Acoustic hip hop

Last updated

Acoustic hip hop is a musical style combining hip hop and rap with acoustic instruments. It was formed as an alternative to pop and gangsta rap in the late 1980s and early 1990s and has been growing steadily since.

Hip hop subculture including music, dance and graffiti

Hip hop or hip-hop, is a culture and art movement that began in the Bronx in New York City during the early 1970s. The origin of the word is often disputed. It is also argued as to whether hip hop started in the South or West Bronx. While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively to hip hop music, hip hop is characterized by nine elements, of which only four elements are considered essential to understand hip hop musically. The main elements of hip hop consist of four main pillars. Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, coining the terms: "rapping", a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality); DJing, which is making music with record players and DJ mixers ; b-boying/b-girling/breakdancing (movement/dance); and graffiti. Other elements of hip hop subculture and arts movements beyond the main four are: hip hop culture and historical knowledge of the movement (intellectual/philosophical); beatboxing, a percussive vocal style; street entrepreneurship; hip hop language; and hip hop fashion and style, among others. The fifth element, although debated, is commonly considered either street knowledge, hip hop fashion, or beatboxing.

Contents

Instruments

Acoustic hip hop requires a backing accompaniment that is both rhythmic and harmonious. Accordingly, the guitar is the most popular instrument used in acoustic hip hop, while the piano and ukulele are also used. Beats and percussion tracks are usually created through the beatboxing or traditional percussion such as drum sets, bongos and Cuban box drums.

Guitar fretted string instrument

The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger(s)/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting with the fingers of the other hand. The sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.

Piano musical instrument

The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.

Ukulele member of the guitar family

The ukulele is a member of the guitar family of instruments. It generally employs four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings. Some strings may be paired in courses, giving the instrument a total of six or eight strings.

History

Early 1990s: the beginnings

Before the introduction of acoustic instruments into hip hop and rap, MCs predominantly used produced music that included samples, electronic beats and drum and bass tracks. [1] From the start of hip hop in the late 1970s until the early 1990s, acoustic instruments were rarely used to produce hip hop tracks. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, there was a perception that hip hop and rap had become too “pop” after acts like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice enjoyed great commercial success. In reaction to this, rappers began trying to take hip hop back to streets causing gangsta rap to surge in popularity, and new forms of hip hop to be created. Looking from something fresh and newer, several hip hop artists decided to buck the gangsta rap and pop trend and to create a new acoustic sound by using classic instruments and full bands as backing tracks. This new sound became extremely popular in the hip hop underground, in the 1990s and led to great commercial success for bands such as Arrested Development and Digable Planets. [2]

Gangsta rap or gangster rap is a style of hip hop characterized by themes and lyrics that generally emphasize the "gangsta" lifestyle. The genre evolved from hardcore hip hop into a distinct form, pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A. After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A attracted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop. Many gangsta rap artists openly boast of their associations with various active street gangs as part of their artistic image, with the Crips and Bloods being the most commonly represented. Gangsta rap parallels other indigenous gang and crime-oriented forms of music, such as the narcocorrido genre of northern Mexico.

Arrested Development (group) American alternative hip hop group

Arrested Development is an American hip hop group that formed in Atlanta in 1988. It was founded by Speech and Headliner as a positive, Afrocentric alternative to the gangsta rap popular in the late 1980s.

Digable Planets

Digable Planets is a Grammy award-winning hip hop trio formed in 1987, in Brooklyn, New York. The trio is composed of rappers Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, Mariana "Ladybug Mecca" Vieira, and Craig "Doodlebug" Irving. The group is notable for their contributions to the subgenres of classic hip hop and alternative hip hop.

Although acoustic hip hop has not been as commercially successful as other forms of hip hop, it has maintained a steady influence on the hip hop scene. The Roots rose to prominence with an underground following that eventually led to great commercial successes. Perhaps the biggest acoustic hip hop album of all-time was The Score by the Fugees. The Score, which infused samples with classic instruments, became one of the most critically and commercially successful albums of the 1990s. [3]

<i>The Score</i> (Fugees album) 1996 studio album by Fugees

The Score is the second and final studio album by the hip hop trio Fugees, released worldwide February 13, 1996 on Columbia Records. The album features a wide range of samples and instrumentation, with many aspects of alternative hip hop that would come to dominate the hip hop music scene in the mid-late 1990s. The Score's production was handled mostly by the Fugees themselves, Jerry Duplessis and Warren Riker, with additional production from Salaam Remi, John Forté, Diamond D, Warren Riker and Shawn King. The album's guest raps are from Outsidaz members Rah Digga, Young Zee and Pacewon, as well as Omega, John Forté, and Diamond D. Most versions of the album feature four bonus tracks, including three remixes of "Fu-Gee-La", and a short acoustic Wyclef Jean solo track entitled "Mista Mista".

Fugees was an American hip hop group who rose to fame in the early 1990s. Their repertoire included elements of hip hop, soul and Caribbean music, particularly reggae. The members of the group were rapper/singer/producer Wyclef Jean, rapper/singer/producer Lauryn Hill, and rapper/producer Pras Michel. Deriving their name from a shortening of the word "refugees", Jean and Michel are Haitian, while Hill is American.

Early to mid-2000s: wane in popularity

In the 2000s, big record labels appeared to be losing interest in the subgenre, with very few new acoustic hip hop artists releasing successful albums. The Roots and Wyclef Jean remained successful throughout the decade, and Outkast enjoyed some success using classic instruments, but the decade provided a noticeable decline in acoustic hip hop popularity.

The Roots American hip hop band

The Roots are an American hip hop band, formed in 1987 by Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The Roots currently serve as the house band on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, having served in the same role on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from 2009–2014.

Wyclef Jean Haitian rapper, musician and actor

Nel Ust Wyclef Jean is a Haitian rapper,singer, musician and actor. At the age of nine, Jean emigrated to the United States with his family. He first achieved fame as a member of the New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees. Jean has won three Grammy Awards for his musical work.

Outkast American hip hop duo

Outkast was an American hip hop duo formed in 1992 in East Point, Georgia, composed of Atlanta-based rappers André "André 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton. The duo achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, helping to popularize Southern hip hop while experimenting with diverse genres such as funk, psychedelia, jazz, and techno.

Late 2000s to today: resurgence

In the late 2000s and early 2010s the acoustic hip hop genre seemed to gain a resurgence in popularity, due in part to YouTube and social media. [4] MCs with the ability to play instruments began posting videos of acoustic covers of old hip hop songs and within a short time many of these rappers had thousands of followers online. Recognizing that acoustic hip hop still remained popular in the underground scene, record labels began releasing new acoustic hip hop artists such as Gym Class Heroes, B.o.B and Travie McCoy – all of whom enjoyed commercial success. [5] [6]

Gym Class Heroes band

Gym Class Heroes is an American band from Geneva, New York. The group formed in 1997 when Travie McCoy met drummer Matt McGinley during their high school gym class. The band's music displays a wide variety of influences, including hip hop, rock, funk, and reggae. After the addition of guitarist Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo and bassist Eric Roberts in 2003, the group was signed to Fueled by Ramen and Decaydance Records, on which they released their debut album, The Papercut Chronicles. The group gained a strong fanbase while promoting the album, appearing at festivals such as The Bamboozle and Warped Tour.

B.o.B American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer from Decatur, Georgia

Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., known professionally as B.o.B, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and conspiracy theorist from Decatur, Georgia. In 2006, B.o.B was discovered by Brian Richardson, who then introduced him to TJ Chapman, who subsequently brought him to American record producer Jim Jonsin. After hearing his music, Jonsin signed B.o.B to his Rebel Rock Entertainment imprint. Two years later, Jonsin and B.o.B signed a joint venture deal, with Atlantic Records and American rapper T.I.'s Grand Hustle Records.

Travie McCoy American musician

Travis Lazarus "Travie" McCoy is an American rapper, singer and songwriter. He is the co-founder and lead singer of the rap rock band Gym Class Heroes, in addition to having a solo career. McCoy became involved with punk rock scenes as a teenager. He formed the band Gym Class Heroes with childhood friend Matt McGinley, and after several line-up changes, the group was signed to Fueled by Ramen, and released their debut album.

Notable acoustic hip hop artists

Related Research Articles

Latin hip hop or Latin rap is hip hop music recorded by Latin American artists in the U.S. and Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean, Central American and South America.

Trip hop is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as "a fusion of hip hop and electronica until neither genre is recognizable", and may incorporate a variety of styles, including funk, dub, soul, psychedelia, R&B, and house, as well as other forms of electronic music. Trip hop can be highly experimental.

The music of the United States reflects the country's pluri-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. It is a mixture of music influenced by West African, Irish, Scottish and mainland European cultures among others. The country's most internationally renowned genres are jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rhythm and blues, soul, ragtime, hip hop, barbershop, pop, experimental, techno, house, dance, boogaloo, and salsa. The United States has the world's largest music market with a total retail value of 4,898.3 million dollars in 2014, and its music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.

West Coast hip hop is a regional genre of hip hop music that encompasses any artists or music that originate in the West Coast region of the United States. The gangsta rap subgenre of West Coast hip hop began to dominate from a radio play and sales standpoint during the early 1990s with the birth of G-funk and the emergence of Suge Knight and Dr. Dre's Death Row Records.

Alternative metal is a rock music fusion genre that infuses heavy metal with influences from alternative rock and other genres not normally associated with metal. Alternative metal bands are often characterized by heavily downtuned, mid-paced guitar riffs, a mixture of accessible melodic vocals and harsh vocals and sometimes unconventional sounds within other heavy metal styles. The term has been in use since the 1980s, although it came into prominence in the 1990s.

African-American music musical traditions in the American context

African-American music is an umbrella term covering a diverse range of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans. Their origins are in musical forms that arose out of the historical condition of slavery that characterized the lives of African Americans prior to the American Civil War.

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1980s built on the post-punk and new wave movements, incorporating different sources of inspiration from subgenres and what is now classed as world music in the shape of Jamaican and Indian music. It also explored the consequences of new technology and social change in the electronic music of synthpop. In the early years of the decade, while subgenres like heavy metal music continued to develop separately, there was a considerable crossover between rock and more commercial popular music, with a large number of more "serious" bands, like The Police and UB40, enjoying considerable single chart success. The advent of MTV and cable video helped spur what has been seen as a Second British Invasion in the early years of the decade, with British bands enjoying more success in America than they had since the height of the Beatles' popularity in the 1960s. However, by the end of the decade a fragmentation has been observed, with many new forms of music and sub-cultures, including Hip Hop and House music, while the single charts were once again dominated by pop artists, now often associated with the Hi-NRG hit factory of Stock Aitken Waterman. The rise of the Indie rock scene was partly a response to this, and marked a shift away from the major music labels and towards the importance of local scenes like Madchester and subgenres, like gothic rock.

The music history of the United States includes many styles of folk, popular and classical music. Some of the best-known genres of American music are blues, rock and roll, and country. The history began with the Native Americans, the first people to populate North America. The music of these people was highly varied in form, and was mostly religious in purpose.

Hip hop soul is a subgenre of contemporary R&B music, most popular during the early and mid 1990s, which fuses R&B/gospel singing with hip hop musical production. The subgenre had evolved from a previous R&B subgenre, new jack swing, which had incorporated hip-hop influences into R&B music. By contrast, hip hop soul is, as described in The Encyclopedia of African American Music, "quite literally soul singing over hip hop grooves".

Popular Hungarian hip hop is popular among the inner city/urban population in Hungary. Performers include a gangsta rap pioneer, Ganxsta Zolee, his local fellow Dopeman, L.L. Junior and Sub Bass Monster.

Golden age hip hop is a name given to mainstream hip hop music created in the mid/late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. It is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the previous decade. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic.

Political hip hop is a subgenre of hip hop music that was developed in the 1980s as a way of turning rap music into a call for action and a form of social activism. Inspired by 1970s political preachers such as The Last Poets and musician Gil Scott-Heron, Public Enemy was the first predominately political hip-hop group. It has helped to create a new form of social expression for subordinate groups to speak about their exclusions, injustices and lack of power. Political hip-hop is the use of hip hop music to send political messages to inspire action or to convince the listener of a particular worldview. There is no all-encompassing political hip-hop ideology; rather, there are multiple perspectives that range anywhere from Marxism to the values of the Five Percent Nation.

Austrian hip hop is not a genre of hip hop music, but covers all hip hop music from Austria. The majority of Austrian hip hop acts does Underground hip hop, as the big radio stations in Austria have no airtime for native hip hop. The only radio station that does so is FM4, which focuses on alternative music.

Hip hop music music genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop or rap music, is a music genre developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans in the late 1970s which consists of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, and rhythmic beatboxing. While often used to refer solely to rapping, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip hop culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

LGBTQ representations in hip hop music have been historically low. Hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music with a significant body of hip hop music containing homophobic views and anti-gay lyrics. However, since the early 2000s there has been a flourishing community of LGBTQ hip hop artists, activists and performers breaking barriers in the mainstream music industry.

This article describes trends in popular music in the 2010s. See also: 2010s in the music industry.

Comedy hip hop or comedy rap, is a subgenre of hip hop music that is comedic in nature, often incorporating satirical lyrics. While many examples of comedy hip hop could be considered a parody of the hip hop genre, in the case of artists who merely incorporate humor into their more serious, purist hip hop styles, such as Eminem and Ludacris, this is not necessarily the case.

References

  1. ↑ Kenner, Rob. "Dancehall", in The Vibe History of Hip-hop, ed. Alan Light, 350-7. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
  2. ↑ "Arrested Development Biography". Sing365.com. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  3. ↑ The Score album accolades. acclaimedmusic.net. Retrieved 2010-04-16.
  4. ↑ "Acoustic Hip Hop . com". Acoustichiphop.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  5. ↑ "B.o.B Biography - AOL Music". Music.aol.com. 1988-11-15. Archived from the original on 2010-08-30. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  6. ↑ "Travie McCoy's Biography – Discover music, videos, concerts, stats, & pictures at". Last.fm. 2009-02-11. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.