has the Beat scene just taken off? One critical step: the
explosion of electronic music. In the past decade, electronic music genres like
House and Dubstep have skyrocketed in popularity, especially in the US. It was
this critical step that made it possible for Beat music to become popular
(although it still hasn’t breached the ever-elusive “mainstream”).
Beats music is all electronically produced. It’s rap beats
meets dubstep. That is, it combines the drum-driven nature of rap beats with
the extremely bass-driven nature of dubstep. And we’re talking deep, deep bass.
It’s also intended to be played LOUD. Like
your-body-is-vibrating-from-the-insanely-deep-and-insanely-loud-bass LOUD. Like
dubstep, it’s allure is largely physical.
It’s visceral music that isn’t necessarily made to make you think. It’s made to
make you go “UGGHHHH” because you’ve never heard anything so filthy in your
life. Filthy, that’s how a Beats beat is supposed to be. It hits hard and it’s
impossible to ignore. It’s not easy listening.
That being said, Beats are also very groove-oriented and made
to meant you dance. In fact, when the right beat gets played, you won’t be able
to help but dance. That is, if you’re able to find the groove amidst the walls
of bass. It’s not an easy thing to do, and most people wouldn’t want to do it
upon first hearing the music. At first you might be turned off – the music is
really intense. But that’s why it’s amazing. It’s amazing because it is so bassy, so loud, and hits you so hard. It’s amazing
because you’ve never heard music that makes you feel this way before and it’s a
totally crazy feeling. And if you let the music take you and dance as hard as
the music suggests, scream as loud as your body feels it needs to, that feeling
of crazy will turn into a feeling of euphoria. And that phenomenon, that
feeling, is why this blog exists.
Some beats for your listening pleasure:
Cushion by Samiyam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwnWFmAaQ2c
Mercy (by Kanye West) remixed by Salva and RL Grime: http://soundcloud.com/salva/mercy-rl-grime-salva-rmx
araabMUZIK producing beats live on an MPC (will explain what
this means later): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qKtyPQ0bJ4
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