Friday on Brooklyn Bodega Radio – Live Bands in Hip-Hop. Why?

This Friday 1-4pm on www.pncradio.fm
Brooklyn Bodega Radio with your host Wes Jackson

The topic for this week is Live Bands in Hip-Hop. Why?

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We talked about this briefly during the Hip-Hop Honors recap in discussing the debacle that was Onyx’s performance.
They performed ‘Slam’ with the live band that was disjointed and incohesive.
It lead me to ask the question – ‘Why did they do that?’ ‘Have they ever performed with a band before?’ and the question I have been asking ever since it became in vogue, post Roots, to replace your DJ with a band – ‘When did two turntables and a mic become so in adequate?’

Thesis:

Hip-Hop is at its roots electronic music. From the earliest days of Kool Herc, Hip-Hop has used technology as its creative foundation.
Vinyl, turntables, drum machines, samplers, SSL boards. Not guitars, drums, and bass.
There is a big difference sonically and conceptually between sampling 3 seconds of James Brown and having the JB’s actually play behind you.

The electronic transfer of the vinyl through an SP 1200 gives you a fundamentally different sound than the actual horn and rhythm section.
Replacing the analog with the digital (the band for the DJ) will yield the same bizarre results as replacing the digital for the analog.
Imagine James Brown without a band but rather with a DJ.

Hip-Hop business has always been about finding the shortest route to success. Our history shows that every so often a trailblazer discovers a new formula for success. That causes a gold rush of copycats. You can see this from the Hip-Hop’s first hit “Rapper’s Delight” where Big Bank Hank stole Grandmaster Caz’s rhyme and style. Think of all the EPMD, Nas, Das Efx, ATCQ, De La, NWA, Jay Z, Scarface, Wayne, Mos Def clones that populate the marketplace. The copies are rarely as sharp as the original.

Ever since The Roots hit the scene artists, promoters, managers and A&R’s alike have deduced that the ‘Roots’ model is the new path to success. From the outside it appears that all you need is Questlove to change the game. The reality that The Roots are a cohesive unit that have been together for years. The fact that Black Thought is an elite MC is lost. Too many believe that live instrumentation is the key to success; and even more arrogantly creative advancement.

This shoving of live instrumentation down the throats of audiences 1) reeks of arrogance and elitism – the idea that you are more of a musician if you play a trombone rather than an MPC, 2) diminishes Hip-Hop’s cultural routes by removing the DJ from the equation, 3) has deep soci-economic ramifications as if it progresses unchecked this thinking will create a barriers of entry for young musicians who cannot afford piano lessons or afford to attend Berklee or The New School.

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Our guests: DJ Parler, Amenan Kouadio- Talent Buyer/A&R Brooklyn Bodega, Savannah Boogie Music and Song, Meghan Stabile from Revive Da Live

Our Panelists: Jessica Estevez from iheartdilla.com, Dee Phunk, Nikon Kwantu