Dance Beat Sneaking Back Into Hip-Hop

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-snoop.jpgWhat I wanna do right here is go back: way back, back into time, to the early 1990s, and to a short-lived musical genre called “hip house.” Bridging the sonic and cultural gap between the up tempo 4/4 beats of house music clubs in Chicago and Detroit with the energy and lyrical flow of New York hip-hop, the hybrid genre was everywhere for a brief moment. Artists like Fast Eddie and Mr. Lee threw down the party jams, while bands like A Homeboy a Hippie and a Funky Dread and Genaside pushed musical boundaries. And don’t forget Technotronic! It seemed like the future, a musical genre that broke barriers of race and sexuality. So, what happened to it?

In the 90s, both dance music and hip-hop seemed to bounce back towards their own extremes: jungle, drum ‘n’ bass and “electronica” took dance floors to new frontiers of edgy sounds and hyper tempos, while hip-hop slowed down to the glacial speeds and minimal production values of crunk and the macho posturing of gangsta rap. Only in isolated environs like Baltimore and Miami did uptempo hip-hop subcultures survive, unheard by the majority of music fans. But lately, it’s almost as if dance music and hip-hop have both reached creative walls, and have rediscovered the other.

Much of this current cross-pollination can be ascribed to one producer: Timbaland, whose tracks somehow incorporate everything from Bhangra to trance while still remaining undeniably hip-hop. Timbaland’s 2007 hit, “The Way I Are,” uses a straight ahead 4/4 kick drum, and the floodgates for hip-hop with dance beats have since opened. Yin Yang Twins’ new single “Drop” features a booming 4/4 beat, as does Pitbull’s “The Anthem,” which samples a ’90s dance song almost in its entirety. Sean Kingston’s new release, “Take You There,” while technically using a freestyle beat, features stuttery synths and an almost electro feel. Freestyle, the originally Latin-inflected genre, uses only two kick drum beats per measure, on the one and the “two and,” and thus feels slightly less frenetic than the insistent 4/4 dance beat (think “Let the Music Play”). It has usually been more acceptable in hip-hop, but even freestyle beats have never been more prominent: Flo Rida’s “Low” has been the #1 song in the country since the year began, and even the master of laid-back West Coast style, Snoop Dogg, is on board with his new track “Sensual Seduction,” a fizzy little number on which Snoop even sings.

Does any of this mean anything? Is it just the eternal shifting of musical trends, or could it symbolize the softening of the “gangsta” culture, and a return to the optimistic, progressive hip-hop style of the ’80s, when artists looked to dance music like Chic and Kraftwerk for their beats and inspiration? It’s tempting to think so, but in the meantime, one thing’s for certain: hip-hop radio stations sound a lot different than they did even two years ago, and I for one kind of like it.

Yin Yang Twins – “Drop” (from the forthcoming album The Ying to the Yang, 2008)

Snoop Dogg – “Sensual Seduction” (from the forthcoming album Ego Trippin’, 2008)

Mr. Lee – “Get Busy” (1989)

A Homeboy a Hippie & a Funky Dredd – “Start the Panic” (1990)

Photo used under a creative commons license courtesy of Flickr user Audunn

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate