"srsly poptimists need 1x CRASH COURSE in contemporary hip-hop"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

(That's the Lex speaking)

1. Do we? Or "Do you?" I should say, since we're a loose clumping of individuals innit.

2. GO ON THEN! What's the best hip-hop you've heard this year?

Comments

[koganbot]

Kurtis Blow says that from the get-go there was a split in hip-hop between the Manhattan guys like DJ Hollywood into disco and the Bronx ones like Bambaataa and Flash & the Furious Five into funk. But the latter two were huge Kraftwerk fans, and Bambaataa ended up helping to invent electro and ultimately had as much or more impact on club music than on hip-hop. And I think it was fairly arbitrary not to call freestyle "hip-hop," though since it generally lacked rapping I guess the exclusion wasn't that arbitrary, but it was into the same beat manipulation. And the South, which wasn't as averse to club beats as New York hip-hop turned out to be, ended up triumphing. And the NYers were always trying to claim that the non-NY competition wasn't real hip-hop.