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Contextualising “Electric Relaxation”: An analysis of the blurred line between instruments and technology The culture of Hip Hop emerged in the 1970s in New York City, prior to the genre of music and the term “Hip Hop” itself. The destitute and dangerous neighbourhoods of the South Bronx lay as a bed to a culture led by youthful anger and street wisdom. Hip Hop is sometimes referred to as having four elements. These four elements are “emceeing, deejaying, graffiti, and breakdancing” (Adaso, H, 2014). I will mainly be focussing on the cultures musical exports using the “A Tribe Called Quest” track “Electric Relaxation” as a focal point. A Hip Hop track is made up of two things, The track and the rap verses. The overarching aesthetic of the stylistic qualities of both was dictated by the Economic, Social, Cultural and Political context in which the music developed. “Gifted teenagers with plenty of imagination but little cash began to forge a new style from spare parts.” (Hip Hop Network, 2014) Young Hip Hop artists who couldn’t afford instruments or hadn’t been provided the opportunity to learn to play them began sampling pre­existing pieces of music and cutting together “joints”, (A drum break and overlayed samples that can be looped and “rapped” over) A Tribe Called Quest etched a unique footprint in the path of Hip Hop by stepping away from the status quo. “Sonically, ATCQ was a decisive and welcomed tangent of jazz, bass­heavy rhythmic vibes and eclectic sampling when compared to the mundane recycling of soul loops, breaks and vocals of their contemporaries.” (A Tribe Called Quest, 2014) A far more down to earth perspective was taken lyrically compared with both their contemporaries and their predecessors. The stories they told focused mainly on what they knew and the culture they came from but without indulging in repetitive nature of the egotistical showboating associated with Hip Hop of the past and the present. The style they created is seen now in producers the likes of “Common, The Roots, Jill Scott, Kanye West and The Neptunes” (A Tribe Called Quest, 2014) and MC’s such as Schoolboy Q, Kendrick Lamar and Del the Funky Homosapien. The path of Hip Hop can be followed back to ten Pioneers. “Pete DJ Jones, Kool DJ Herc, DJ Hollywood, Eddie Cheeba, "Love Bug" Starski, Grand Master Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, the Sugarhill Gang, Run DMC” (Hip Hop Network, 2014). The most notable of which being Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, The Sugarhill Gang and Run DMC. It easy to tell that these characters have been some of the most notable because of the Hip Hop cultures tradition of “shoutouts” (Farlex, The Free Dictionary, 2014). It is arguable that these artist have received the most shoutouts of all the pioneers. Even A Tribe Called Quest have directed shoutouts to each and every one of these artists. Shoutouts are when Hip Hop artists mention other artists in their tracks. Grandmaster Flash was a pioneer in the sense that he was the first to employ cutting and scratching. He would sustain a continuous drum break whilst cutting and scratching another record. “..rearranging the song and creating an extended instrumental groove over which the MC or rapper could entertain the crowd with raps.” (Hip Hop Network, 2014). This set the footprint that would begin the trail blazed by every Hip Hop producer after him. Alongside Grandmaster Flash in the beginning stood Afrika Bambaataa. Many people think of Hip Hop as being a genre of gangsters, guns and violence, A Tribe Called Quest obviously proved that to be otherwise in the mainstream, but their predecessor Afrika Bambaataa was the trailblazer on that front. On February 28th 1982 Bambaataa held his third annual party and a gun fight began outside. The feeling of the room changed and Bambaataa was quoted as stopping the music and stating “no violence…no violence…no violence” (Banes, S, 2004) defusing the situation. He is the founder of the “Zulu Nation” a group promoting peace and unity through his music. ““What’s the name of this nation?” he shouted, his wiry body quivering with energy. “Zulu! Zulu!” chanted the audience.” (Banes, S, 2004) These artists pioneered something that is very distinctly present in A Tribe Called Quest’s repertoire and ethics. Grandmaster Flash created the format within which they built their compositions and Afrika Bambaataa influenced their modus operandi “Lyrically, emcees Q­Tip and Phife Dawg addressed social issues relevant to young blacks such as use of the N word and its relevance, date rape and other interpersonal relationships, industry politics and consumerism with infectious energy and fun and having a good time while still promoting positivity.” (A Tribe Called Quest, 2014) These pioneers can’t be given full credit for everything about Hip Hop though. Rap itself comes from a style of Traditional African storytelling, of which the main features are “Self­Aggrandizement”, “Toasting (long narrative poems that sometimes bestow praises” and “playing the dozens (competitive and recreational exchange of verbal insults)” (Norfleet, Dawn M, 2006) This could explain the tendendency to brag about personal accolades in modern hip hop, the culture of “Shoutouts” and the nature of the modern “rap battle”. The influence of Hip Hop on the world is huge. You can see it’s imprint in an incredible range of different things. Fashion to this day is heavily influenced by Hip Hop in the form of clothing items such as baggy jeans and baseball caps. This influence seeps into language too, in a huge way. “Hip Hop has encompassed not just a musical genre, but also a style of dress, dialect and language, way of looking at the world, and an aesthetic that reflects the sensibilities of a large population of youth born between 1965 and 1984” (Alridge, D.P and Stewart, J.B, 2014) I have discussed the musical pioneers but I am yet to discuss the innovators in technology that allowed the pioneers to thrive. The concept of “Cutting and Scratching” introduced into Hip Hop by Grandmaster Flash was originally formulated by a lover of Avant Garde Movements and Punk Rock, Christian Marclay. “In the late 1970s, concurrent with the birth of Hip Hop, Christian Marclay (1955­ ) pioneered the use of turntables and found recordings to make experimental music in the context of art” (Cox, C and Warner, D, 2004) The term “sampling” itself just means turning sound into digital information. The term was coined by “Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel, inventors of the Fairlight CMI” (Howell, S, 2014) The Fairlight CMI was notable used by Kurtis Blow (Hip Hop Network, 2014) whereas the real kick off of the path that leads us to the present and a huge influence on the sound of contemporary Hip Hop Artists who name their style “trap” now is the “Roland TR­808” and the “MPC60” (Howell, S, 2014) used notably by Afrikaa Bambaataa and The Beasties Boys Respectively. As Hip Hop and Sampling progressed, a common utterance to hear, especially from the older generation, was that Hip Hop Sampling is theft. This spun the huge intellectual property battles that followed this phenomenon. I think it was said best in this excerpt which details the story of producer “Mr. Supreme” explaining sampling to his mother. “we were arguing, ‘cause she was saying I didn’t make music…..If i took the sounds, it’s not mine ­ that I took it from someone” “it’s the sound that you’re using, and then you create something” (Schloss J, G. 2004). Of course within the artform there were many rules accepted by the Hip Hop zeitgeist. The most common being that you must find your own samples. Sampling a drum break from a compilation is like theft. “You sampled that offa Lord Finesse, you sampled that beat, that’s wack [objectively bad]” (Schloss J, G, 2004) another version of this is sampling material that has been recently sampled by someone else, This is called “biting” (Schloss J, G, 2004). There are so many other rules such as only being able to sample from vinyl, never sampling records you respect and never sampling more than one part of any given record. Of course, most people don’t strictly follow these rules, I state them as an indication of the justifications Hip Hop producers use to criticise one another within the culture. Hip Hop posed a very difficult question in copyright law as although it is a completely legitimate form of creative output the music itself is built on samples of copyrighted material. This forced the world of Intellectual Property to redefine their definition of originality. “IP theorists tend to argue that copyright law inhibits recoding, thus stifling semiotic democracy. The use of sampling in hip­hop music is frequently cited as a paradigmatic example of recoding that has been stifled by IP law.” (Joo, T, W, 2011). As legislation is reactive and took a long time to catch up, the number of Hip Hop artists grew and the amount of Artists releasing works that were technically illegal also grew. This was a landmark in the battle between art and legislation and is one of the biggest ripples Hip Hop made in the creative industries which was only a taster of what was to come when high speed internet connections and napster arrived. The line up of A Tribe Called Quest “Q­Tip (nee Jonathan Davis), Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor), Ali Shaheed Muhamed, and Jarobi White” (Rolling Stone, 2001) met each other at High School. Q­Tips association with Hip Hop act De La soul lead to A Tribe Called Quest’s record deal with Jive Records.

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