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Joseph Glenn Schloss is now a professor of music @ some university, although I can't seem to pin him down anywhere in particular.But this is a review of his PHD dissertation submitted to University of Washington. It will be published as a book, so I'll assume there'll be some polishing for a regular audience.
According to the dissertation when this was written Joe was a 31 year old Jewish guy, who was also a hip hop head in the Seattle Scene. If you google for Joe schloss, you will find all sorts of things he's written, including hip hop.
"Making Beats explores the ways in which the non-vocal elements of recorded hip hop are conceived by producers, and how these conceptualizations are informed by a variety of social, practical, and artistic concerns"
The dissertation is based on a series of interviews with hip hop producers.
He breaks up this topic into 9 parts
1. Intro and methodology - hip hop and how he did the study
2. Literature review - what has been written about hip hop by scholars.
3. History of Sampling and it's connection to the Deejaying
4. "It just doesn't sound Authentic"
5. Digging in the Crates
6. Sampling Ethics
7. Signifying on Beats
8. From samplers to ears
9. Conclusions____________________________________________________________ Grains of Salt to carry with you as you read this review
- For various reasons, most of which can be found in lesson archives, I dislike academicians taking on hip hop.So if some parts of this review seem particularly harsh, and you're trying to guess my agenda, my agenda is that I dislike college types trying to describe hip hop.
______________________________________________________ Overall Conclusions
1. This is an impressive work for someone constrained by a school.
2. The stench of The Academy is confined to a few things, so the brunt of the dissertation is good, but he tries to fit some things he finds in hip hop to a greater framework supplied to him by The Academy, and this fails, miserably even.
3. On the substantive parts about hip hop, there are some problematic conceptual issues. Either he doesn't get it, or he can't explain it, or it can't be explained.
Chapter 1
He opens the entire work with Mr. Supreme's justification of sampling.
Joe: I wanted to get you to tell that story about when you were talking to your mother-in-law about painting....
_______________________________________________________________- Mr. Supreme - Oh Yeah, and we were arguing, 'cause she was saying I didn't make music. That it's not art....She really didn't understand at all, and we argued for 2 hours about it. Basically at the end she said...If I took sounds, it's not mind--that I took it from someone.
And then I explained to her: What's the difference if I take a snare drum off of a record, or I take a snare drum and slap it with a drum stick?
Ok the difference is gonna be the sound. Because when it was recorded, it was maybe a different snare, or had a reverb effect or the mic was placed funny. It's a different sound. But what's the difference between taking the sound from the record or a drum? It's the *sound* that you're using, and then you create something. You make a whole new song with it.
And she paints, so I told her, "you don't actually *make the paint*" You know what I'm saying? "you're not painting 'cause you don't make the paint..But that's what it is, it's like painting a picture.
____________________________________________________________________ In essence, Supreme's Mom says that sampling wasn't making music, it wasn't making art. He then makes the analogy that the individual sounds that he samples, and then arranges into a beat, is like her picking out colors and painting a picture. The individual sounds – a snare from this record, a note from a piano on this record, is the paint. So when you put together a beat, you're making art. The composition of a painting, knowing what you want to draw, the drawing of the lines, the filling in with paint, is the same as knowing what you want your beat to sound like, getting the diff sounds together, and organizing them, and filling in the beat.
Two things strike me as problematic.
- At this point in the game, we as hip hop heads, do not need to justify sampling. We gain nothing from it.
- This analogy doesn't really address the most common criticism that people have about sampling. If you were to take a beat like Come Clean, and then go get that Shelly Manne record, Primo comes off like a genius. He took noise and made it into music. But what average folks normally say, "They just stole that beat from Chic, it still sounds like Good Times to me". The ultimate design and appeal of Rapper's Delight is Good Times. Same with Ice Ice Baby and D. Bowie's Under Pressure. – So in essence it defends chops quite well, but loops on the other hand....
To me, even questioning the legitimacy of sampling as art is heretical, blasphemous even.
If anything, it should be an axiomatic assumption. But if you feel the need to defend it, the paint analogy is not the way. There are alternatives, including the sow's ear into a silk purse analogy. I submit, w/o proof, that a lot of popular loops in hip hop weren't popular records in their native genre's. And the real talent of the looping hip hop producer is to have the ear for some dope records, and able to recognize that this sound would be great with the appropriate drum track and additional elements.
In essence, not all breakdowns, riffs, and bridges are suitable for hip hop, and it takes real talent to understand what works, and what doesn't.
There are other ways to defend looping, as I'm sure most of you are aware.
Ultimately, he does treat the legitimacy of sampling as an axiomatic assumption throughout the rest of the work. But you shouldn't really call it into question in the first place.
Axiomatic Assumptions
1. Hip hop is an African-American music
2. Sample-based hip hop in its ideal form exists on record rather than in live performance
3. Sample based hip hop celebrates the vision of a single composer
4. Sample based hip hop is a genre - hip hop is an African American musicI gotta respect the man for this particular definition, because he's trying to satisfy his critics with a defn that includes American blacks, Jamaican blacks, and Puerto Ricans (implying the non-black ones?) in the general definition of African American. This means he doesn't need to account for whether hip hop is Jamaican in heritage, or if the Latin rhythms played in the park jams had any sort of influence.
He then even goes on to say that you can make Af. Am music w/o being Af. Am. No one would argue that 3rd Bass wasn't making black music. The next move is to connect things found in hip hop music, which arguably has influence from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and America, with what other scholars have said about dancing connection with Africa, Beatboxing in Africa, and the general characteristics of African American culture as promulgated by Skip Gates
He's lucky he's assuming this, and then moving on, because the American blackness, the Jamaicanness, the PuertoRicanness of hip hop can be argued very heavily.
- Sample based hip hop in it's ideal form is on record, and not live Again this is another slick assumption but necessary for the work as a whole. But the complexity hidden by this is difficult to resolve. We all know that hip hop started out as a live event, and not a recorded artifact. Hip Hop used to be something you would go to, not something you'd go pick up and have with you. Now before you cut and paste this particular part of my review, recognize that you and I were not a part of that reality. I'm talking about 1973, way before hip hop records were being made, and way before hip hop was playing in downtown NYC clubs. You weren't there, and I wasn't there, so neither of us can really stand on solid ground in all of our assertions about said time.
But in the modern context (post 1987), this is a good assumption to make, because the vast majority of us ever really witness live sampling/beat making, even though we witness live hip hop all the time.
You think when Gangstarr performs, Primo got the original breaks on the 1200's and is backspinning them like Herc? Hell naw. He might be rocking the instrumental and cutting in live, but he doesn't travel with his producing records for live shows.
Joe says, "the process of creating recorded music has become almost completely estranged from the process of capturing the sound of a live performance"
He might be right, but it's a hard road to take.
- Single vision of a producer
He only says this in response to the idea that Af Am music has a communal nature. I think it's a bit overstated, considering how much we know about 1) production assistants, 2) co producers, 3) production teams, 4) ghost producers. The Neptunes, Dr. Dre, Puffy n'nem.- Sample Based hip hop is a genre
The other 2 genres being, live instrumentation and synthesizers. I'm not sure if this is a useful distinction. Often times when producers use live bands, they are replaying breaks. Cats that use synthesizers on the other hand, might not use any breaks at all.Later on in the Book, he brings in Dj Karen Dere, and in her discussion of drum selection, she implies that G-rap isn't really hip hop because of how they choose their drums. At least that's how I think he wants you to read it.
The rest of Chapter 1 deals with his methodology.
Conclusion on the 1st chapter - Not to discount his effort, but he uses a lot of Seattle producers, when we really want to know what particular east coast producers (large pro, pete rock, primo, diamond d, Marley Marl, etc) think.
I hope that this book gets popular enough so that he could talk to more esteemed/brand name sample-based producers. Understandablely, I don't know how you would get all those cats to really break down their thought process. I also agree that a lot of what these cats say in their interviews, I've heard from sample-based producers from Chi, ATL, and Houston. But the fact that most of the producers are only known to underground heads, and only a couple of them have recognizable joints, takes away from the real strength of this work.
Chapter 2 – Literature Review
It's interesting that he says he has to discuss the scholarly work that is the foundation of his own work. Interesting might not be the word, contradictory might be better. Joe makes the same conclusion that all of have made, everything written about hip hop, really isn't about hip hop.
- pre cursors of hip hop, r He mentions the work done on the pre-cursors of hip-hop, but he doesn't really address whether those pre-cursors are indeed pre-cursors of hip hop.
Is Jazz really a pre-cursor? Funk? Reggae? He argues that any useful work done on hip hop has to be interdisciplinary, since it has to integrate literature from diff diverse subjects. Then he goes on to say that there is literal work done on the pre-cursors of hip hop, and none of it addresses the musical aspects.
He says, this lack of work on the musical elements, forces you to discuss the "oral poetry", the rapping.
The next paragraph speaks to West African oral tradition. He notices how there is little work on what slaves sounded like though. (that is when the West African Oral Tradition would be the strongest) He goes on about various other studies that sorta vaguely relate to black folks, talking, and music.
But in essence, he comes to the conclusion that a lot of research that would id/define the precursors of hip hop and draw those connections, hasn't been done.
Personally, I don't think it can be done, but that's a whole other topic…..
- On to the hip hop literature
Mentions David Toop, Castleman (on graffiti), and Hager. "Many of the above cited works primarily emphasize economic, social, and cultural contexts"…But he goes on to say this, (quoting Keyes) "hip-hop's aesthetics is deeply beholden to the music of other eras, and an understanding of these sensibilities can only enrich our understanding of contemporary practice"
To be quite honest with you, I only find this interesting because the hip hop community is split on this question.
There are tons of classic hip hop beats that pretty much reject the sensibilities of other genre's. (think Bomb Squad) At the same time, there are also classic beats that capture the aesthetics of another era, just in a slightly new context. I think this ties into the whole loop vs chop dichotomy I put above.
But when I hear Biggie or Tribe reuse Btwn the Sheets, I'm definitely thinking of the aesthetics of the Isley Bros. When I hear, K. Murrays' the most beautifullest thing in the world, (which uses the same break), I don't think the Isley Bros. Now that's my personal example, but I'm sure if you were a real breakologist, you could come up with a bunch of songs that use the same breaks, but one is recognizable and the other isn't.
But this sort of debate, central to a discussion about sample based producers, isn't here. Maybe ol boy didn't think of it.
To sum up my point – there is a specific hip hop aesthetic/thing that we're going after that is not dependent on what we sample. But he continues to suggest that some of our aesthetics, way we look @ and listen to beats, with this (as a general criticism, Mr. Schloss believes that certain things are right and wrong about hip hop, and he uses the words of his interviewees to push his own agenda) Pg 34 - Mr Supreme, rejects the notion that a "true hip hopper" should only listen to hip hop music.:
‘If you're a real true hip hopper – and I think a lot of hip hoppers aren't – like I always say, "it's all music", So if you really are truly into hip hop, how can you not listen to everything else? Because it comes from everything else. So you are listening to everything else. So how can you say I only listen to hip hop and I don't listen to this, it doesn't make sense to me"
*I personally don't know about all that. It's a bit too Deepak Chopra for me*
Joe then rightly says, if these kinda attitudes are rarely seen in hip hop, it's because they do not answer the questions that scholars are interested in, such as, what does hip hop's popularity say about Am. Culture in the late 20th century, how does global capitalism affect artistic expression….
Joe argues that most hip hop literature rests on 2 premises,
1) hip hop is primarily the expression of Black social and cultural formations in the US,2) hip hop is an expression of the cultural logic of late capitalism. And then goes on to say that Rose (of black noise fame) and Potter offers sophisticated blend of these 2 things, which he believes are correct.
Now because this is a scholarly paper, and I'm no scholar, I have no idea what the cultural logic of late capitalism is, nor the expression of a social/cultural formation. But I've read Tricia's book, and I'm basically not feeling it.
He also likes Potters post modern linkage to hip hop. (look up postmodernism online, cause the resident post modern experts can't really explain it in a few lines)
But he does make this key observation, that neither Rose nor Potter works are based on participant observation, ie they weren't hip hop heads.
He also says that it's strange that the majority of hip hop work is post modern analyses of rapping.
- the current study
Is ethnographic, and to study it this way you need 1) access to producers, 2) the desire to study music.Page 38 - He says this about his boy Potter, who dismissed beats, "Whatever role played by the samples and breakbeats, for much of hip hop's core audience, it is w/o question the rhymes come first. – and Joe's study is about challenging this conclusion.
Oddly enough, he doesn't really get into this at all. Unless you make the leap of logic that considerations of producers necessarily determines what the audiences thinks about a particular song… If Primo thinks it sounds dope, then automatically the audience says yes, Primo you are right. - *listens to Tha Ownerz and comes to a different conclusion, lol*
A major problem with this study is that in studying sample-based producers, purists even, is that it ignores the end product, which is necessarily the mc + the producer/dj, not to mention the business process that goes from actual song creation to being played to an audience.
Now I don't expect any one person to cover everything about making good hip hop music in 1 thesis, but there are some basic concepts you need to address whenever you write something like this. Just acknowledging the complexity would have been enough for me, but that's not what this paper does.
…..
Anyway, ol boy does mention that the post modern analyses of hip hop pretty much doesn't use empirical data and indigenous perspectives. For this alone, I gotta give ol boy props. It's funny that, 25+ years after the birth of hip hop someone makes this conclusion.
Chapter 3.
- historical issues
Disputing the popular tendency to portray hip hop as an organic cultural development, Joe notes that a lot of people argue that hip hop was inevitable given the cultural context it came out of. "Poor black and brown kids under Reagan with no after school music programs…oh no, they have to do something. Voila hip hop" Hip Hop developed as a form of resistance to oppression.Anyway, he brings in some cat named Robin D.G. Kelley that says the linking of Af Am art with oppression is endemic to people writing about Af Am art. In essence, rapping might not be about fighting the party, it just might be fun.
On page 42, he runs with Kelley's observation, and says that people who do the auto associate thing make mad mistakes.
1. Hip Hop was not created by Af Am culture but by Af Am people, each of whom had volition, creativity, and a choice as to how proceed. "Dj Kool Herc was not forced by his oppressive environment to isolate percussion breaks when he deejayed in the early 70's. He Chose to do it
2. class determinism – what people do in hip hop is the product of being poor – they rap because they can't afford sax lessons. He then cites Dj Kool Akiem – "They were too poor to get instruments….man those samplers were expensive back then…djing is more expensive than playing an instrument" Sp 12 was 2745 in 1986 (approx 3600 bucks today assuming 1.5% inflation)
- in talking about the actual creation of hip hop
Joe makes this good observation, "At some point in the late 1970's, the isolation of the break + other effects, began to be considered a musical form unto itself. – hip hop became a musical genre when the dj's and their audiences made the collective intellectual shift to perceive it as music. – hip hop as activity to hip hop as musical form.He then has some words about Sugar hill's 1st record and how that affected the culture, and how it's still being felt today. This is actually an important thing he notices, but he doesn't develop it. He does address the things that had to develop on the musical production side when it's divorced from the live context.s
parts 2 and 3 shortly