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What is the appeal to the beats in hip hop?


DirtyDeeds

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Keep in mind I'm really asking because I don't understand, and I'd like to hear an explanation. I'm not asking in order to criticize.

I always hear people say how great or how dope a beat is, and I don't get it. It always sounds like the base of a beat or the foundation of a beat off of which a drummer in almost any other genre would build a much fuller drumming part. But in hip hop, it just ends there with the foundation, with nothing else built on it.

So when someone says, "This beat is dope," I always think, "Really? It is? Where is the rest of it?"

Can someone explain to me what the appeal is?

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It's just something you...feel. You hear a good beat and it just hits you the right way. It's like trying to explain why rock music riffs are catchy to someone who's never heard a rock song before, or, actually, better yet, listens exclusively to classical music and never listens to rock and doesn't "get" it. To someone like you or I, that would probably be weird, but there were people in the '50s (like my great grandmother) who thought Elvis was "noise." Of course, most elderly people nowadays would probably think you were an ignorant kid if you said you thought Elvis sucked. Every generation has their new sound that connects with them, and I don't suspect it would be very easy to explain to someone who doesn't appreciate the music why they should appreciate it. You either get it, or you don't?

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I can't tell if you are, but if you're unaware, usually when someone refers to the "beat" in a rap song, they're talking about all of the music, basically anything that isn't the rapping. It's not just referring to the percussion.

So the three to four synthesizer notes that are usually thrown in and looped throughout the whole thing? I find it hard to believe that makes a significant difference, but I was not aware that counts as the beat, too.

I mean, I get why people like the lyrics that are rapped. I like that sometimes, too. There's a lot of interesting structures in the rapping part. But I just don't get where the interesting part is in the beat. It's like the same 4 or 5 seconds looped over and over, and typically very bare-bones at that.

And to E.R., I don't always think it's noise, though it is sometimes I think, but it just seems to lack anything interesting to me. I guess I just don't get it and maybe never will. Your explanation that it can't be explained sort of makes sense I guess, though. I hear people rave on about how talented some of these guys are, though, and not counting the rapping part, I'm envisioning a four-year-old that has a sense of rhythm performing the beat. It's just so... bland.

Edited by DirtyDeeds
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Guest Len B'stard

Well my way of explaining is..you know when rock n roll is stripped down to like...a ramones level it kind of makes people react different, move different? That whole kind of music, early rock n roll like Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley stuff, its just supreme rhythm, accentuated, with the extras stripped away, focusing purely on the aspect that makes you rock, as in literally physically rock, back n forth, bob your head? THAT is what people that dance listen to when they dance, its the core of the music, that and the bassline, so when a hip hop head hears a bangin' beat its THAT that they're talking about, the boom and the bass, its the core of what physically moves a person to music and thats the context in which hip hop is to be understood, parties and dancehalls and outdoor events, its made for you to dance to.

Chuck Berry is a wonderful example if you consider his rhythm playing as the beat and those little 2 or 3 or 4 note licks he does as the little

Samples of 4 note loops they lay over the beat.

Blues rhythms, 12 bar blues, works on a similar principle, its just supreme rhythm and it makes you nod a certain way, slower i guess in most instances, timed a little different but the principle is the same.

It has to be understood in a live context (which is where hip hop belongs), like in a party of whatever to truly get it, i mean in the club dancing after you've had a few all you really hear, or rather feel, is the beat and the bass, the essential components to music that make you rock, so its just music stripped down to that and the more that particular beat and bassline nails it, the more dope that beat is.

The beat is the foundation, the bassline is the groove, its like the soul of music. The core of all music designed for dance is a repetitive beat.

It all comes from Jamaican reggae and sound system parties where, back in the day when they started pressing up singles the b side of the single would be the 'version' which just basically consisted of the beat, the instrumental with the lyrics wiped off and the dj of each sound system would talk over the beat to rile the partygoers, often in the manner of like 50s american djs, in rhyme, they'd praise the beat, the party, the soundsystem...and these sound systems would travel from dancehall to dancehall, town to town, bringing music to the people and you'd be in competition with local sound systems to see who'd be the one with the sickest beats.

Then one of those DJs, DJ Kool Herc emmigrated to America and took his sound system and the principle of playing stripped down instrumentals and mixing them to create something new, to the Bronx and lo and behold you have hip hop.

A key component of sound system culture was

Volume because you had to be louder and badder than your competition to get rated, to get respect and a consequence of that is that the beats and bassline were highly accentuated and in being so became the focal point of the music.

The focus on rapping only really came later, in Jamaica it was known as toasting, it was a peripheral thing really, the focus was on the beat or the song and the DJ and the breaks, the MCs job was just to rile the crowd like everybody on the left throw your hands up, throw your hands up, everybody on the right throw your hands up, if its friday night and you just got paid throw your hands up etc etc.

The reason for my explaining all of this shit is to give you an idea of the context of this shit and to illustrate why so much focus would be on the beat and the bass, unless you been in a club or a sound system party and you really felt that kinda bass that you can feel buzz through your body and felt the groove (and you can literally feel it) and then the repetitive heavy beat, its almost intoxicating, its just the accentuation of the core elements to get right down to what it is that really GETS to people in music.

I mean themes, lyrics, someones story etc, these are things that a person may or may not identify with...but every language understands a beat, a groove, everybody from Seoul to Saudi to Suffolk understands a beat, your heart pounds out a beat for as long as you're alive :)

And as for the little samples and loops i can see how it might be repetitive but at the same time, take your average well put together guitar solo, in terms of your musical enjoyment of it is it the whole entire thing you always enjoy on one even flatline level or does it kinda go up and down and you sort of have a certain extract of it that is REALLY the pay off bit? And thats what it is, its about taking a certain aspect, a short extract to lay over the beat there that just compliments it like PERFECTLY, rather than a lengthier more meandering piece that builds to a climax you just take the climax (or it might not be the climax, it might be the lead off bit or whatever) the bit that is really the pay off bit and lay it on the beat and make a perfect distilled like, fuckin potion to move the crowd with.

Its like with funk music, the rhythm is accentuated by a repeated sequence of notes, often led into by a lil' slide and a two or three note lick over and over, it sorta comes from that but its a way of creating that without a band or using someone elses one of them or creating your own loops to which i suppose you could say well why not learn to play the instrument (and some do) but see the beauty is you can take any passage from any piece done by a tuba or a violin or a guitar etc etc or make synthesised versions but it'd be a bit of a pain in the arse learning how to play 50,000 different instrument when a sampler can infinitely broaden your pallette in an instance.

Edited by sugaraylen
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It's a load of cobblers basically! What's the craic with all of 'em sounding like fucking robots anyway? I'll see all these new "artists" in the news and wotnot and even though I've never heard of 'em I know I can already tell you exactly what they sound like. It's like listening to Stephen Hawking on crystal meth fucking a drum machine! :rolleyes:

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Guest Len B'stard

The scope of hip hop is slightly broader than the whole chipmunk vocals trend though Dazey dear..by like 30 plus years of productivity :lol:

Edited by sugaraylen
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The scope of hip hop is slightly broader than the whole chipmunk vocals trend though Dazey dear..by like 30 plus years of productivity :lol:

Bollocks! I know all about this hippity hoppity cobblers just like Miser knows about Malcolm X! :lol:

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The scope of hip hop is slightly broader than the whole chipmunk vocals trend though Dazey dear..by like 30 plus years of productivity :lol:

Bollocks! I know all about this hippity hoppity cobblers just like Miser knows about Malcolm X! :lol:

:rofl-lol: You sure do.

Len, nice avatar, but I'm the original G-O-D. :lol:

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Guest Len B'stard

The scope of hip hop is slightly broader than the whole chipmunk vocals trend though Dazey dear..by like 30 plus years of productivity :lol:

Bollocks! I know all about this hippity hoppity cobblers just like Miser knows about Malcolm X! :lol:
:rofl-lol: You sure do.

Len, nice avatar, but I'm the original G-O-D. :lol:

Actually no you're not, i had one on an old account, along with the sig: i dont give a fuck if you from brooklyn, if you from manhattan, if you from queens n*****, i dont give a fuck where you be motherfucker, where you reside motherfucker, how you live' so there! :lol:

Also, my daddy could whup yo daddys azz :lol:

Ergo, IM THE ONLY UNIQUE ASON! :D

Edited by sugaraylen
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Guest Len B'stard

I jus saw another one browsing for a link for ya thats 3 hours long and its called Bro Panic - the legend of ol dirty bastard and the 8 immortal Gods, whats that one about? Never heard of it before.

Edit: nevermind, just some bullshit slideshow, theres another one on there aside from the big official one i think.

Edited by sugaraylen
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I agree with lenny's 12 page essay he wrote on this topic, I just want to add my 2 cents from a musical perspective. Here's my essay Lenny :)

Like blues and old soul music hip hop is either in 2/4 or 4/4 time signiture. which basically means the music is always following either the second or fourth beat. which fyi is what probably 80% of all popular music follows. At its core I think we can all agree that hip hop derives from african american or striaght african ethnicity. I say this because the music of "these" (for lack of a better word) peoples have always been extremly beat oriented. And honestly hip hop is just the modern version of beat based music that can be traced back hundreds of years to Africa and maybe other locations.

While "white" people were learning classical music in Europe, "black" people were learning beat based music in Africa. Sometime in the 17 and 18 hundreds these two vastly different forms of music started to combine in and around new orleans. Many "white" aritocrats had relations with "black" slaves, resulting in mixed raced children. The people of New Orleans being very a head of the times, even then, decided to care for their mixed children. The result became known as creoles. These creoles were taught western classical music and mixed it with beat based african music and blues and jazz were born.

Now fast foreward to the late 1970's early 1980's. Blues music turned into rock and roll and was flooded by "white" people. so imo hip hop was "black" people evolving beat based music. In a way they brought it back to its roots with very simple, but pulse sounding beats, but at the same time "rapping" became something completly new. Even though hip hop beats are very simple, they make your body much easier than complex beats do. Because like I said before, these simple beats can be traced back hundreds of years to africa. at the end of the day what is going to make people move and dance, john bonham's moby dick drum solo or one of dr. dre's beats? Bonham's is more advanced, difficult to reproduce, and more skillful. But Dr. dre will get people dancing, and at the end of the day thats what its been all about since the beginning of time.

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