By all accounts, last Wednesday’s Hip Hop Xplosion show at
Ackerman Grand Ballroom was a success (with all due credit, of
course, given to cosponsors Campus Events Commission, Cultural
Affairs Commission and the African Student Union). For three hours
on June 2, UCLA students were blessed with the privilege of
watching performances by former and current underground heroes
J-Live, MF Doom and Talib Kweli.
And though one wouldn’t know it by the proliferation of
J-Kwon or Lil’ Flip on the singles charts these days, last
week’s show proved that, for better or worse, hip-hop is
maturing.
The three performers are particularly apt examples of this
maturity. J-Live, one of the most talented and literate MCs in rap
today, taught eighth-grade English in Brooklyn, N.Y., before his
career took off. Kweli, whose best-known hit is the gospel-tinged
feel-good anthem “Get By,” ushered in a new style of
conscious rap with his early recordings. As for Doom, he’s
been in the game for at least 15 years, and the breadth of his
career spans from old school work with 3rd Bass and KMD to this
year’s boundary-pushing “Madvillainy.”
“Madvillainy” may be the best-reviewed hip-hop album
of the year, but you probably wouldn’t have known it from
Doom’s performance: He came out with less energy than the
others, and the crowd never seemed very involved in his set. But
the real problem the audience had might have been the material
itself. “Madvillainy” is a densely packed collage of
vignettes and change-ups with the hooks and choruses excised, which
may not translate into the most exciting live set. In other words,
the most critically successful hip-hop album so far this year might
be best heard on headphones. That’s not to say the songs
don’t bump, but these certainly aren’t your older
brother’s head-nodders.
To be fair, these three artists are more the exception than the
rule in today’s rap world. Although hip-hop has matured in
terms of its stylistic rules, lyrical content and production values
have not necessarily kept up. You need only to flip to MTV to
witness this lack of progress. But hip-hop as a genre has
undoubtedly grown past its glory days. The new generation of
listeners may not know it, but the hip-hop of today is cognizant of
its own history and boundaries in a way that it previously
didn’t need to be.
It’s now been 25 years since “Rapper’s
Delight,” and a decade since hip-hop’s creative peak in
1993 and 1994 (For those who forgot, “Enter the
Wu-Tang,” Nas’ “Illmatic,” Biggie’s
“Ready to Die,” Snoop’s “Doggystyle,”
and Tribe’s “Midnight Marauders” were all
recorded in this period, in addition to overlooked classics like
Common’s “Resurrection,” Souls of
Mischief’s “’93 ‘Til Infinity,” De La
Soul’s “Buhloone Mindstate,” and Organized
Konfusion’s “Stress: The Extinction Agenda”).
The difference between then and now is that up until around 10
years ago, hip-hop was still making up its own rules. Such
exhilarating vitality is the same kind one finds at the beginning
of any musical movement. The bold artistic freedom of early
Run-D.M.C. strikes a similar chord to the pioneering works of Chuck
Berry, Sam Cooke and James Brown.
On the other hand, even the most original hip-hop releases these
days have to know the rules in order to bend and play with them
““ “Madvillainy” and OutKast’s latest are
prime examples.
As the June 2 show demonstrated, hip-hop will continue to branch
out and redefine itself in the years to come. At one point, Talib
invited B-boys and B-girls from the crowd to come on stage with
him. Watching these people come together ““ regardless of
race, creed or color ““ to dance to Afrika Bambaataa’s
“Planet Rock,” I was given a glimpse of hip-hop’s
early days and Bambaataa’s vision of unity through hip-hop.
It may have grown up, but the spirit is still there.
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.