There's been a lot of hip-hop history in the pop-culture media this fall. Conduits from VH-1 to Entertainment Weekly have weighed in on what is widely assumed to be the 25th anniversary of the crystallization of hip-hop culture.
But it's not.
It's understandable that mainstream outlets would choose to designate 1979 The Year Hip-Hop Was Born. It was, after all, the year of The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," a song from which virtually every American between the ages of 20 and 50 can quote at least a couple of lines. That "Rapper's Delight" was basically just another example of a canny outsider cashing in on a cultural trend is little more than an interesting anecdotal side trip; it's there, it's huge, and it makes an easy and obvious foundation on which to build a mythos. Like so much broad-strokes history, however, the Story of Rap can be criminally neglectful of those who designed and built the machine.
"I'm glad that they finally got it up to 30 years," says hip-hop culture pioneer and Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa. "They were saying 25 years, and we had to have a press conference to let 'em know it was 30. A lot of people were pissed at VH-1.
"There's a lot that's not being taught. They're not trying to come to the true-school people to find out factual history. There are a lot of other people's opinions about what history should be, the hip-hop scholars writing all of these books. They're not the people who were there."
Afrika Bambaataa was there, but he's more concerned about presenting an accurate picture of the roots of hip-hop culture than glorifying his own role in them. He needn't worry about that, because nearly every single hip-hop fan in the world knows who he is, and at least some of what he's done. They might not know that the Bronx native, born Kevin Donovan, turned a neighborhood street gang into the globally recognized cultural movement known as Zulu Nation; or that he was DJing warehouse parties and breakdancing contests as early as '73; or that he helped plan the '82 showcase at Manhattan's Mudd Club that introduced hip-hop to white fringe-culture.
But they know that Bambaataa's passkey to immortality — 1982's landmark, Kraftwerk-borrowing "Planet Rock" — is the most sampled record of all time. And they know that his "electro funk" style influenced every genre of electronic music to come after it, from what's now recognized as rap to clubby house and breakbeat sounds.
"I definitely see it in a whole lot of different music," says the innovator. "That groove, or something from that, has stretched into all different fields of music. Even the rap that's being made today, some of it's just slowed-down 'Planet Rock.' Lil Jon, Jermaine Dupri, all the early stuff they made was electro funk."
Since the days of "Planet Rock" and the equally classic "Renegades of Funk," Bambaataa has continued to experiment musically — which explains why American rap and funk audiences haven't heard much from the man since the '80s, though he's released several popular dance-music records in Europe with side projects such as his Time Zone. A recent Continental tour to commemorate the 20th anniversary of seminal urban label Tommy Boy, however, engendered the idea of delivering another album of space-age posi-funk to homeland fans.
The resulting disc, Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light, effortlessly returns to Bambaataa's familiar aural party: a mix of interstellar synths, funk and go-go rhythms, quirky noise, and lyrical themes of peace, unity and enlightenment. Dark Matter unarguably sounds dated, and in some corners the excitement it generates will undoubtedly be of the kitsch-loving variety. But "dated" doesn't automatically equal "bad" or "unworthy"; the disc's sound might be jarring in comparison to contemporary urban vibes, but it's also a hell of a fun and energizing listen. In fact, it might be the record's esoteric, Nubian-space-hippie aesthetic, rather than its grooves, that will prevent Bambaataa from connecting with a modern-rap audience weaned on violence, street cred and getting that green.
"I don't really worry about that," he says when asked if his substance might be perceived as uncool. "My mission has always been to keep people learning, seeking knowledge … whether they think it's cool or not, they still gotta be taught. What they think is cool, is being led by certain things that are being controlled by money. You might not want to be a nerd or whatever, but you better learn what's going on in life, your community, in the government, in the universe. You deal with that every day."
While Bambattaa repeatedly reminds that the term "hip-hop" originally referred to a particular lifestyle of which music was only one facet, he doesn't dismiss the current, myopic rap scene as utterly without merit. He's got love for plenty of latter-days artists, particularly those who follow their own muses, like OutKast, Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott, whom he calls "the Grace Jones of hip-hop." He wishes contemporary urban sounds would defy trends more often to embrace all of the facets embodied in hip-hop culture, and thinks fans everywhere are ready for, and capable of, accepting all of those things. It's the business, he believes, that holds the Hip-Hop Nation back.
"When they say hip-hop, all they think is rappers, rap records. They never look at the other elements, and music, that are part of hip-hop. That's bad, it's a corporate type of control of the hip-hop industry," he says. "I'm challenging all these radio stations, when they have me on, asking, 'Where's the go-go, the Miami bass, the electro funk, the scratch-DJ records, the hip-house?'
"We have some people who are trying to keep political or knowledge-based rap alive. It's just that these stations have to be more acceptable to playing all flavors of hip-hop. There was a time in the '80s and early '90s when there were progressive program directors out there. But it's up to the people to call in, and ask why it's not being played. We want to hear something that's giving you something to enjoy life. Tupac was a thug, but he also told you how to keep your head up, and to love your mama."
scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2004.