Just memorizing the words in this box is not the same as understanding the material well enough to use it in the world, or to do well when you are tested on it. Some of this material is explained in depth starting at the left of this box, or on the main study site.
Because records are mass-produced, more permanent than live performance, and major sources of wealth that are subject to copyright, legal and ethical questions about appropriation become more central in the second half of the 20th century. Remix in the strict sense is an appropriative art that relies on technology. Most of the related forms of appropriation also involve recordings and technology:
In the early 70s, disco djs developed the method of extending a song by having two turntables with a copy of the same record on each.
When hip hop began in the 1970s, the most common practice was to create continuous danceable music with "breakbeats" (the instrumental part of the song where the singing stops for awhile). The DJ would have two copies of the same record – one on each turntable - or sometimes two different records that were close enough in tempo and feel that he could mix the breaks from one record into or over the breaks in the other one to create a continuous, rhythm-focused groove.
To repeat: the early hip hop dj would cut back and forth between an instrumental or percussive interlude in the song (the “breakdown”) and the same or a compatible instrumental passage on a second disc, creating a continuous stream of the same rhythm line for people to dance to, and eventually for the MC to rap over.
Rapping developed out of a number of traditions, but when it happened in hip hop, it was initially the DJ who would talk, shout, or chant over the music briefly, encouraging people to get up and dance, "get down," etc. Here's a rare recording of DJ Hollywood and Lovebug Starski from 1979 that gives you a bit of the feel.
The "crew" were initially the actual friends of the DJ who helped him transport and set up his sound system, and guard it from theft and vandalism. Eventually, members of the crew would sometimes take turns shouting and rhyming over the music. Dancers would sometimes take the spotlight to perform wild moves over the breakbeats, hence "break dancing."
Clive Campbell was a young man in the Bronx whose family had immigrated from Jamaica in the 1960s. As mentioned in an earlier lesson, the Jamaican "MCs" (DJs) often drove around with their "soundsystems" and set them up for live dance happenings. It became a matter of pride to have the biggest, loudest soundsystem, and when Campbell started to DJ at live events in the Bronx he assembled a famously large and loud system. His stage name was DJ Kool Herc. DJ Kool Herc is frequently credited with inventing hip hop djing, in the sense of mixing more than one record on top of each other or into each other live.
In the 1970s, the disco DJs downtown had started using two turntables. While one song was playing, they would set up the next song on the other turntable, and then as soon as the first song ended the second one could begin, with a minimal break in the music and dancing.
Herc emulated this technique, though he played more hard-edged funky music for his parties in the Bronx. At one point it occurred to him that he could play two songs at the same time on the different turntables, and using a mixer he could mix from one to the other without the first one ending. The songs could even play together for a time, as the instrumental conclusion of one song blended into the instrumental beginning of the next song.
Eventually, Herc figured out that people were happiest dancing to the instrumental parts of the records, and he developed his "Merry-Go-Round" approach, where the instrumental parts of different records could be mixed into each other, repeated, and added to one another to create a continuous dance mix of larger instrumental "breaks" (the intrumental breakdowns from records, where the vocals disappeared for a bit and the music became purely instrumental, with the focus on drums and bass).
Meanwhile, downtown the DJs were interested in creating longer versions of their own records, because people enjoyed dancing to the repeated rhythms and motifs. The typical R&B, salsa, or pop song that the DJs were playing lasted only three or four minutes - intended for release on 45 rpm singles, and play on the radio. The DJs started adopting some of the merry-go-round ideas. They would tape-record records that were popular and then use simple cassette deck dubbing to create new edits of the songs where instrumental parts (and also vocal sections) might be repeated several times, to turn a three minute song into a 10-minute dance track.
Eventually the idea of the "extended remix" caught on, and record producers themselves created these for the club market in their studios. By the heyday of disco in the mid-1970s, labels were putting out 12-inch singles with 15-minute-long versions of popular disco songs, for club dancing.
Though hip hop parties went on for hours, hip hop DJs were more interested in fast cutting between different records, or different sections of two copies of the same record. This required much more skill than what the disco DJs were doing at that time, and hip hop DJs turned the turntable into a musical instrument - as hard to play well as any other. They produced entirely new musical experiences from entirely appropriated material - the records they had at their disposal, often "borrowed" from their parents' R&B and funk record collections.
Early hip hop was an all-night "happening." DJs would mix records for hours while crowds danced and partied. Sometimes people would breakdance, and eventually, DJs, crew, and finally dedicated MCs would rap over the "breaks" as well. But rapping was not originally the focus - it was live dancing to a night-long nearly continuous mix of beats.
The hip hop art forms of djing, breakdancing, and rapping emerged organically and among amateurs whose focus was on having a good time and making interesting and spirited music. Hip hop events were collaborative happenings that lasted for hours. Initially hip hop was not commercial in our sense; it was typically practised in recreation centres, outdoors in schoolyards and on the street; it was improvisational and its practitioners had not received formal training. It was done for pleasure.
It was an example of "jes' grew" culture, as described in last week's lesson. Like the blues and early jazz, it was a kind of (urban) "folk music." DJs appropriated (almost exclusively black) records (dance, funk, and r&b), which they mixed together to create extended breakbeat backdrops for b-boys and b-girls to dance to and rappers to rap over. These were “amateur” public performances, for small cover charges, largely unrecorded, in which old and new records (funk, soul, jazz and disco) were used as sources for original musical experiences.
Hip hop DJs had invented a new form of music - one dependent on technology and on previously recorded records. They played their turntables as instruments, and they composed new music by cutting between and mixing together parts of existing records.
It is only with recording and sampling that legal (and political or moral) questions of ownership and appropriation become central to hip hop practice. Many of the early hip hop pioneers were initially against making hip hop records. The point was the opposite: to take the performances frozen on records and make them come alive again in performance on turntables.
The first recorded hip hop to get a lot of radio airplay was "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang (1979). In one account of how the record came to be, punk singer Debbie Harry, aka Blondie, is a key figure. Blondie was into the underground hip-hop scene in the late 70s and it was she who invited members of the disco funk group Chic to a Sugarhill Gang event, which is how they knew who the Gang was when members jumped up onstage and started improvising raps over Chic's “Good Times” at a Chic concert a few weeks later.
The Sugarhill Gang were so excited by the results that they created a cassette of themselves rapping over the Chic song and circulated it on the street. Some people really liked it. The song "Rapper's Delight" with the Sugarhill Gang rapping over the Chic song was eventually to become the first hip hop single to make it onto the "charts" - sell significant copies.
It was also the first clear example of ownership and copyright issues in hip hop. When Chic heard the cassette they were upset with the Sugarhill Gang for using their music without permission. When the Gang decided to put out a commercial release of their song on vinyl, rather than pay Chic for the right to use their recording, they instead utilized what may be the first interpolation. An interpolation is kind of like a sample (to be discussed below), but instead of using another artist's actual recording, you get your own musicians to replay the music you want to use in the same style as the original. Then you only have to purchase the publisher's rights for the song, not the recording rights.
“Rapper’s Delight” was the first mainstream rap single (1979). It uses an instrumental cover (interpolation) of the main chorus of the Chic song as the accompaniment. This was the first time a band (Chic) demanded remuneration from a hip hop artist for using their music with the artists’ rapping over it. This video from a dance music show of the day gives you a sense of what rap was like at the time:
“Rapper’s Delight” is a 12” single. It’s about 15 minutes long. It was the bestselling 12” single to that time.
Chuck D, later of Public Enemy, remembers when “Rapper’s Delight” appeared how strange the idea of recording hip hop seemed back then: “I’m like, record? Fuck, how you gon’ put hip-hop onto a record? ‘Cause it was a whole gig, you know? How you gon’ put three hours on a record?” Chuck says. “Bam! They made ‘Rapper’s Delight.’ And the ironic twist is not how long that record was, but how short it was. I’m thinking, ‘Man, they cut that shit down to fifteen minutes?’ It was a miracle.” (quoted in Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop)
Many hip hop artists at the time were infuriated by "Rapper's Delight." Some thought it misrepresented the artistic practice of hip hop, which was not about recording but about live and participatory events, mostly dancing. Others felt their ideas had been ripped off, or as in the case of Grandmaster Caz and others that the Sugarhill Gang had stolen their rhymes. With recording came fame and fortune, and suddenly ownership, originality, and remuneration became central to the art form, whereas in the "Jes' Grew" urban folk culture of hip hop up until then they had barely been considered.
Originally, hip hop was a live participatory experience, not a fixed consumer product to be listened to privately. This is discussed by many of the interviewees in the 2016 Canadian HBO documentary series Hip Hop Evolution:
Hip hop had gone from being a participatory amateur happening to being a product that could be monetized. It proved to be lucrative and many more rap singles followed.
It's shocking, but the first #1 single to feature “rap” was actually by Blondie!
On the one hand, this is a remarkably late example of a white performer capitalizing on a black invention and selling it to the white majority. On the other hand, it was intended as a tribute and served to legitimize hip hop further with mainstream audiences, and it is pretty impressive in its own way.
Incidentally, “Rapture” doesn’t actually use appropriation of other people's records, sampling, or hip hop djing. They wrote an original tune for the song. You could perhaps say that it was "inspired by hip hop," rather than a genuine rap song. However, as I've suggested, Blondie was deep into the New York hip hop scene and helped to popularize it.
Gradually through the 1980s the live hip hop DJ tends to be replaced by canned backing tracks in rap songs. These are usually based on sampled breaks, programmed drum machine beats, and commercially produced loops sold for this specific purpose. The producer takes the place of the live dj. Sampling involves cutting up recordings on tape or digitally, rather than live djing. Throughout the 1980s it gradually became the standard practice in making hip hop records, and was also used in other genres. (If you're interested in the history of sampling, check out this one hour BBC radio documentary on the Amen break.)
During the 80s, sampling was largely carried out without paying release fees for the use of the sampled recordings. By the late 80s, some hip hop producers might be using more than a hundred little samples to assemble the music that rappers would rap over. A lot of these samples were just bits of rhyth tracks, often modified so that no one would ever be able to recognize the original. Sampling became a recombinative art, and many great tracks were pieced together like Frankenstein's monster from sources most of which would not even be recognized by listeners.
In an interview with Kembrew McLeod, Chuck D and Hank Shocklee from Public Enemy were asked about how hip hop was changed by the rise of mandatory licensing of samples. In the interview, they suggest that the need for sample clearance changed hip hop in two negative ways:
Public Enemy in particular had practiced a sampling technique where tiny fragmentary samples had often been pieced together, creating a song from perhaps dozens of small, often unidentifiable, samples. Once they started having to clear and pay for every sample or risk lawsuit, they had to revise their practice.
It is often thought that this court case brought an end to the kind of freewheeling sampling that had characterized hip hop in the 80s. Biz Markie wanted to sample Gilbert O’Sullivan's 1972 soft pop hit “Alone Again (Naturally)” in a jokey rap remake of it, and O'Sullivan refused. Biz Markie went ahead and used it without permission and O'Sullivan's label sued Markie's. You might be surprised to learn that O'Sullivan's label was the underdog, Grand Upright Music. By this point, rap had become big business and Biz Markie was backed by the behemoth media company Warner.
During the trial, the Warner Brothers lawyers attempted to suggest that using other people's recordings was integral to hip hop creation (which it was) and the practice was brought to the attention of the public, the record labels, and the lawyers. When O'Sullivan won, record labels saw it as a cue to start looking for remuneration from anyone sampling their material, and - as Chuck D and Hank Shocklee suggested - this changed how hip hop music tended to be made forever.
O'Sullivan himself was not pursuing Markee for the sake of royalties, however. He was angered that his work had been used without his permission, and indeed in direct contradiction of his wishes that it not be used. This thus also raises the question of performance abduction, and by extension the even larger issue of identity appropriation, to which I will turn next week.