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A Service of The
Arrow Tuesday November 21,
2000
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Arrow
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What is underground hip-hop?
By Nic Balding- Arrow Staff
The true essence of hip-hop, which has nothing to do with money, fame, or how many gold teeth one can fit in an artist's mouth. Hip-hop is another form of musical entertainment. So when all the hype and glitter settles, the entertainment should lie in the music. A hip-hop artist's life purpose is to entertain with their musical talent and making hip-hop entertaining takes more then high budget music videos and multi platinum albums. Quality hip-hop needs solid beats, highly developed and detailed lyricism, and a large vocabulary among many things. When an intelligent music listener puts in a Pharcyde or Roots album one cannot help but to feel what they feel. Hip-hop, unlike other slow moving forms of music illustrates a broad topic in very little time with much more detail. The Roots, shows this in songs such as Adrenaline. True hip-hop musicians such as Pharcyde, The Roots, and Hieroglyphics entertain their listeners with complex rhyme concepts and hooks. The way they intertwine their lyrics can be hypnotic. Most the hip-hop on MTV and the radio falls short in the quality category. To truly understand hip-hop one must dig a little deeper then the spotlight-basted pop-hop seen on MTV. To experience hip-hop at its purest form one must dig straight to the core of the underground hip-hop movement. Mainstream artists such as Juvenile, Master P, and Lil' Bow-Wow fail to truly capture the true essence of hip-hop. It's as if their soul purpose is not to entertain, but to make big bucks for their record labels. People who don't understand hip-hop automatically cast it into their "it all sounds the same to me category." To understand hip-hop for what it really is, rather then for its catchy, bass ridden beats and fast moving lyrics, one must understand flow. Flow is the way that lyrics intertwine into one continuo rhythm. Artists such as Mars Ill have lyrics that seem like they never stop. One word or thought flows into another, smoothly. Flow is not something easily obtained. Flow comes only with time, practice, vocabulary, and quick lyrical reflexes. Just listen to the smoothed out melodically flowing lyrics of Blackstar. An artist's flow is best illustrated in freestyle hip-hop. Freestyle is a form of hip-hop where the artist has to rap off the top of his or her head. Someone with flow will be able to connect all of his or her rhymes in a smooth flowing nature. It is quite amazing when someone is able to do this, and keep his or her rhymes interesting. Method Man, of the Wu Tang Clan has an ever-changing flow to his music. He raps about many different things but links them together so they sound like one. In all, the underground hip-hop scene is just that, underground. And when artists are underground they have more time to think about what hip-hop really is, and what it means to them. Then and only then is the artist truly in tune with hip-hop. |
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