Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music 3030253767, 9783030253769

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Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music David Diallo

Pop Music, Culture and Identity Series Editors Steve Clark Graduate School Humanities and Sociology University of Tokyo Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan Tristanne Connolly Department of English St Jerome’s University Waterloo, ON, Canada Jason Whittaker School of English & Journalism University of Lincoln Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK

Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial and mass-cultural has proved itself durable, tenacious and continually evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defining various forms of identity (individual and collective) as influenced by nation, class, gender and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates how this enhanced status shapes the iconography of celebrity, provides an ever-expanding archive for generational memory and accelerates the impact of new technologies on performing, packaging and global marketing. The series gives particular emphasis to interdisciplinary approaches that go beyond musicology and seeks to validate the informed testimony of the fan alongside academic methodologies. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14537

David Diallo

Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music

David Diallo The University of Bordeaux Pessac, Gironde, France

Pop Music, Culture and Identity ISBN 978-3-030-25376-9    ISBN 978-3-030-25377-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Praise for Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music “Diallo does an impressive job of corralling multiple viable perspectives and dispersed theoretical analyses, drawing on both older works and those that are more recent.” —Murray Forman, Professor, Communication Studies, Northeastern University, USA and author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Call-and-Response in Rap Music  5 3 “Rock the House:” Emceeing and Collective Participation in Rap Music’s Formative Years (1974–1978) 25 4 “Keeping It Real Live!” Maintaining Collective Participation on Records 47 5 “Coming to You Live and Direct!”: Performing Liveness and Immediacy on Record 65 6 Intertextuality in Rap Lyrics 85 7 From the Stage to the Booth to the Stage: Sustaining Collective Engagement During Live Performance103 8 Rap Music and Singing Along to the N-word121

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9 Discussing Collective Participation and Audience Engagement with Sugarhill Gang’s Master Gee137 10 Conclusion145 Index149

List of Figures

Graph 4.1 The development of rap and the emphasis on collective participation60 Fig. 7.1 The one-­ finger chop. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)113 Fig. 7.2 The ninja-star. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission) 114 Fig. 7.3 The not-­ having-­ it-hands. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)114 Fig. 7.4 The slim-­ shady chop. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)115 Fig. 8.1 A&O announcement before Lil Uzi Vert’s concert (Colin Boyle, The Daily Northwestern/used with permission) 122

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2

Repetitions of calls and incentives List of formulas prolonging the ‘live’ vibe of pre-1979 parties Songs denoting ‘liveness’ and immediacy (1985–2010) Occurrences of “here” and “now” (1985–2010)

42 55 78 78

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  The idea for this book started with a simple question: why do MCs try to nurture collective participation dynamics in their lyrics even though they perform them in a studio booth and not in front of a crowd? Keywords  Rap • Collective participation • Audience engagement • Liveness • Mediated performance The idea for this book started with a simple question: why do MCs try to nurture collective participation dynamics in their lyrics even though they perform them in a studio booth and not in front of a crowd? This question came up after I had presented a paper on intertextuality and rap music at the Researching Black Canadian Music/Black Music Cultures in Canada, held at York University, in Toronto, in May 2003. In that paper I examined the intertextual aesthetics of the rap genre but fell short of bringing to light its specific functions and the purpose of MCs’ referential lyrics and immoderate use of simile. Although I drew attention to the way rap lyricists importantly rely on intertextual references I never went beyond the play element explanation to support their rhetorical inclination to nod to preexisting texts and to mention other artists. Considering the matter further for a recent article (the enhanced version of which would become Chap. 6 of this book), I established that rappers, through intertextuality, seek to connect with their listeners the same way they connect on stage © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_1

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with an audience. Let’s take the example of Nicki Minaj, who chose to call her third album The Pinkprint (2014). Through this inferred reference to Jay-Z’s widely acclaimed opus The Blueprint, Minaj, engages the listener through an alternate form of call-and-response in soliciting their reading competence and cultural grammar (in the process, she also relates her status in the rap milieu to one of the genre’s most celebrated albums and MCs and asserts her sociocultural authenticity in the extremely competitive rap game). Of course the communication established through this spin on call-and-response is not as tangible as the physical connection that would occur during a live performance. It remains nonetheless interactive since the reader/listener responds emotionally to the reference and participates in the performance as critic. Although it is not the main focus of this book, this idea of intertextuality as one of several ways to engage with an audience which is ‘not there’ through some kind of call-and-response would nevertheless lay down its foundations. It would lead me to investigate more comprehensively the idea of audience engagement in mediated rap performances and rap lyrics. Once acknowledged, this idea would pop up in every song I listened to or would emanate from every book on rap I read. In the same way Murray Forman’s authoritative study on place and space had enhanced my approach to rap lyrics, this observation on the inclination of rap musicians to present their lyrics and studio recorded performances as live altered—and somehow desensitized—my listening experience. Almost any song I would play would validate my point that rap lyrics are remarkably audience-oriented. It was for example the case the first time I heard the 2015 song “Green Light” by rappers Jonwayne and Anderson Paak. Although these two rap musicians are less popular than Nicki Minaj, and although that particular song comes from an independently released album—with greater artistic freedom and fewer constraints to comply with aesthetic, thematic and formal standards—, its lyrics nonetheless display the same braggadocio, the same ‘I’ vs ‘you’ battle rhymes (“See I’m in tune and you’re not/I’m the truth and you’re not”) but also and most importantly, the same pronounced emphasis on collective participation, audience engagement, immediacy and spontaneity (“one more time,” “ayo,” “One-two, one-two (yeah, yeah)”) as other songs produced for a mainstream audience. I found the same philosophy of performance oozing from numerous boxes of the first volumes of Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree (2013). Hence my decision to dig further and examine rap’s transition from face-to-face performance to technologically-­ mediated performance more carefully since no other book-length study had been written on collective participation in rap,

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which, I believe, made this project highly original in its ambition to enhance our understanding of the compositional practice of rap lyricists and of their performance philosophy. This book begins with a study of the first rap performances and examines how the formative years of the hip-hop movement were fueled by collective participation. Before it flourished as recorded music, rap performers and their audiences had a direct connection, principally because they were located in the same place. The move from the streets or from the clubs into the recording studio completely altered this relationship by breaking the link of time and space. The rap performance was no longer live and there was no back and forth banter between the rapper and the audience anymore. However, MCs, I will argue, manage to offset the isolation of the performer from their audience and maintained stage dynamics on records, especially through the battle-rhyming type of lyrics, which rely heavily on similes and intertextual references. The Chap. 2, before plunging into the shaping of rap as an audience-­ oriented musical form, explores call-and-response as a rhetorical device and re-contextualizes it in the academic discourse and in rap studies. It reflects on call-and-response as a longstanding rhetorical and musical practice that is unquestionably prominent in the sociocultural practices of some black communities in the US, but not, as many scholars contend, a uniquely ‘black’ feature. It also revisits the prevalent discourse on the African roots of call-and-response, examining how it came to epitomize ‘black’ music and highlights the chief functions of this rhetorical practice. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the influence of the formative years of rap music on the practice of emceeing as well as the structuring role of live performances on the lyrical content of the MCs. Both seek to demonstrate how rap, when its first records were released, was still very much a party-­ oriented musical practice. Chapter 3 first examines how the early rap performances (1974–1978) were fueled by collective participation. Focusing on pre-1979 parties (or pre-Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” foundational years) and on call-and-response routines, it specifically looks at how influential performers established audience engagement as a template for emceeing. In Chap. 4, I subsequently argue that collective participation was not lost when rap music transitioned from live performances to recorded music. I contend that rap’s seminal years exerted a significant influence over rap lyricism, particularly with regard to its focus on call-­ and-­response strategies and its emphasis on collective participation. The performance philosophy of the early days, in which the individual and group are affirmed simultaneously, survived the transition through the

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emphasis on call-and-response-based practices and through rap lyricism, which prolonged the ‘live’ characteristic of pre-1979 performances through a prevailing conversational tone involving an interactive, interdependent, and spontaneous process for achieving a sense of unity in which listeners have an impression of inclusiveness. In Chap. 5, focusing on popular rap songs from 1978 to 2010, I try to appraise this enduring emphasis of MCs on collective participation in technologically-­mediated performances and to provide insight into the creative process of rap lyrics. To bolster my argument of rap lyrics as a ‘mediatedlive’ conversation, I have explored a corpus of over 350 relevant songs from 1978 to 2010. This examination intends to demonstrate that building unity and harmony through lyrics has remained significant over those years and that, while crafting deeply evocative and memorable messages, MCs remained highly interactive although the music was no longer exclusively performed live. As I previously mentioned, Chap. 6 revisits ideas developed in an article published in a French journal in American studies in 2015. I contend that the structuring role of the spirit of competition in the rap genre obliquely shaped the content of the rhymes of its MCs, making intertextuality a highly persuasive and multifunctional stylistic device in a musical sphere where elaborate and intricate language communicates better than simplicity. I also argue, as I did briefly with Nicky Minaj’s The Pinkprint, that the active engagement with the audience, prompted by intertextual references and similes, is an indirect expression of collective participation and call-­and-­ response insofar as the dialogical character of rap lyrics activates the listener’s shared knowledge, thus transforming them into a collective performance. Chapter 7 focuses essentially on live performances and addresses various ways rap lyrics cultivating collective participation on vinyl connect powerfully with live audiences. It also considers the stage dynamics of MCs and their use of call-and-response on stage, with the audience, with back-up MCs or with their DJs. Chapter 8 draws attention to the ways rap musicians have dealt with non-black fans singing their unaltered lyrics during live shows and how the controversies around the N-word have influenced their live performances and collective participation. Chapter 9, the closing chapter, includes a conversation with Master Gee from The Sugarhill Gang about audience engagement.

References Minaj, N. (2014). The pinkprint. New Orleans, LA: Cash Money Records. Piskor, E. (2013). Hip hop family tree book 1: 1970–1981. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics.

CHAPTER 2

Call-and-Response in Rap Music

Abstract  This opening chapter explores call-and-response as a rhetorical device and aims to re-contextualize it in the academic discourse and in rap studies. It reflects on call-and-response as a longstanding rhetorical and musical practice that is unquestionably prominent in the sociocultural practices of some black communities in the US, but not, as many scholars contend, a uniquely ‘black’ feature. It first revisits the prevalent discourse on the African roots of call-and-response, examining how it came to epitomize ‘black’ music. It then examines the chief functions of call-and-response. Keywords  Call-and-response • Rap studies • Popular music • Rap music

2.1   Introduction In June 1999, a friend and I went to a concert of rap group The Roots in our hometown of Bordeaux, France. The Roots were then touring Europe after the release of their Things Fall Apart album and, to the pleasure of French rap enthusiasts, were making a few stops in some French venues. Unfortunately, our excitement about that show was only equal to our disappointment. I remember the opening acts (Melky Sedeck and the Arsonists) doing an excellent job at warming up the crowd and getting © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_2

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everyone pumped up for ‘The Legendary Roots Crew’ but also being clearly disappointed with the latter’s performance. At various points during their set, the Roots’ lead MC, Black Thought, openly expressed his annoyance at the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm and inability to respond to his various calls. As the group was about to launch into their song “Ultimate,” Black Thought started interacting with the crowd, asking “B-Boys, B-Girls and real Hip-hoppers” to throw their hands in the air. While introducing the song, he announced that he was about to “call” upon us again, “for our energy,” he added. He then pointed out how the Roots were representative of hip-hop music and culture to its purest form, ending each point with cogent Ya know’mma sayins. Next, asking the crowd to pay attention and to follow his lead, he said: Yo Bordeaux check this out, when I say “We are the ultimate” then I want everybody on the side of this motherf∗∗∗ from the right to the left, from the front to the back, to say “rock-rocking it!”

He first rehearsed the call-and-response with the band, calling “We are the ultimate” and having the other members of the group responding “rock-rocking it!” He then called to the audience, who, unfortunately failed to respond correctly. Having misunderstood the call, many in the audience responded with a French-sounding syncopated repetition of “Ultimate” instead. Things went clearly awry when, right before the first chorus, Black Thought asked for the support of the crowd:       Time to set it off, let’s spark this      Bordeaux, France LET’S SPARK THIS!!!      We are the ULTIMATE (ult-ultimate)      We are the ULTIMATE (ult-ultimate)

Things did not improve during the set. As the group introduced British singer Chezere, invited to sing Jill Scott’s part on their signature song “You Got Me,” Black Thought made a remark about how even her good looks would fail to get the crowd going. Then, he spent long minutes performing seated on an amplifier. I cannot remember if the group came back for an encore. This story illustrates how live performances importantly rely on crowd response and collective participation. The beats and melodies and the energy of the musicians will certainly have people dancing, but successful performer-audience cooperation is equally critical for the performance to

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work. In this case, the language barrier might have impaired community building, but the absence of effective cooperation also shows how essential audience participation can be and how call-and-response plays a key role synchronizing musicians and audience within a performance event. Call-and-response, also referred to as call-response, is a common technique frequently used by musicians to connect with their audience during a live performance, and, as an article in The Guardian pointed out, “an effective way of creating excitement, and (…) a staple of the rock stadium sing-along” (Dennis, 2012). Although it can be found in various genres, it is an essential element in rap music, a highly interactive musical genre where, as I intend to show, DJs and MCs place a heavy emphasis on encouraging their audiences to become physically and emotionally involved in the music-making performance. Not only is the audience’s linguistic and/or paralinguistic response necessary to create some unity in the rap performance, like the Roots example revealed, it is also required to validate the ability of a DJ or MC, in an extremely competitive genre, to successfully and skillfully engage audiences. This opening chapter explores call-and-response as a rhetorical practice. It first revisits the prevalent discourse on its African roots, examining how it came to epitomize ‘black’ music. It then examines its chief functions.

2.2   Definition In January 2012, English newspaper The Guardian organized a poll that called on its readers to provide a list of the best call-and-response tracks. It then responded by compiling a playlist. That playlist included various genres including funk music (James Brown’s “Say it Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud”), punk rock (Iggy Pop’s “Success”), soul (Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”), Tuareg music (Tinariwen’s “Oualahila Ar Tesninam”), rock (Edwyn Collins’s “A Girl like You”) and rap (Outkast’s “Mighty O”). In that poll, call-and-response was described as a feature of gospel music that ‘unsurprisingly’ had African roots. The African origins of call-­ and-­response, supported by numerous music scholars tracing some formal characteristics to a persistent cultural memory reified by Melville J. Herskovits (1941), are commonly acknowledged, both in music journalism and academia. According to The Norton Anthology of African-­ American Literature, call-and-response is: (an) oral musical pattern of West African origin in which a leader sings or speaks and is followed by the response of a related group; the response may echo fragments of the leader’s structure or words. (n.d.)

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Sociolinguist Geneva Smitherman, one of the most authoritative scholars on the subject similarly described the call-and-response discourse as: spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker’s statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener. (1977, p. 104)

In her article “How I Got Over: Communication Dynamics in the Black Community,” co-written with Jack L. Daniel, she also presents call-­ and-­response as an Africa-derived process consisting in the verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which each of the speaker’s statements (or ‘calls’) is punctuated by expressions (‘responses’) from the listener (2003, p. 4). Researchers on the sociocultural practices of African-Americans have commonly described call-and-response as a basic communication strategy permeating black religious and secular life. Multiple studies on black churches have indeed showed how call-and-­ response is a fundamental communication strategy designed to bring about a sense of satisfaction through unity and how the constant conversation between preacher and congregation affects the churchgoing experience (Dandy, 1991; Pawelczyk, 2003). The extensive folklore research on the sociolect of the streets of black America conducted by Roger D. Abrahams (1970, 1973, 1976), Mitchell Kernan’s detailed study of language behavior of Blacks in Oakland (1973), or William Labov’s landmark analysis of the narrative syntax and ritual insults of Harlem teenagers in the inner city (1972) pointed out how call-­ and-­response is also used in everyday interactions in black communities, especially in the vernacular and orality of black teenagers. These in-depth studies on language use in black ghettoes notably demonstrated how, just like the preacher during his sermon, politicians, poets, street artists, musicians or regular folks use several rhetorical strategies to engage their audience and greatly rely on their response in their need to determine whether their speech-act has moved or affected the audience somehow and if they have established a connection (Smitherman & Daniel, 2003, p. 12). It is important to point out, as Daniel and Smitherman underscored, that call-­ and-­response was not widespread to all sets of ghetto dwellers but was to be found, chiefly, amongst lower socio-economic working class Blacks whom they call “traditional black folks” (i.e. “Blacks who haven’t been assimilated into the elusive American mainstream”) (2003, p. 4), the same group that Thomas Kochman calls “community Blacks” in his book Black

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and White Styles in Conflict (1970). In “The African Element in American English,” David Dalby, another linguist, also pointed out in that some African-American linguistic features had survived and been preserved chiefly by “the black American proletariat” (1970, p. 174). Research conducted on other expressive forms has also revealed how call-and-response was used as a multifaceted rhetorical system and musical system in African cultures (Stone, 2008; Kebede, 1982) and as musical device in musical genres like jazz and blues (Sidran, 1983). It has also been studied in literature (Callahan, 2001) and, more recently in social media (Long, 2012) and political speeches (Gates & Burton, 2008). William Eric Perkins (1996), Marcia A.  Dawkins (1998) and Baruti Kopano (2002) discussed it briefly in their respective articles on rap music and hip-hop. In his book Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture, H.  Samy Alim also points out the pervasiveness of call-and-­ response mechanisms in the HHNL (Hip Hop Nation Language) (2006, p. 80). It has not, however, been extensively explored. Yet, Perkins, in the introduction of his authoritative collection of essays on rap, brought to light the importance of call-and-response in this music. He argued that: It is clear that rappers, like their ancestors, draw on the call-and-response form so common in ritual chanting to the gods, ancestors or both; and the accumulated traditions of storytelling are an essential element in rap music’s overall structure. (…) such old school rappers have instructed the new school practitioners in the importance and historical significance of this verbal mastery, so that rap can claim a place alongside gospel music, work songs, jazz and rhythm and blues in the African cultural unconscious. (Perkins, 1996, p. 2)

Even though Perkins’s observation on the drawing of rappers on the call-and-response form, and that it results from a sociocultural continuum seems very much accurate, his essentialist position (“African cultural unconscious”) must be acknowledged with great care. Indeed, if call-and-­ response is African in nature, how can we explain then, as Daniel and Smitherman have shown, that it is not present in the communicative practices and expressive forms of all slave descendants, but predominantly in the communication and music of blacks from lower-class backgrounds? Also, how can Perkins explain the reprobation of rap music, which he places alongside gospel and jazz, by black music executives—at least at the beginning of the movement—(see Dan Charnas’s The Big Payback, 2011)?

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The race/class dualities among African-Americans or US blacks are in fact more complicated that Perkins and other music historians have let on. Considering an expressive form, a musical genre or a prominent rhetorical strategy like call-and-response as ‘black,’ one runs the risk of overlooking the multiple dynamics amongst African-Americans, like, for example, the social attitude among assimilationist Negro elite which rejected its own ‘African identity’ and self-image brought to light in LeRoi Jones’ Blues People (1999). Conversely, African-Americans who strongly affiliate with an African identity and cultural heritage frequently point at the dedication to assimilation of the black upper and middle-classes as a complete mark of cultural inauthenticity. On the one hand, such essentializing discourse about what is black and what is not overlooks the sociological diversity of the black population in the US and, on the other, reveals an ideological bias which has filtered down scholarly research on the expressive forms and social practices of African-Americans. As I intend to show, perspectives similar to Perkins’, impeded by their amalgamation of race and class, have led to some enduring oversimplification.

2.3   Revisiting the Discourse on African Roots and Tradition Perkins, as we have seen, is clearly not the only scholar tracing the roots of call-and-response back to certain African cultures. Geneva Smitherman similarly considers that the exchange between the caller and responder entailed by call-and-response creates a harmonic relationship that is “African in nature” (1977, p. 107). Along with Jack Daniel, Smitherman explains that a theoretical “Traditional African World View” provides a fundamental and sustaining unity for African-Americans. According to them this “Traditional African World View,” resting on various core beliefs, helped to forge a durable cultural identity in which the individual and group are acknowledged all together. It is, they argue, experienced and expressed in a unique “call-and-response” (2003, p.  5). Although their argument reflects the importance and recurrence of some aesthetic and thematic elements within a racialized group shaped by sociohistorical adverse circumstances (Gilroy, 2001, pp.  12–13), one can nevertheless wonder whether a communication strategy like call-and-response is uniquely ‘black’, ‘African’, or ‘African-American.’ I have already mentioned that a great number of scholars seem to consider it is the case and argue that traditional African religious structures like the call-and-response

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were undeniably brought directly from Africa. According to them, it has remained an important basic strategy in communication within black America, and is a necessary element to “African American social and cultural identity” (Venezia, 2010). Arguments according to which call-and-response is “the life and force of black communication” (Keyes, 2002, p. 26), or which argue that “black American culture” stresses communality through call-and-response (Smitherman & Daniel, 2003, p. 14) are widely accepted and derive their authoritative value from various sources. The Norton Dictionary of African-­ American literature, as we have seen, traces the origins of call-and-­ response to West Africa. A similar contention is at the core of scholarly canons such as Henry Louis Gates’ Signifyin(g) Monkey or Samuel Floyd’s The Power of Black Music, two books that greatly shaped later research on the expressive forms of African-Americans. Floyd’s work, transferring Gates’s signifyin(g) theory to music, presented call-and-response as a master trope grounded in ‘black’ vernacular and distinguished ‘black music’ as a cohesive tradition that “epitomizes all of the rhetorical in the black vernacular” (Ramsey, 2003, p. 21). Such claims, however, lay on a groundless generalization. French musicologist and political scientist Denis Constant-Martin, in a theoretically elaborate and vastly documented article published in 2011 discussed both Gates and Floyd, Jr.’s observations. He particularly insisted on the impossibility to establish any kind of logical basis that would permit to define intellectual singularities or sociocultural practices, in any society, as uniquely “black” (or “white”) and argued that a black music/white music taxonomy is anthropologically knotty. For example, pointing at intellectual inconsistencies and contradictions in both works, Constant-Martin reminds his readers of how Henry Louis Gates admits that the Signifyin(g) Monkey—Esu/Elegbara African lineage, widely discussed in his book and at the core of his reasoning, is “purely hypothetical” (Gates, 1988, p. 88). As Constant-Martin remarks, Floyd adopts an equally indefinite position, recognizing ‘African-American’ music as a “mulatto text” (Floyd, 1995, pp. 263–265). And Constant-Martin to argue that Floyd, Jr’s thesis rests on a homogenization of African cultures “that corresponds to no reality, past and present” (2011). According to him, it implies, without ever proving it, a prevailing Yoruba influence and overlooks both the diversity and the complexity of African musical systems, and the history of European popular music. In his book In the African Grain: Call and Response in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction, Joe Callahan describes call-and-response

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in a similarly confusing and imprecise manner and calls it “both a fundamental perhaps universal oral mode and a distinctively African and African-­ American form of discourse in speech and story, sermons and songs” (2001, p. 16). In Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-hop, musicologist Guthrie P. Ramsey mentions that a comparable approach can be found in the equally established writings of anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Trying to connect rap music and Depression-era exegesis of black culture, Ramsey nods to Hurston’s prescience about some on the thematic and musical qualities of rap music (2003, p.  192). In her 1934 article “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” Hurston catalogued prominent features of ‘black’ expressive practices that have been passed from one generation to the next (1997, pp.  55–72). These qualities and tendencies include: a dramatic mode of expression, the mimicry and revision of previous expressions; the will to ornament convention through improvisation; an additive approach to “languaging” that inspires dense narratives with dense layers of meanings; male braggadocio (…) frank approaches to sexuality; and the importance of the local cultural place, among others. (Ramsey, 2003, p. 192)

Although racial and spatial segregation certainly helped shape some aesthetic practices, authoritative observations like these, or LeRoi Jones’, or Melville J. Herskovits’, produced a somewhat problematic theoretical framework for studying the cultural production of African-Americans. It helped conceptualize the ideas of a particular ‘African-American’ popular culture, of a ‘black texture’ or of a ‘black cultural repertoire’ (Hall, 1999, p. 289) consisting of the rhetorical techniques, expressive forms, or cultural products of people of Africana descent that influence part of their culture “whether as context, texture, or text” (Nelson, 2009). While many scholars have embraced this approach, others have partially tried to de-­emphasize it, bringing forward the idea of cultural hybridization. For example, as Paul Gilroy observes, still making it a uniquely ‘black’ thing, hip-hop culture grew out of the cross-fertilization of African-American vernacular cultures with their Caribbean equivalents rather that springing fully formed from the entrails of the blues (1993, p. 103). Facing a similar intellectual conundrum, Daniel and Smitherman paradoxically contend, in their respected study of the communicative power of call-and-response, that although the Africans who came to the US as

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slaves were able to blend their culture with the existing one, they did so precisely because of a resilient sense of communal cohesion that provided the enduring roots of the ‘African-American’ cultural identity (2003, p. 35). Embracing at the same time the antinomic ideas of hybridity and authenticity, Angela Nelson equally claims that elements derived both from African culture and dominant culture form a foundation of a “black aesthetic and are used to create black popular cultural products” (Nelson, 2009). Sociologist William Julius Wilson finds an explanation to this duality in the large-scale critical reaction propelled by the momentum of the civil rights movement and the changing political climate of the sixties. The black power movement and the trumpeting of racial pride and self-­ affirmation marked the apex of a longstanding essentialist approach (see Hurston, 1997) and signaled a significant intellectual shift from “interracialism to black racial solidarity.” As he writes: This new approach, proclaimed as the “black perspective,” signaled an ideological shift from interracialism to black racial solidarity. It first gained currency among militant black spokespersons in the late 1960s; by the early 1970s it had become a recurrent theme in the writings of a number of black academics and intellectuals. (Wilson, 1994, p. 244)

Of course, earlier nationalist movements like Martin Delany’s, W.E.B. DuBois or Marcus Garvey’s had already put Africa at the core of their ideas but the advent of a black power, supported by intellectual and musical proclamations of self-esteem (“Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud”), intensified the search for African roots. Even the militant Black Panther Party used The Myth of the Negro Past to inform their activism. In music studies, it spawned a research enterprise aiming at unveiling specific ties between the music of black Africans and of African-Americans. Books like Blues People: Negro Music in White America (Jones, 1999), Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues (Oliver, 1970), Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental and Dance Heritage of Africa and Black America (Kebede, 1982), America’s Black Musical Heritage (Brooks, 1984) or Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in ­Afro-­American Music (Small, 1987) tried to trace the origins of blues, of jazz, of spirituals and gospel songs, and of call-and-response back to Africa. These very important works considerably influenced later research on music produced by African-Americans.

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2.4   Constructing Call-and-Response as Black Call-and-response, used prominently in the sociocultural practices and communication strategies of black communities across the country is, as I have showed, generally presented as the essence of the culture of people of Africana descent. This later assertion was nonetheless questioned in musicologist Philip Tagg’s “Open Letter about ‘Black Music’, ‘Afro-American Music’ and ‘European Music’” in which he discusses the relevance of categorizing a kind of music or expressive form as ‘black.’ Starting from the lack of scientifically compelling definitions for widely acknowledged terms like ‘black music’, ‘white music’, ‘Afro-American music’ or ‘European music,’ Tagg contends that from a musicological viewpoint (as opposed to ideological): “(…) Taking ‘black music’ to mean the common denominators of music made by Negroes, we will find ourselves running into musicological incongruities galore” (1989, p. 287). Questioning all forms of essentialism bound to African and African-American musical productions and debunking the very idea of ‘black music’ Tagg argues that the constant merging of genres makes it difficult to assign any definite paternity of a musical genre or musical characteristics to a racial group or geographical area. Taking the examples of musicians (Paul Robeson, Charlie Pride, Nat King Cole, Prince and Lionel Richie) or of genres largely advertised as ‘black’ Tagg explains how defining musical genres or characteristics on skin color is problematic if not incongruous. For example, he points out that the ‘black’ music of the ‘b-boys’ of hip-hop was, at some point, greatly influenced by Kraftwerk, and is, in fact an aggregate of various genres. Research on oral narratives and tales collected in black communities have also brought to light their mixed origins and the fact that they came from multiple sources (Dorson, 1968, p. 17). Tagg’s skepticism towards a supposed ‘African’ or ‘Afro-American music’ has two main grounds: (1) musicological, because of the absence of reliable sources which would confirm this hypothesis and because no satisfactory definitions of any terms are provided, and (2) ideological. I tend to concur with Tagg and believe that we lose analytical leverage if we simply define the music played by blacks as ‘black.’ From a strictly musicological perspective, one of the most common misconceptions addressed by Tagg concerns the call-and-response technique being introduced as a typically ‘black’ or ‘African’ musical trait. Call-and-response, he argues, is African as much as it is European or Indian or Jewish, having been documented over the past two thousand years both in the Middle

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East and Europe. Even though call-and-response may be widespread in West Sudanic music, Tagg claims that it cannot logically be cited as characteristic of ‘black music’ or ‘Afro-American music’ since elements observed throughout Africa, America, and Europe became, at some point, interconnected and combined (Tagg, 1989, p. 143). He similarly brings to light the presence of elements generally presented as specifically African-­ American or ‘black’ in popular European music, especially from the British islands, where most of the first colonists originated and with whom the first slaves were in contact. French musicologist Yves Raibaud concurs that although blue-note, slide, call-and-response and improvisation are commonly presented as typically ‘black’, they can in fact be found in all popular and ‘high’ music throughout the world. Besides, as he points out, these elements are not systematically and simultaneously present in the most ancient regions where the majority of black people still live (Raibaud, 2008). Finally, as Denis Constant-Martin remarks, the difficulties of unestablished continental origin for the various styles feeding into the mainstream of American popular music raise doubts about the validity of the term ‘Afro-American music’ too. One reason for such doubts being that as long as no one really knows what music Africans actually brought with them to the USA—a very important research priority according to him—it is simply impossible to say what is specifically ‘African’ in ‘African-American’ music (Constant-Martin, 2011). Documentation on the music played by blacks during the colonial era is practically nonexistent. The contributions of black musicians on the music played in certain areas of Latin American and Caribbean, although this music has been much more documented, have proven equally difficult to ascertain (Leymarie, 1996). As a consequence, Constant-Martin recommends a paradigmatic shift to creolization, and that we consider the blending of genres and influences as a more likely hypothesis. This approach also enables to avoid the fraught idea of cultural authenticity. Call-and-response, just like other genres labeled as ‘black’ could then be regarded as an “improved” trace characterized by an infinity of interlaced traces, coming from the past and places; a statement that studies in religious music seem to confirm (Constant-Martin, 1998). However, the highly performative discourse promoting the idea of an ‘African black’, in spite of anthropologically nonsensical ideas like purity or authenticity, was accepted, used and embraced by African-Americans and music historians. Yet, this aesthetic fetishization of call-and-response as ‘black’ or ‘African-American,’ since it derives from a myth deprived of any biological foundation, should then be read as what it really is: a social

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construct. This implied meaning of ‘black’ is clearly ideological. As Tagg explains, it is not to be taken for granted, but to be addressed as a sociopolitical process which developed in specific historical situations, marked by particular power relations. According to him, notions of ‘black music’ and ‘white music’ appear like the result of a categorization of practices and musical products operated within a system of powers that has established racial hierarchies. Avoiding the exclusivist discourse on its African roots I will try here to re-introduce a reflection on call-and-response as a longstanding rhetorical and musical practice that is unquestionably prominent in the sociocultural practices of some black communities in the US, but not a uniquely ‘black’ feature too problematical to establish firmly. Considering call-and-response as a social phenomenon, I will approach it as the product of historical realities where the relations of slaves taken from Africa, then their descendants, and European colonists, then their kids, were extremely complex, circumscribed by absolute violence. These circumstances certainly maintained some acquired conventions, some “kinetic patterns, cognitive maps and affective movements” to quote Richard Middleton (Middleton, 1993, p. 106). However, they could never prevent interactions and exchanges. Although the presence of call-and-response has been emphasized in several musical genres created by African-American musicians, I will reject the idea of call-and-response as ‘tradition’ for it conveys the idea of “boundedness, givenness, or essence” (Handler & Linnekin, 1984, p. 38), to use that of formal regularity. As Handler and Linnekin showed, discounting notions of ‘authenticity’ or ‘genuine,’ tradition, as a concept is not a “thing sui generis but a symbolic construction; an interpretation and representation of the past made by people in the present” (1984, p. 38). My approach will be very much in line with that of folklorist Dan Ben Amos. In his article “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context,” Dan Ben-Amos (1971), having studied a folk group over a long period of time, observed the presence of thematic and formal regularities. He described them as “old wine in new bottles” or “new wine in old bottles.” These two switchable formulas both express the sense of continuity and ­discontinuity of cultural productions while bringing some restraint to the idea of a dichotomy novelty/oldness. Therefore, they suggest a (historical) diachronic approach as much as synchronic (at a specific time) one. A similar idea can be found in the work of James A. Snead (1990). Snead, in his article “Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture” observed a recursion (as opposed to a linearity) in the symbolic forms and themes of the cultural

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production of African-Americans. He argues that cultural production is the result of a process of transformation and not of repetition. This distinction is precisely in line with the idea of Ben Amos or that of ‘folklore-­ popular culture continuum’ theorized par Peter Narvaez and Martin Laba (1986) insofar as it revisits existing conventions without challenging the idea of filiation. Ben Amos indeed suggests that each expression is the revitalization (or a deviating) of pre-existing cultural elements (narrative structures, patterns…). This prolonging guarantees, regardless of additions and/or consequential differences in social transformation within this group, the homology of a range of traits and idiosyncrasies, of formal regularities without essentializing them. Through this approach, my idea is in no case to deny the presence of some rhetorical or musical characteristics in the sociocultural practices of African-Americans, nor is it to question the often very accurate observations about the communication dynamics and patterns observed in African-American communities and insightful remarks on prominent conventions, performance practices, and formal qualities in the works previously mentioned. These works, in spite of their generalizing approach, remain extremely insightful and documented. It seemed to me nevertheless important to bring to light the extrapolations that call-and-response has inspired among some critics and scholars. Although I fully acknowledge the fact that racial divisions, geographical and spatial segregation have tended to confine the dynamics of innovation within black social groups, I nonetheless argue, like others scholars before me, that the music played by blacks could never be sorted out as unique. Although call-and-­ response and hip-hop have been presented, multiple times as “vital components of African-American culture,” “the grandchild of earlier forms of African-American music” (Venezia, 2010) “evidence of the survival of the traditionally oral African-American rhetoric” (Long, 2012), a “re-­ enactment of performance of the griots of Africa” (Poschardt, 1998, p.  154), it has rarely been presented as a rhetoric and musical strategy imprinted in a socially and racially compact cultural group and experienced as ‘black.’ Doing so allows to both acknowledge the ways in which racial dynamics play a key role in cultural production without falling into the trap of overgeneralization. The essentialism bound to the prevailing narrative on call-and-response as a uniquely black artistic form led to a confining description of this technique. I am not arguing here that there is no relationship between call-and-response and race in the United States. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to revisit and thus question some of

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the prevailing scholarly treatment of the music of black Americans. In order to overcome the academic erasure of work by marginalized people, some authors essentialized ‘black’ music. The argument suggesting that we replace the prefix ‘black’ with, for example, ‘experienced as black’ builds on that work but argues that we move beyond this generalization to more critically examine the ways in which black artists engage in the creative process drawing on inspiration that goes beyond one dimensional racial narratives. I believe the field is ripe for this conversation. For this reason, I present call-and-response as a formal regularity diachronically prevalent in (not only) the expressive forms of lower class African-­ Americans, thus avoiding the commonly found naturalized social construct produced by what Pierre Bourdieu calls “the longstanding collective endeavor of socialization of the biological and of biologization of the social” (1965, p. 28).

2.5   The Functions of Call-and-Response and Collective Participation In her article ““Put Your Hands Together:” The Theological Meaning of Percussion and Percussiveness in Rap Music” Angela Nelson points out: There is no question that rhythm, percussiveness, and call-response patterns have a functional effect since these elements must be present for transcendence or “communitas” to occur. (2009)

As we have seen, call-and-response is crucial for the music performance to work insofar as it enhances performer-audience cooperation. MCs, on stage or through mediated performances, very commonly include the audience through various call-and-response strategies. They use co-­signing, a response intended to affirm or agree with speaker: Now is Kanye the most overlooked? Yes sir (Kanye West “Last Call”)

Encouraging, a response to urge a speaker: You like the break-dance say OHOH (OHOH) (KRS ONE “Ma 6-T va Crack er”)

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Repetition, using the same words as the speaker: Mighty I-dee-I-dee-I (Mighty I-dee-I-dee-I) (Outkast “Mighty-O”)

and completing, completing the speaker’s statement in response to a request (Foster, 2001, p. 286): We are the ULTIMATE (Rock-Rocking it) (The Roots “Ultimate”).

According to Madeline Slovenz, these communication methods exhibit the performers’ primary concern to establish successfully a lively relationship with the audience—to “keep their hands clappin’, fingers snappin’, feet tappin’” (1988, p. 152). As Robert Farris Thompson stresses in his performance approach, these elements constitute more than matters of structure and are meant to establish “perfected social interaction” (1974, p. 28). This idea was precisely at the core of the first DJ parties that would launch rap music. This music started as party music and live performances where DJs and MCs greatly relied on the need to create a perfect sense of community. Playing the right records at the right time and establishing a bond with the audience was key to their success; hence their use of a structured set of distinctive communicative means and formulas to involve the crowd. Through this interaction, the fundamental requirement of which is the active participation of all individuals, rappers, as I intend to show, helped create a performance environment and a communication system where there is no clear mark between performers and the audience, for essentially everyone is performing and everyone is listening. This collective mindset, brought to light in other musical genres (such as blues and jazz), was particularly underscored in the street vernacular of black ghettoes, where it was examined as a way to help building a compelling sociocultural identity, in which the individual and the group are affirmed instantaneously. Rap music having emerged on these very streets, created by youths whose daily communication and cultural grammar heavily relied on call-and-response, it is unsurprising that, when performing for crowds of dancers, these same youths would seek to similarly synchronize with listeners. On stage, DJs and MCs used the same rhetorical strategies than the ones which were required when recounting personal stories, oral narratives or folktales. On street corners, at the barbershop or performing in

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front of a crowd, the same cooperation of both parties was needed to create a bond through conversation and common knowledge. As a result, when the rapping and storytelling of the black youths of the Bronx transitioned from the streets to the stage, it maintained an effective use of call-­ and-­response where everyone is expected to participate as performer and listener, bridging the gap between the two so that there is no sharp divide between them. This can explain why Black Thought might have been frustrated during his show in Bordeaux. As Cheryl Keyes remarks, rappers, due to the party-­ oriented beginnings of the music and the importance of controlling the crowd, thrive on audience response to the extent that the success of a performance is measured by the active interplay between the performer and the audience (2002, p. 26). In the best ways, as Lars Russell points out, “call-and-response reflexively feeds energy into the performance, and back” (2013). In the absence of this dynamic, the performer and the audience are no longer a unified whole and the audience simply observes the performance event when it should be taking part in it. As Daniel and Smitherman lyrically point out, the choice of call-and-response derives from the core belief “that true happiness lies in both the individual and the group merged in harmony” (2003, p. 31). Other scholars who have studied it (Werner, 2006) agree that with call-and-response, the individual is expected to contribute—and thus actualize his or her sense of self within the confines of the group—with a ‘call’ and ‘response.’ In such a setting, as Ulf Poschardt points out, the only incorrect action is to not reciprocate, not respond at all. Responses are not only tolerated but are encouraged by the performer (1998, p.  34). The audience’s participation is a conduit through which the performer feels the flow of the audience’s emotions (Venezia, 2010) through the comfort of what Elizabeth Sloan calls an “inclusive communal sentiment” (2011, p. 33). Call-and-response as ‘perfected social interaction’ embodies a communality where the effort of all is needed. Rappers, as we will see in the next chapter, draw on group cohesiveness and cooperation in strategic and selective ways. The fact that they are referred to as Mic Controllers, which points at their remarkable rhetorical abilities to control the crowd or called Masters of Ceremonies, which denotes a similar idea of grandeur is quite telling and quite fitting. Although like other musical genres, rappers are committed to provide danceable satisfaction and rely on the vitality of the audience, they particularly require the support of the audience both to perform in a perfected environment and to get a certification of their ver-

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bal skills. Hence their extensive use of call-and-response, an essential element in rap music’s overall structure (Perkins, 1996, p. 2) that is required to validate their ability on the microphone, in an extremely competitive genre.

References Abrahams, R. (1970). Positively black. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Abrahams, R. (1973). Deep down in the jungle: Negro narrative folklore from the streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Abrahams, R. (1976). Talking black. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Alim, H. S. (2006). Roc the mic right: The language of hip hop culture. New York: Routledge. Ben-Amos, D. (1971). Toward a definition of folklore in context. The Journal of American Folklore, 84(331), 3–15. Bourdieu, P. (1965). Un Art Moyen: essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit. Brooks, T. (1984). America’s black musical heritage. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Callahan, J. (2001). In the African-American grain: Call-and-response in twentieth-­ century black fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Call-and-response. (n.d.). The Norton Anthology of African-American literature. Retrieved April 25, 2019, from http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/africanamericanlit2e/welcome.aspx Charnas, D. (2011). The big payback: The history of the business of hip-hop. New York: NAL. Constant-Martin, D. (1998). Nouveaux langages du politique en Afrique orientale. Paris: Karthala. Constant-Martin, D. (2011). Gregory Walker et le singe roublard. Volume!, 8(1), 17–39. Dalby, D. (1970). The African element in American English. In T.  Kochman (Ed.), Rappin’ and stylin’ out: Communication in black America (pp. 170–186). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Dandy, E.  B. (1991). Black communications: Breaking down the barriers. Sauk Village, IL: African American Images. Dawkins, M.  A. (1998). Voices underground: Hip hop as black rhetoric. The Literary Griot, 10(2), 61–84. Dennis, J. (2012, January 19). Readers recommend/call-and-response songs. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk Dorson, R. M. (1968). American negro folktales. Greenwich: Fawcett.

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Floyd, S. (1995). The power of black music: Interpreting its history from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Foster, M. (2001). Pay Leon, pay Leon, pay Leon, paleontologist: Using call-and-­ response to facilitate language mastery and literacy acquisition among African American students. In S. L. Lanehart (Ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English (pp.  261–298). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Gates, H. L. (1988). The signifying monkey: A theory of African American literary criticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Gates, H.  L., & Burton, J. (2008). Call and response: Key debates in African American studies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic: Modernity and double-consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilroy, P. (2001). Against race: Imagining political culture beyond the color line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hall, S. (1999). Encoding, decoding. In S.  During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 508–517). New York: Routledge. Handler, R., & Linnekin, J. (1984). Tradition, genuine or spurious. The Journal of American Folklore, 97(385), 273–290. Herskovits, M. J. (1941). The myth of the Negro past. New York: Harper. Hurston, Z. N. (1997). Sweat. New Brunswick, NJ: Press Rutgers University Press. Jones, L. (1999). Blues people: Negro music in black America (New ed.). New York: Harper. Kebede, A. (1982). Roots of black music: The vocal, instrumental and dance heritage of Africa and black America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kochman, T. (1970). Rappin’ and stylin’ out: Communication in black America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kopano, B. (2002). Rap music as an extension of the black rhetorical tradition. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 26, 204–214. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Leymarie, I. (1996). Musiques caraïbes. Paris: Cité de la musique. Long, T. (2012). As seen on Twitter: African-American rhetorical traditions gone viral. Unpublished MA dissertation, Eastern Michigan University. Middleton, R. (1993). Popular music analysis and musicology: Bridging the gap. Popular Music, 12(2), 177–190. Mitchell-Kernan, C. (1973). Signifying. In A. Dundes (Ed.), Mother wit from the laughing barrel: Readings in the interpretation of African-American folklore (pp. 311–328). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Narvaez, P., & Laba, M. (1986). Media sense: The folklore-popular culture continuum. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press.

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Nelson, A. (2009). The repertoire of black popular culture. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), 8(1). Retrieved from http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2009/ nelson.htm Oliver, P. (1970). Savannah syncopators: African retentions in the blues. New York: Stein and Day. Pawelczyk, J. (2003). Redefining femininity: Call and response as gendered features in African-American discourse. Multilingua-Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 22(4), 415–437. Perkins, W. E. (1996). Droppin’ science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Poschardt, U. (1998). DJ culture. London: Quartet Books. Raibaud, Y. (2008). Peut-on parler de musique noire ? Volume!, 6(1–2), 171–175. Ramsey, G. P. (2003). Race music: Black cultures from bebop to hip-hop. Berkeley: University of California Press. Russell, L. (2013). A performative survey of call & response in rap. Retrieved from https://beatvalley.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/you-say-nothing-call-andresponse-rap/ Sidran, B. (1983). Black talk. Boston: Da Capo Press. Sloan, E. (2011). Hip hop as neo-slave narratives: The modernization of redeeming bodies through sound, narration and performance. Unpublished thesis, Trinity College of Arts and Science. Slovenz, M. (1988). Rock the house: The aesthetic dimensions of rap music in New York City. New York Folklore, 14(3–4), 151–163. Small, C. (1987). Music of the common tongue: Survival and celebration in Afro-­ American music. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Smitherman, G. (1977). Talking and testifying: The language of black America. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Smitherman, G., & Daniel, J. L. (2003). How I got over: Communication dynamics in the black community. In R. Jackson (Ed.), African American communication and identities (pp. 3–15). New York: Sage. Snead, J. (1990). Repetition as a figure of black culture. In H.  L. Gates (Ed.), Black literature and literary theory (pp. 59–80). New York: Routledge. Stone, R.  M. (2008). The Garland handbook of African music. New  York: Routledge. Tagg, P. (1989). Open Letter about ‘black music,’ ‘Afro-American music,’ and ‘European music. Popular Music, 8(3), 285–298. Thompson, R. F. (1974). African art in motion: Icon and act in the collection of Katherine Coryton White. Berkeley: University of California Press. Venezia, L. (2010). The features of the voice of African American tradition: An analysis of African American rhetoric for the influence of the call response technique. Unpublished Senior Project.

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Werner, C. (2006). A change is gonna come: Music, race and the soul of America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wilson, W. J. (1994). The black community: Race and class. In R. Takaki (Ed.), From different shores: Perspectives on race and ethnicity in America (pp. 243–250). New York: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 3

“Rock the House:” Emceeing and Collective Participation in Rap Music’s Formative Years (1974–1978)

Abstract  This chapter delves into the way early rap performances (1974–1978) were fueled by collective participation. Focusing on pre-­ 1979 parties (or pre-Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” foundational years) and on call-and-response routines, it examines how influential performers established audience engagement as a template for emceeing. Keywords  Rap • Emceeing • Call-and-response • Collective participation • Audience engagement

3.1   In the Beginning Was the Breakbeat In his book DJ Culture, German music journalist Ulf Poschardt points out that what would later be known as rap music, in its early stage, existed solely as “live music played in the ghetto for the people who lived there” (1998, p. 83). Although a few uncertainties remain, most interviews and oral histories confirm that the genre that started in the Bronx in the summer of 1973 was, indeed, chiefly about the music. As Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois observed: When hip hop culture as we know it was first stirring in the early 1970, it was activated not by MCs, but by DJs spinning records and by dancers (later called b-boys and b-girls) responding to the music. (p. 2) © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_3

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According to rap icon Grandmaster Caz, deejaying and breakdancing were the very first expressive forms of hip-hop, and the movement was solely about “who had the baddest beats” (Eure & Spady, p. xvii). As DJ Hollywood points out, at that time, DJs were evaluated on the size and loudness of their sound systems rather than on their technical abilities to spin records or to rap to a crowd (Keyes, 2002, p. 55). DJ Kool Herc’s innovative ‘merry-go-round’ technique, which consisted in mixing the instrumental breaks of a record with two turntables, was, reportedly, extremely successful with the dancers but somewhat clumsy at times, with the needle not always finding the selected instrumental part on cue (Fricke & Ahearn, 2002 p. 87). The focus on the skills did not come until later, with Grandmaster Flash’s experimentation on timing. Indeed, after having attended one of Herc’s parties (or jams as they were called at the time), Flash decided to perfect the practice to a science: What I said to myself is, if I take the most climatic part of these records and just string ’em together and play them on time, back to back to back, I’m going to have them totally excited. (Brewster & Broughton, 2011, p. 240)

He then combined Herc’s break-beat deejaying style with disco DJ Pete ‘DJ’ Jones’ seamless mixes and introduced his ‘quick mix’ and ‘clock’ theories. His manual sampling and looping of breaks without losing a beat, developed over several months in 1975, established the instrumental basis of rap as we know it today. As for rapping, some popular DJs, like Pete ‘DJ’ Jones, Flowers and Maboya, had no microphones, as Cheryl Keyes remarks. They only had “big big sound systems and big equipment, which is what people were into at that particular time” (2002, p. 55). Indeed, DJs took enormous pride in their equipment and often gave them explicit awe-inspiring names like ‘Herculoid’ (—or Herculord depending on the source—Herc’s impressive system) (Chang, 2005, p. 81) or the equally famous ‘Mighty Sasquatch’ (The Funky Four +1’s system).

3.2   Then Came the Microphone Although some accounts put rapping or emceeing more or less at the same period, reciting elaborate rhymes over a melodic and rhythmical loop did not start until later. The exact chronology of events is quite difficult to establish with total accuracy insofar as rapping might not have the same

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meaning or refer to the same idea for all the interviewees. For some, rapping might just be throwing some incentives to dancers, while for others it might refer to slightly more sophisticated rhymes over instrumental breaks. Grandmaster Caz for example, considers that in 1973–1974 Herc was never rapping per se since he did not deliver any intricate lyrics while performing. Besides, as he points out, at the onset, very few DJ had microphones to encourage dancers. In contrast Afrika Bambaataa argues that Herc, while deejaying, frequently used a microphone to deliver some rap catchphrases consisting of street slang and idioms popular among street youths like “Rock on my mellow,” “to the beat y’all,” “you don’t stop,” and just elaborated on that to keep up a party atmosphere (Toop, 1991, p. 69). Such variations among individual interviews and between conversations both point to the inherently subjective nature of oral histories and underscore the complexity of the history of rap music. In spite of their strengths as source, these accounts sometimes present challenges when it comes to their reliability. Recollections can be faulty, and other elements like the interviewee’s rapport with the interviewer, the interviewer’s cultural assumptions, or the way the interviewee remembers an event definitely shape the content of the discussion. As historian Michael Frisch points out, oral history interviews, despite all their considerable value are not an unproblematic source since their immediacy, persuasiveness, and compelling nature might seduce readers into taking their content literally; an approach he has criticized as “Anti-History” (1990, p. 9). However, the early days of rap having been extensively documented, with oral histories like Rap Attack, Yes Yes Y’all, Nation Conscious Rap, Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Breakdancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti, or, more recently with The Record Players: DJ Revolutionaries, rap scholars have at their disposal important reliable sources of historical information about its beginnings made by people who were involved in an event or witnessed it. Several first-hand interviews can then be compared and cross-referenced. The possibility to consider these interviews in light of other research and thus to weigh the consistency of each account helps to minimize inaccuracies and can, in fact, clarify details and create a sense of the whole. For example, when Caz and Bambaataa talk about the beginning of emceeing, they might be talking about the same thing, but from a different time perspective, which would blur the line. Hence the need, on the one hand, to clearly define the terms that are used and, on the other, to use oral sources in conjunction with other accounts.

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For greater clarity and consistency, I will use here Cheryl Keyes’ definition and refer to rap as “a musical form that makes use of rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular, which is recited or loosely chanted over a musical soundtrack” (2002, p.  1). Although this definition is widely accepted, the origins of rapping have been more problematic to pinpoint. Perkins, in his authoritative essay, debatably traces rap “all the way back to the motherland,” where rapping was putatively used by African tribes through call-and-response chants (1996, p. 2). In his book Rap Attack, David Toop ties the rhyming style of rappers to Cab Calloway’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s pioneering styles of jazz rhyming popular in the 1950s, to Isaac Hayes or Barry White’s love styles, to the poetry style of rapping of the Last poets and the Watts poets, or to the militant style of rapping with Malcolm X and H.  Rap Brown (1991, p.  2). Although these examples have some relevance insofar as they point to formal regularities with longstanding expressive forms developed in a socially and racially segregated cultural group, the direct origins of rapping as a dual rhythmic relationship of beat and voice are more recent, and manifold. For most historians, rapping as a style, although it has most certainly been nurtured on the accumulated and residual forms of music and verbal styles of the black ghettoes, was inspired by the verbal acrobatics and vocal improvisation of radio and club DJs who would rhyme and scat before a song came on. The style of these ‘rapping DJs’—or ‘DJ rappers’ as they are sometimes called (Eure & Spady, 1991, p. x), greatly reminiscent indeed of Cab Calloway’s aforementioned jive scat, consisted in introducing songs or guests in juggling nonsense syllables (Poschardt, 1998, p.  153). In the 1940s and 1950s, trailblazers like Daffy O Daylie, Poppa Stoppa, Georgie Woods, Maurice ‘HotRock’ Hulbert, Jacko Henderson and Herb Kent electrified the airwaves with their innovative styles, sometimes becoming bigger stars than the artists they were supposed to play as Perkins points out (1996, p. 5). Their rhyming style was then taken up and evolved a little bit closer to rap as we know it with DJs like Frankie Crocker, whose signature introduction (“I’m Frankie Crocker your record rocker”) and extravagant displays of verbal skills are commonly considered proto-rap (Eure & Spady, 1991, p. x). As Ulf Poschardt argues: These verbal distortions, which were to become an art form in their own right, were among the origins of rapping. Berry Gordy, the founder of the Motown label, describes the black radio DJs as ‘original rappers’ at a time when rapping was still the way a man spoke when he hit on a woman: a

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mixture of scat which introduced the voice into the music as an instrument, and adventurous jive lyrics full of exaggerations and nonsense. (1998, p. 83)

Only at this period did ‘rapping’ come to mean rhythmic speaking with or without music as the first DJs punctuated their break-beats with “finger-­ snapping non-sense words” designed only to encourage the dancers (Poschardt, 1998, p. 155). DJ Hollywood recounts how, while performing in clubs in the early 70s, he began ‘rapping’ along with the audience. During his DJ sets he commonly sang bits like “Hip hop de hip bip de hop, de hip hop, hip de hop. On and on and on and on. Like hot butter on what…?” Then cutting the music to have the crowded rooms shouting “Popcorn!” right on cue. His rhyming resorted heavily to call-and-­ response. For example, one of his routines consisted in screaming “partytime” and having a galvanized crowd responding “anytime” (Poschardt, 1998, p. 181). In his wake, other club DJs started reproducing the radio DJs’ rhythmical chattering and fluid introductions to their live performances, composing party rhymes that were both personal and a cooperative venture. Although rhyming DJs Hollywood and Eddie Cheba (also spelled Cheeba) are sometimes presented as overlooked forefathers whose influence on the burgeoning rap scene is undervalued, most rap historians and hip-hop purists have acknowledged DJ Kool Herc as the inventor of the distinctive Bronx emceeing style that would initiate rap. Over these issues of authenticity and precedence lies a generational conflict with on the one hand, a group of street kids from disadvantaged areas claiming to be at the inception of hip-hop and, on the other, slightly older club DJs playing for an older middle-class crowd contending that they somehow initiated the movement with the vocal improvisation and record spinning tricks they had borrowed from radio DJs. Putting the prime locus of rap music and hip-hop in the street Afrika Bambaataa considers that Herc’s rapping style, a combination of existing deejaying techniques and of popular slang phrases contrasted with that of disco DJs like Cheba and DJ Hollywood (Toop, 1991, p. 69). Bambaataa is not the only one to confer credibility and cultural legitimacy to Herc and to root the conceptual base of rap music in a street style (or B-boy style). Although both disco and ‘street’ DJs were trying to drive the crowd in a style reminiscent of radio DJs of the 50s and the 60s Herc’s legitimacy and status as a founding father relies chiefly on his status as a street DJ and to his distinctive use of catchphrases popular amongst Bronx high school kids.

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Although rap music technically began indoors (in Herc’s building, located at 1520, Sedgwick Avenue) it was established from the start as a music coming from the streets. The ‘street,’ in rap music, refers to a discursively constructed locus which loosely encompasses DIY parties held in schools, community centers, basketball courts and parks. This symbolic connection to the streets, the stakes of which have been analyzed in depth by several rap historians (Keyes, 2002; Chang, 2005; Negus, 2011) and in Murray Forman’s comprehensive study (2002), can also be found in the discourse of club owners who willingly promoted and marketed the emerging rap scene as a ‘street phenomenon’ (Keyes, 2002, p.  60). Although Herc’s deejaying undeniably shares formal similarities with what disco DJ were doing (selecting the best parts of records for dancers to go wild), the locus (the street), the crowd (high-school kids, teenagers and hustlers) the type of records he played (funk and soul records) and his mixing technique nonetheless set him apart from the vocal and technical experiments carried out by other DJs. In Hip Hop: an Illustrated History of Rap Music, Break Dancing and Graffiti, Charlie Chase remembers how the distinctive style of Bronx DJs clearly stood out at a time were the records played in clubs were mostly disco. The records selection, as he points out, with records like “Just Begun,” really turned on the crowd (Hager, 1984, §6.3).

3.3   The Blueprint As a party DJ, Herc’s goal was to move the crowds, which he did in carefully selecting the most danceable parts of rare records and playing them back and forth without pausing, simultaneously playing two copies of the same record. The ear-catching musical phrases that he selected were generally between twenty and thirty seconds long and came from a variety of funk, soul and rock records. These breaks having no vocals on them, Herc started to talk intermittently over them to establish a rapport with the audience and to encourage them to dance to his beats. As Ulf Poschardt recounts, he would usually launch his parties with “Apache,” a dancer’s favorite and, with a microphone hooked up to his mixing desk, would follow-up with a series of call-and-response routines and minimalist phrases and rhymes praising his sound system, his entourage, the ‘Herculoids,’ and whichever party that happened to be going on (1998, p. 161). His freelance talking often contained references to the surroundings neighborhoods, and housing projects, elements that contributed to

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his ability to engage audiences through call-and-response practices (Miller, 2006, p. 22). In his authoritative account of the beginnings of rap music Steven Hager recounts how Herc, very much like Afrika Bambaataa pointed out, used ghetto idioms like “Rock the House,” “my mellow” or “it’s the joint” to provide a show and to establish a perfect sense of community. Drawing his inspiration from “Hustler’s Convention” and from longstanding oral narratives recounting the exploits of ‘baaad-men,’ Kool Herc sometimes composed prison-style short rhymes that he enhanced by an echo chamber which provided dramatic flourishes at just the right moments. Going back and forth between the turntables and the microphone, he would recite lines like: Yes, yes, y’all/It’s the serious, serio-so jointski/You’re listening to the sound system: The Herculords…cu-lords… lords…/And I just want to say to all my b-boys…boys…/Boys… boys./Rock on!/Time to get down to the a.m./but please remember/Respect my system and I’ll respect you and yours/As I scan the place, I see the very familiar face…of my mellow. Wallace Dee in the house. Wallace Dee, freak for me. (Hager, 1984, §4.11)

Herc rapped until he had a complete hold on his audience. As early MC Sisco Kid recalls, the crowd would get literally transfixed by his raps and his booming voice (Hager, 1984, §4.12). His chanted lyrics were highly self-referential with a strong emphasis on call-and-response and dancing. Recycling short and easy to remember DJ punch lines, he established conversations with the audience that would keep them both physically and emotionally involved in the performance. His rapping, although quite elementary, was definitely influential and prompted several careers. As Sisco Kid points out: “He had this def (i.e. cool) voice that almost sounded like a southern drawl. You thought, “This is cool, I want to be like this”” (Hager, 1984, §4.12). While Herc was busy tweaking his breaks or simply needed a break, his back-up deejay/security/MC, Coke La Rock, took over and continued giving props to the dancers, becoming the first MC in hip-hop history. While Jamaican influences have been frequently posited, like that of toasting as a vocal and performance style which provided a backdrop to the development of live rap performance, this hypothetical lineage is, in fact, not straightforward and clear-cut. Although Kool Herc is Jamaican and sometimes played Jamaican records at parties, Coke La Rock, generally considered as the first MC is in fact a Bronx native whose family had moved from North Carolina. Since my focus here is more on emceeing

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than deejaying, and as Coke La Rock is the one who brought forth the rapping, the narrative (which keeps being rewritten) on the American influence of radio DJs like Jocko Henderson, or other local MCs from other Bronx areas seems slightly more plausible. Indeed, Coke La Rock used DJ routines popular at other Bronx parties like “get up” and “jam to the beat” to motivate the audience to dance while Herc mixed records (Keyes, 2002, p. 62). “You rock and you don’t stop,” was one of his favorite lines. He is also credited for having invented: “Hotel, motel, you don’t tell, we won’t tell,” and other crowd-engaging lines that became Bronx classics (Hager, 1984,  §3.8). Having Coke La Rock by his side helped Herc compensate for any slip, musical beat lapse or interruptions that sometimes occurred during his mixes, and to create excitement with the dancers. As Elisabeth Sloan points out, during these early stages of rap music the live shows unequivocally required collective participation and the involvement of the crowd (2011, p. 21). When interviewed about the importance for a performer on stage to have the crowd motivated, Grandmaster Caz gave the following answer: It’s everything. It’s everything! To motivate the crowd, that’s where the rapping comes from. A lot of times that separate rappers, cause you have rhymers, people that just write, they’re good writers and they get on the mic and do dope rhymes. Then you have party rockers like Busy B or Lovebug Startsky, or a Doug E Fresh, who are not so rhyme oriented, but party oriented. They get the crowd involved in it. They get the crowd involved in it. “Say ho, wave your hands in the air. Where you from?” Getting the crowd into performance is everything. (Eure & Spady, 1991, p. xxvii)

Coke La Rock was reportedly adept at getting the crowd, building them and using perfect timing with the break beats to help the excitement go up. His skilled use of call-and-response helped him to heighten the performance dynamics and to intensify engagement. His and Herc’s crowd controlling techniques established rap parties as highly interactive performances that had to be shared by performer and audience alike. The people who attended blocks parties and street jams, as DJ Grandmaster Flash recalls, came to be entertained. As David Toop relates, Flash required the assistance of an MC on the microphone chiefly because the audience was so mesmerized by his mixing and scratching virtuosity that that they

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would stop dancing. Flash needed an entertainer who could turn his virtuosity as a DJ into dancing fun: The crowd would stop dancing and gather round as if it was a seminar. This was what I didn’t want. This wasn’t school—it was time to shake your ass. From there I knew it was important to have vocal entertainment. (Toop, 1991, p. 72)

Around 1974–1975, Herc and his crew had established the first norms and trends of the rap practice and lay the canvas for the development of the genre. As their reputations spread throughout the Bronx, other DJs began using MCs in a similar manner. Gradually, rap performances became all the rage in the Bronx with a large number of multimember competing crews popping up in high schools and in parks. The DJ+MC+B-boys crew template popularized by Herc was soon emulated by young DJs who were accompanied by their own cliques. Grandmaster Flash was one of the first to pick upon Herc’s approach, which, after less than a year, had become the prevailing deejaying style in Bronx parks, high schools and community centers. Just as Herc had Coke La Rock, Flash had an on-and-off relationship with a group of young MCs who worked the mic during his mixes and would come to be known as the Furious Five (Cowboy, Melle Mel, The Kidd Creole, Scorpio and Rahiem). These cutting-edge rhymes-­ spitters came up with many of the culture’s benchmark phrases. As Nelson George points out, Cowboy is credited with inaugurating “Throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care!” and “Clap your hands to the beat,” two essential clichés of rap performance. According to Flash, Kid Creole and his brother Melle Mel were “the first rhyme technicians and the first to toss a sentence back and forth” (George, 2001, p. 18). At about the same period Flash started to perform (1975–1976), Afrika Bambaataa was already performing with a small group called the Zulus in the Bronx River area. At many of his DJ performances, Bambaataa was accompanied by three MCs, Cowboy (not Cowboy of the Furious Five), Mr Biggs, and Queen Kenya. Many other lesser-known deejays, all seeking recognition, imitated the DJ, MC(s) and B-Boys and B-Girls model and its gang-like structure. Over a period of three years, between 1975 and 1978, the competition among these—mostly male—crews and those of aspiring DJs and MCs would contribute to the development of rap music.

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3.4   Battling for Supremacy and the Evolution of Emceeing With the growing number of DJs crews that formed in their wake, Herc and La Rock made a point to throw the best parties around. One of Herc’s flyers even informed: “You’ve been entertained by the rest, now be entertained by the best: Kool DJ Herc and Coke La Rock, where you get the serious of the seri-o-so jointski’s.” Deejaying, like dancing, was fiercely competitive and established rivalry at the heart of hip-hop. Rap manager Bobby Robinson points out that in the formative years of the movement, every group that came to him to play in the clubs claimed to be “number one” (which made him wonder if there were any number twos) (Toop, 1991, p. 19). To garner a following and to establish a reputation up-and-­ coming DJs were to ‘battle’ a known deejay. These battles were usually held in parks or community centers. Both deejays played either at the same time or one after the other. Whoever collected the most dancers around his system was declared the winner (Brewster & Broughton, 2011). According to the three “Founding Fathers” (George, 2001), rap as an autonomous expression—in the context of the music, but no longer as an accessory to it—, started, as we have seen, with Coke La Rock. Although La Rock’s contribution initially consisted in improvised chattering and talking while Herc mixed his records, his rhyming, as it evolved to more sophisticated formulas and narratives, gradually became an aesthetically marked and heightened mode of communication, turning rap into a full-­ fledged performance. Unlike Herc’s, his lyrics were framed in a special way, and rehearsed before being put on display for an audience. Before long, MCs of competing crews emulated his innovative style and took it to new levels. The use of language, the way words were pronounced, elements of intonation or prosody, syntax and semantics became more elaborate. MCs now experimented on manner of speaking and introduced variations in loudness and in delivery while playing with intonation, tempo, and with non-language sounds such as laughing and sighing. The Three MCs (later to become The Furious Five), the posse hired by DJ Grandmaster Flash to keep the crowd dancing at his shows are generally considered as the first rappers who turned rhyming as a full-fledged performance, using all these elements and implementing new ones. “They got into rhyming” as Bambaataa loosely put it and turned “these words to music into words as music” (Poschardt, 1998, p. 185).

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Flash’s friend Keith Wiggins, later known under the name Cowboy, quickly built a reputation as an extremely talented microphone controller who addressed the dancers directly and involved them in his rhymes. Calling to the audience with routines like “If you like the sounds that are going down, somebody say Oh, yeah!” Wiggins would get a tremendous “OH YEAH” back. These exchanges with the dancers had been critical for the parties to work and still played a key role synchronizing the DJ and his audience within the performance event. Cowboy, like Herc, had a powerful voice that made the audience listen and shout along. His role was vital at Flash parties but also in the development of emceeing. As Poschardt remarks, he reportedly invented dozens of incentives to the dancers (like “Clap to the beat” or “Somebody scream!”) and made the music more accessible (1998, p. 184). With the rising popularity of Grandmaster Flash and his MCs, the rhyming MC emerged as a distinct and primary feature. As Sal Abbatiello explains, “Flash was a great DJ, but his MCs were so different from the other MCs.” Instead of talking intermittently to the dancing crowd while the DJ spun records, each of Flash’s MCs executed their phrases and rhyming in a rhyming and rhythmic fashion. I have previously mentioned how The Three MCs popularized the concept of ‘trading phrases,’ the exchange of phrases between MCs. They also introduced a percussive style of talk, giving rise to what rap artists call a “party-style rap” (Keyes, 2002, p. 62). They were highly influential and definitely contributed to the development of rapping from singsongy catchphrases to more elaborate lyrics. For Steven Hager, 1978 was the year when the emphasis noticeably shifted within rap music from the DJs onto their MCs, who were busy creating a new, competitive style of rapping on the microphone (Hager, 1984, §3.32). The DJs’ breakbeats, transforming the way the parties were going at the time, provided the blueprint for a new music genre consisting in the interweaving of musical accompaniment and call-and-­ response techniques and/or playboy braggadocio. As Ulf Poschardt remarks, although DJs still liked to speak of ‘scratch’ or ‘breakbeat’ music to foreground their own contribution to the music, the use of the term ‘rap’ was widespread in the late seventies, which stresses the rising status of the rhythmic speech act over all other elements (1998, p. 150). Another pronounced pattern of the blossoming rap music scene and of the rise of the MC was the multiplication of multimember groups built around one or two DJs like The Funky Four + One, The Cold Crush Brothers, The Fantastic Five, or The Treacherous Three.

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3.5   Emceeing and Collective Participation The fierce competition that saw DJs blasting their sound systems or dancers trading dance moves found a verbal medium in the rhyming of the MCs whose lyrics displayed a clear focus on self-praise and crowd control. It has been established numerous times that rap music is an extremely competitive expressive form. Without dwelling on this here, it is important to point out that the fact that MCs must exhibit lyrical dexterity through sophisticated rhymes and demonstrate to the audience how each of their characteristics surpasses those of any potential or identified rival derives from the agonistic inclination of the formative years. In his book on the rap aesthetics, French philosopher and rap scholar Christian Béthune compares rap music to the athletic contests of ancient Greece and argues that the rap genre displays similar combative values (1999, p. 67). The emphasis MCs lay on verbal jousts and rivalry has also been pointed out by music scholar Elijah Wald, who discusses “the martial art of rhyming” in his book on the dozens (2015) or by rap historian Nelson George, who presents this music’s formal characteristics as follows: Hip-hop is a world of I opposing I over microphones aimed like Uzis. Be it East Coast versus West Coast, Bronx versus Brooklyn, activists versus gangsters, rappers versus r&b, hip hop exists in a state of perpetual combat, constantly seeking sucker MCs to define itself against. (George, 2001, p. 87)

Marc Costello and David Foster Wallace also consider the need to better opponents through a strategy of upping the ante as a constitutive element of rap and claim that MCs must exhibit lyrical dexterity through sophisticated rhymes and demonstrate how each of their characteristics surpasses those of any potential or identified rival (1990, p.  24). In his book How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC, Paul Edwards similarly contends that the spirit of competition of rap derives from the boast, a compulsory figure in the writing process of rappers. As he explains: Bragging and boasting, known as braggadocio content, have always been an important part in hip-hop lyrics and are an art form all in themselves. This type of content, combined with put downs, insults, and disses against real or imaginary opponents, makes up the form known as battle rhyming. (2009, p. 25)

Finally, in their Anthology of Rap Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois note that although MCs develop a complex expressive range of narratives

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and themes, the rap genre is unusually characterized by a dominant spirit of competition: The dominant poetic voice is the first-person singular, the ‘I’ not only of the MC, but of a range of invented identities that the MC takes on. As poetic practice, rap verses are often confrontational, composed either in competition with an actual rhyme adversary or in a mock battle with an imagined one. A dominant theme, therefore, is the elevation of the self and the denigration of the opponent. (p. xxxi)

As an aside, I would also like to add that the sociocultural ramifications of the provocative sexist rhetoric of some rappers and of their phallocratic hedonism has also been extensively researched. For instance, sociologist Charis E.  Kubrin leaning on the ethnographic observations of Elijah Anderson explained that the social acknowledgment and respect young Blacks of the ghetto earn for their masculinity is an achieved status they establish through their sexual prowess (Kubrin, 2005). Sexual activity not only enables an assessment of an individual’s masculinity; it determines the esteem that his peers have for him. As Kubrin, explains, the more women with whom a young man has sex, the more esteem he accrues amongst his peers. This value system is clearly reproduced in the misogynist lyrics of rappers. Such sexist attitudes are consistent with a conception of masculinity that apparently prevails in the ghetto. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown that the attachment to a set of attitudes and behaviors is considerably determined by the structural conditions of their social milieu. The assertion of attitudes attached to virility and physical strength, for instance, characterizes individuals who can only count on their physical skills to work or fight (Bourdieu, 1993). Similarly, the assertion of an exacerbated virility amongst young ghetto dwellers may be viewed as a reaction to a set of social restrictions that have altered the social role and status of men amongst ghetto residents. Postures expressing ideas of prestige, distance, superiority over outsiders, toughness and style, postures that have caused a schism between the young black men who adopt it and women, correspond to a set of dispositions shaped by specific social constraints (racial stigmatization, low socioeconomic status…). The strategies of rappers to adopt hyper masculine postures that suggest distance, irony or superiority can also be seen as figurative reproductions of a practical rationality produced by the conditions of existence of the black ghetto.

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When they transplanted the fierce rivalry opposing juvenile New-York street gangs onto dance and music, gang-members-turned-DJs Kool Herc, Africa Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash retained several characteristics of gang culture and imported its inherent spirit of competition (see Chang, 2005, pp. 41–65). Along with territoriality, this spirit of competition fueled challenges where B-Boys and B-Girls competed on cardboard on the sidewalk and spawned the sonic battles of the pioneering DJs. It also invigorated the first verbal jousts where MCs exhibited their rhetorical skills and tried to better potential rivals and established battle-­ rhyming as a fundamental incentive in the rap discourse and practice. Whereas DJs had to impress partygoers and stay ahead of the competition by displaying their dexterity behind the turntables and by crafting dazzling mixes, MCs, following the same agonistic inclination, had to celebrate their crew, their rhetorical virtuosity, their multiple romantic conquests, and to invent status markers determinedly superior to those of any potential opponent to sway the audience. These verbal exhibitions, peppered with hyperbole and larger-than-life egotism, quickly became an essential pillar of a rap practice reaching its maturity. This focus on style and form imposed an underlying constraint for MCs to create outstanding lyrics, to explore semantic fields, and to find creative rhyming patterns, rhythmic structures, scansion and prosody. They implemented rhetorical devices and figures of speech such as alliterations, assonances, metaphors and metonymies to verbalize their wit with style, to wow the crowds, and to prevail over the competition. As Michael Eric Dyson puts it “rap artists explore grammatical creativity, verbal wizardry, and linguistic innovation in the art of oral communication” (1991, p. 22). Rap is indeed replete with examples of stylized lyrics, the verbal creativity and expressiveness of which are reminiscent of Aristotelian rhetoric in that they rely on ethos (or authority), pathos (targeting the listeners’ emotions), and logos (logical argumentation) to engage the audience and the listener. Part of this verbal creativity resides in the way rappers consistently rely on exaggeration and hyperbole to give more evocative power to their lyrics, to enhance their punch lines, and to increase their persuasive property (Claridge, 2011, p. 217). On stage, in parks, on street corners, or on records, rappers commonly employ hyperbole and imagery meant to intimidate the competition and sway the audience at the same time. To comply with the spirited character of the rap expressive form, they ­adamantly resort to what Claudia Claridge calls competitive exaggeration; efficient hyperbolic statements and calculated absurdities where each new

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statement made must up the former (p. 160). The inflated egotism of the first MCs and DJs whose names (Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizard Theodore,…) are plainly indicative of their ambition to self-aggrandizement illustrates their need to steer clear of the mundane, to surpass the ordinary and to present a discourse which disproportionately amplifies the norm and suggests excess (as opposed to moderation). However, it is important to point out that in this performance of self-­ aggrandizement, no correspondence between the words pronounced in raps and action is required. MCs have no obligation to coordinate their actions with their bigger-than-life lyrics. As Thomas Kochman explains in Black and White Styles in Conflict, boasts are not meant to be taken seriously (1970, p. 64). Nor do they need to be substantiated. MCs express their creative range with a purpose of ‘make believe.’ The main objective being to impress the audience and the competition through verbal wit only. In accordance with the discourse of pacification of gang violence which guided early hip-hop participants and practitioners, the goal is precisely to exhibit one’s expressive superiority without using physical force. MCs losing their self-control will automatically lose a battle. Only the wit, the one liners, zingers, delivery, or flow of an MC can make them the winner of a battle and grant them a respected status. Marcyliena Morgan highlighted this trifling and jocular dimension of battle-rhyming in her study of ciphers. She notably showed how in these circles of rhyming MCs and onlookers, where the lyrical and battling skills of the participants are evaluated and where their skills and ability to provide and accept critique are developed, the imaginative rhymes of the MCs are delivered in a competitive but playful way (2009, p. 59). Vocalizing the spirit of competition that had fashioned instrumental rap music during its incubation period, this practice of crafting playful boasts and narratives rapidly gained momentum and popularity to become a fundamental element of a consolidating rap genre. The calculated absurdities of Big Bang Hank, of the Furious Five and of the first generation of MCs instituted the legitimacy criteria of the rap practice and conferred strong symbolic value and efficiency on exaggerated self-praises. Not only did they establish the standards of emceeing, they importantly instituted battle-­rhyming as its backbone. To obtain and hold prominent status in the rap milieu, their descendants and opponents nationwide had, from then on, to conform to these new norms and to perform an emphatic discourse the aim of which was, and still is, to surpass existing production in content or form.

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As far as I can tell, there are no recordings of rap parties from the 1973–1976 era in circulation. Very few tapes have survived this early period, which has made reconstructions largely conjectural. If we except the descriptions provided in oral histories and in the accounts chronicling the emergence of rap music in the Bronx, it is quite difficult to have a comprehensive idea of what rap music sounded like before it was put on wax. In 2017, Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. combined never-before-used archival material (transcripts of firsthand interviews conducted primarily by Jim Fricke, and by hip-hop historian Troy Smith) in his insightful sociological analysis of hip-hop’s beginnings. His book Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years does provide a detailed analysis of the inner-workings but does not bring new evidence on the evolution of emceeing between 1975 and 1979 (2017). There is, however, one recording of a Grandmaster Flash and the Four MCs (Melle Mel, Kid Creole, Cowboy and Mr Ness) performance audiotaped at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem in 1978 and recounted in Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, Will Hermes’ portrait of the innovative music scene of 1970s’ New York (2012, p. 320). A very rare 30-minute recording of that jam, available on YouTube, provides a good illustration of rap music pre-1979 and the status of emceeing. The repetition of the date and place of that party by Melle Mel (“Uh, December/23rd/Audubon/Rock on!”) and the fact that Rahiem had not joined the crew yet confirms that that party was indeed recorded that year. This recording offers a snapshot of emceeing circa 1978 and testifies to its evolution since the early days where DJs or their sidemen had begun stringing together minimalist phrases and rhymes. It shows how emceeing had progressed to the employment of metaphor, simile, alliteration, internal rhyme and reveals the MCs’ entire catalog of techniques to assist in getting their listening audience open. Although rap was still a live performance medium dominated by the DJ, who was still the star (as the stage name Grandmaster Flash and his MCs indicates), MC lyricism was no longer subordinate. Emceeing was no longer a “musical ad campaign for the DJ who ran the show” as William J. Cobb puts it (2007, p. 17), but a blossoming expressive form. Surely, Flash’s MCs were still ritually praising their DJ, repeating lines like “Grandmaster’s number one!” or “come to the front and check out Grandmaster” asking the audience to “check out the sound of the mix of Grandmaster Flash!” and to rock to his “sure shots” (“Check out the sound of the sure shot” i.e. highly danceable records). However, it had become a well-defined feature of the

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c­ onsolidating rap genre. While the rhymes and incentives recited by DJs or apprentice MCs were largely ornamental in 1974, they now filled the whole sonic environment crafted by the DJs in a continuous flow, predominantly occupying the instrumental space. In Flash’s 30-minute live set, roughly 25 minutes are jammed with non-stop rapping. Melle Mel, Kid Creole, Cowboy and Mr Ness display their verbal skills, and recite rhymes that are clearly more sophisticated than Herc’s and Coke La Rock’s early rapping, but whose content has not radically evolved. I have already insisted on the fact that rap being real-time party music performed in front of a crowd, driving the dance floor better than the other performing crews is essential. For this reason, on top of routine techniques like self-naming and self-description, the lyrical content remained heavily crowd-oriented throughout its evolution. As Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois point out, Melle Mel, Kid Creole and Cowboy through their extensive use of “Y’all” (used more than a hundred times in the Audubon performance) made rap “collective and connective,” bringing the crowd into the proceedings “via an intensive use of call-and-response” (Bradley & DuBois, 2011, p.  7). In 1978, call-and-­ response routines, though not as prevalent as in the beginning, still played a significant role in the lyrical arsenal of the MCs. Popular expressions like “to the beat y’all,” “yes yes y’all, and you don’t stop,” triggering verbal and/or non-verbal responses, were instrumental to establishing a lively relationship with the audience and infused the raps of the MCs accordingly. The rapping parts were certainly longer than in the early days and MCs increasingly incorporated similes, double entendre, and comparisons (“smooth as ice,” “bad as hell”) in their lyrical enterprises of overblown self-celebration and self-aggrandizement. However, the form and content was both innovative, with divisions of syllables (“I’m the M-E-L-L-E M-E-L”), while remaining extremely conventional as it still relied heavily on a pre-existing call-and-response repertoire and crowd favorites (e.g. “like hot butter on popcorn,” used twice). Table 3.1 testifies to the structuring role of live performances on the lyrical content of the MCs and demonstrates how rap, in 1979, was still very much a party-oriented practice. It lists the most common calls used by the four MCs during their set and the number of times they are used: We can observe that even though rhyming complexity had evolved between 1974 and 1978 the formulas used by Grandmaster Flash’s MCs to exhort the crowd are identical to those used by the first DJs and MCs to drive the dance floor. Also, to have the dancers really rocking, the Four

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Table 3.1  Repetitions of calls and incentives Calls/Incentives

Repetitions

“You don’t stop” “Yes Yes Y’all” “Rock the house/Rock on” “To the break/crack of dawn” “Clap your hands” “To the beat (y’all)” “Keep on” “Say Uh”

40 25 63 20 1 34 15 3

MCs still rely heavily on call-and-response techniques like “say uh, I like it, I love it,” or converse directly with the dancers—sometimes by name— asking them to shake their bodies and to “get down.” Throughout this 30-minute set, heightening the dancers’ excitement stands out as a key objective for the Four MCs. As other recordings of the same era demonstrate, the emphasis on collective participation was essential, and common to all rap jams. In a recording of a performance at the Armory in 1979, DJ Eddie Cheba, in a style slightly more rudimentary that Flash’s MCs (Bradley & DuBois, 2011, p. 6), recites rhymes that are equally focused on getting the crowd involved in the performance. Although this party took place in 1979, Sugarhill Gang’s pivotal record “Rapper’s Delight” had been out for only a few weeks, and had not yet dramatically transformed emceeing, which will remain profoundly party-­ oriented for another couple of years. Although Eddie Cheba’s raps are peppered with the usual self-praising battle rhymes (“you know Cheba’s gonna be the winner/I’m mean, I’m mad, I’m cool and smooth” or “the man with the master plan/that will always steal your show”) it is also replete with interactive formulas (“y’all” or “raise your hands in the air/ Wave ’em like you just don’t care”) and several call-and-response routines. Such standardized rapping, unequivocally aimed at the dancers, can also be found in DJ Hollywood’s performance recorded on the same night. DJ Hollywood raps are greatly similar to Flash’s Four MCs’ and Eddie Cheba’s. They contain the same commonplace incentives (“Clap your hands, everybody/Everybody, clap your hands,” “And you don’t stop, keep on” or “Just throw your hands in the air/Wave ’em like you just don’t care”) and are equally interactive. He is openly conversing with the audience (“Y’all”) and makes extensive use of call-and-response

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(Somebody say, “Macho”—Macho (…) Somebody say, “Oh yeah”—Oh yeah). In his book To the Break of Dawn, William Jelani Cobb remarks that all definitions of the MC, whether one understands these two letters as “Microphone Controller,” “Mic Checker,” “Master of Ceremonies,” or “Mover of Crowds,” point to their pivotal role in keeping the crowd amped (p.  8). It was true in 1974 when early DJs like Herc built their reputations freelance talking while mixing to incite crowd participation. It was still accurate after his sound and Coke La Rock’s influential lyrical work had been developed by a new guard of verbal wordsmiths chasing after reputations for lyrical flow and who had invigorated it and turned it into a more accomplished rhythmic relationship of beat and voice. When “Rapper’s Delight” came out in 1979, emceeing had noticeably evolved into a well-rounded practice. The use of voice and timing had clearly developed. MC now introduced wordplay and wit in the crafting of multi-layered meanings. An enhanced focus on matching the flow of words to the music being mixed by the DJs can also be noticed. Over its formative years, a “critical mass of mic prodigies had literally created themselves and their art form at the same time” (Cobb, 2007, p.  47). However, emceeing remained inherently attached to the party spirit at the center of the newborn culture. As I have demonstrated, although rapping had evolved to more sophisticated craft, its 1978–1979 form was still heavily committed to danceable enjoyment and to creating an atmosphere that relied on the collective energy of the audience and the dancers for its life force, however submerged by self-praise, braggadocio and a myriad of new themes. As William Jelani Cobb remarked “the rapper lives and dies by his skill at getting the crowd open” (p. 16), an obvious comment as far as live rap performance were concerned, but also, as I will argue in the next chapter, extremely accurate when rap transitioned from a predominantly live performance medium to its first commercial recordings.

References Béthune, C. (1999). Le Rap: une esthétique hors-la-loi. Paris: Autrement. Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question. London: Sage. Bradley, A., & DuBois, A. (2011). The anthology of rap. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brewster, B., & Broughton, F. (2011). The records players: DJ revolutionaries. New York: Black Cat.

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Chang, J. (2005). Can’t stop, won’t stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: Picador. Claridge, C. (2011). Hyperbole in English: A corpus-based study of exaggeration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cobb, W.  J. (2007). To the break of dawn: A freestyle on the hip hop aesthetic. New York: NYU Press. Costello, M., & Foster Wallace, D. (1990). Signifying rappers, rap and race in urban present. New York: The Ecco Press. Dyson, M. E. (1991). The emergency of black and the emergence of rap: A special issue on black sacred music. Journal of Theomusicology, 5(1), 94. Edwards, P. (2009). How to rap: The art and science of the hip-hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. Eure, J.  D., & Spady, J.  G. (1991). Nation conscious rap: The hip hop vision. New York: PC International Press. Ewoodzie Jr., J. (2017). Break beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering hip-hop’s early years. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Forman, M. (2002). The ’hood comes first: Race, space and place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Fricke, J., & Ahearn, C. (2002). Yes yes y’all: Oral history of hip hop’s first decade. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Frisch, M. (1990). Oral history and hard times: A review essay. In M. Frisch (Ed.), A shared authority: Essays on the craft and meaning of oral and public history (pp. 5–14). Albany: State University of New York Press. George, N. (2001). Buppies, b-boys, baps and bohos. New York: De Capo. Hager, S. (1984). Hip hop: The illustrated history of break dancing, rap music, and graffiti. New York: St Martins’ Press. (N pag. EPUB file). Hermes, W. (2012). Love goes to buildings on fire: Five years in New  York that changed music forever. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kochman, T. (1970). Rappin’ and stylin’ out: Communication in black America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kubrin, C. E. (2005). Gangstas, thugs and hustlas: Identity and the code of the street in rap music. Social Problems, 52(3), 360–378. Miller, M. (2006). Bounce: Rap music and cultural survival in New Orleans. HypheNation: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse, 1(1), 15–31. Morgan, M. (2009). The real hiphop: Battling for knowledge, power, and respect in the LA underground. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Negus, K. (2011). The business of rap: Between the street and the executive suite. In M. Forman & M. A. Neal (Eds.), That’s the joint: The hip-hop studies reader (pp. 525–540). New York: Routledge.

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Perkins, W. E. (1996). Droppin’ science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Poschardt, U. (1998). DJ culture. London: Quartet Books. Sloan, E. (2011). Hip hop as neo-slave narratives: The modernization of redeeming bodies through sound, narration and performance. Unpublished thesis, Trinity College of Arts and Science. Toop, D. (1991). Rap attack 2: African rap to global hip hop. New  York: Serpent’s Tail. Wald, E. (2015). Talking ’bout your mama: The dozens, snaps and the deep roots of rap. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 4

“Keeping It Real Live!” Maintaining Collective Participation on Records

Abstract  This fourth chapter makes plain that collective participation was not lost when rap music transitioned from live performances to recorded music. Rap’s seminal years exerted a significant influence over rap lyricism, especially in terms of its focus on call-and-response strategies and its emphasis on collective participation. The performance philosophy of the early days, in which the individual and group are affirmed simultaneously, survived the transition through the emphasis on call-and-response-based practices. Rap lyricism prolonged the “live” characteristic of pre-1979 performances through a prevailing conversional tone involving an interactive, interdependent, spontaneous process for achieving a sense of unity in which listeners have a sense of inclusiveness. Keywords  Rap • Emceeing • Call-and-response • Collective participation • Audience engagement

4.1   Introduction In his article “Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans,” Matt Miller remarks that like earlier forms of locally grounded popular music, rap shares a commitment to danceable enjoyment and a sensibility that often relies on the collective energy of crowds and audiences for its life force (2006, p. 20). This observation certainly relates to the earliest © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_4

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Bronx jams organized by DJ Kool Herc and his competitors. It also applies to the subsequent period identified by Cheryl Keyes, when the confluence of the street DJ and the rhyming MC became “the trademark for what would soon be recognized as rap music” (2002, p. 67). As we have seen, collective participation had been a vital component of this music from its inception. This element was not lost when rap transitioned from live performances to recorded music. In fact, the records released over these pivotal years (1979–1982) exercised a significant influence over rap lyricism, especially in its privileging of call-and-response strategies and in actively engaging the listener through recorded lyrics. This chapter examines how the philosophy of performance of the early days, in which the individual and group were affirmed simultaneously, survived the transition from the stage to the recording studio. I will argue that rap lyricism prolonged the ‘live’ characteristic of pre-1979 performances through a predominant conversational tone meant to build a comparable sense of unity.

4.2   The Turning Point (1978–1979) As many early pioneers recount, the blackout of 1977 and the opportunity for cheap equipment that it provided, made a big spark in rap music as it “sprung a whole new set of DJ crews” and boosted its development (Fricke & Ahearn, 2002, p. 133). Around that time, front lines of multiple MCs, each with a specific role, had become the norm. Now occupying center stage, MCs began to develop stage routines to go with their rhyming. This new guard of MCs and fresh voices challenged the symbolic hierarchy of the field. They infused novelty and creativity and explored new aesthetic possibilities that brought the music forward. The sociology of art has detailed how expressive forms invariably generate various currents, sometimes contrasting ones, with performers seeking originality and innovation through various discursive strategies and aesthetic choices (Bourdieu, 1965, p. 73; Fabianni, 1986, p. 238). According to Theodore Gracyk, this realignment of a genre, with the arrival of new musicians committed to shift its balance of power, is due to what he calls “aesthetic fatigue.” In his study of cycles of obsolescence and renewal in rock music, Gracyk explains that each genre goes through a series of adjustments at the risk of disappearing (1996, p.  206). However, he only considers briefly the role of social forces generating novelty and overlooks, for example, the role played by the changing of the guards in a field of production. As Pierre Bourdieu explains in Sociology in Question, up-and-coming ­ practitioners rely on

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strategies consisting in accumulating symbolic capital which, ultimately, occasions a swapping of values and a redefining of the principles of production (form, content, style) and, concurrently, a devaluation of the capital of the most influential performers of that field (1993, p. 197). Although this social phenomenon applies to all genres, rap music particularly stands out as its MCs openly verbalize these strategies, repeatedly claiming to be better than the competition and constantly challenging the legitimacy and authenticity of existing and older guards. This is precisely what occurred in the mid to late seventies, when some of the rap pioneers gradually moved to the background as newcomers moved up to challenge the authority of the established crews. As the scene and the sound changed, Grandmaster Flash and the Zulu Nation remained strong, but Kool Herc’s influence began to wane. Herc had helped popularize the rhyming MC and DJ concept that had become the norm throughout New  York. Although the symbiotic relationship that he had established with Coke La Rock and the rest of his crew had become the model for rap music, the new styles and performance routines that had appeared throughout the city outshined him. Flash and his MCs were leading the pack. For this reason, they were amongst the first crews to be contacted by record company representatives interested in pressing break-beat mixes together with rapping on vinyl. They were approached as early as 1977, but refused. As Flash recounts, he just could not imagine that anybody would want to hear a record re-­ recorded onto another record with talking on it and was not certain whether the move from making parties to making records was the right one (Poschardt, 1998, p. 196). At the time, rap/breakbeat music was only ever played live at parties where dancing to records was the primary concern (Slovenz, 1988, p. 151). As Loren Kajikawa remarks in his study of the first decade of the movement, rap, before it became commercially recorded music, “did not exist independently of events held at clubs, parks, community centers” (2015, p.  25). Flash’s initial reaction epitomizes the attitude which prevailed amongst rap musicians at the time. In his book Hip Hop America, Nelson George recounts how none of the three original DJs expected anything from the music but local fame, respect in the neighborhood, and the modest fees from the parties given at uptown clubs or the odd midtown ballroom: Like the graffiti writers and the break dancers, the old school DJs, and those that quickly followed their lead did it because it felt good and because they

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could. (…) For all these old-schoolers it was an accidental, off-hand discovery of a way to distinguish themselves in a very direct, self-contained, and totally controllable way. They needed simple tools to make their art and they made their own decisions about what made it good. Hip hop was not a mass market concept. It was not a career move. (2005, p. 18)

As Mtume Ya Salaam points out in “The World of Rap—Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five:” For them, hip-hop was live music, club music, park music. And not just that, it wasn’t really even music, per se. I’ve talked to Old School MCs, DJs and b-boys (dancers) who said they never thought they were “doing” anything and they never called what they did “music.” They’d say, “We’re going to the jam” or “Let’s do our thing.” And then they’d do it. The names given to the participants reflect the ambivalence—this was no orchestrated “scene” or “happening.” People were just doing their thing. (2012)

That ‘thing’ developed into a local—mostly informal—DIY economy where performers and their hired staff were making a little bit of money playing in clubs and sometimes bigger venues (see Diallo, 2014). Little did anybody know, as Herc recalls, that rap music was going to turn into a worldwide phenomenon, billion-dollar business (“’Cause I wasn’t looking at it like that back then. I love my music, I love my sound system, and just love to see people havin’ fun. Period.”) (Fricke & Ahearn, 2002, p. 43). This state of mind was shared by Sha-Rock from the Funky Four + 1 who points out that, at that time, thinking about records was not an issue (Fricke & Ahearn, 2002, p.  212). Those who had envisioned the possibility and potential of making a rap record, like KK Rockwell, had simply dropped the idea because of the lack of wherewithal and connections (Toop, 1991, p.  81). As David Toop remarked, the absence of industry connections in the Bronx, the radical primitivism of the music itself, added to the young age group involved in rap music (Herc was 18 when he started mixing, Bambaataa 17, Flash 16, Grandwizard Theodore—allegedly—12; while Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz and Sha Rock were respectively 14, 14 and 15 when they started rapping) “conspired to produce an island of relatively undisturbed invention” (Toop, 1991, p. 78). Toop is right to be cautious mentioning that the burgeoning rap scene was relatively undisturbed since while rap music was expanding across other New York boroughs and popular DJs were developing a following,

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a handful of astute music promoters had gone in search of performers that were capable of reproducing this kind of rhythmical verbal agility in the studio, this, as we have seen, as early as 1977. This resulted, in March 1979 to the release (on a B side) of King Tim’s “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” a mixture of old-style MC and radio rapping, peppered with a few B-boy phrases. However significant, this release did not entail any major shift in the rap practice, which remained exclusively live-oriented for another couple of months. The turning point came later that year with the release of Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” The commercial success of that record considerably changed the dynamics of rap music. Bambaataa and Herc have recounted how, over the course of a few months, they felt the radical change in the hip-hop environment (Poschardt, 1998, p. 197). Gradually, the parties were no longer so well attended since instead anyone could buy records featuring the music that had previously been only available live or on cassette tapes—these clandestine tapes that were made at parties and clubs, or those (slightly more official) made by the groups themselves that circulated at the time and which remain the sole documentation of pre-1978 Bronx hip-hop (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 44). As Herc explains, when rap was pressed on vinyl for the first time, he was simply too content with his work as a DJ to worry about record production: “My thing was just playin’ music and giving parties. I wasn’t interested in making no records” (Poschardt, 1998, p. 197). Yet, the key underlying principle according to which a crew needed to have a good sound system to draw crowds of dancers was shattered with the success of the first records. Overnight, emerging and established record labels like Sugarhill Records, Enjoy Records, Peter Brown’s Sound of New York, Express Records, Tree Line—Eddie Cheba’s label—or more obscure labels like Razzberri Rainbow started to make rap records with live musicians, and while MCs remained valuable, DJs and their sound system became somehow irrelevant. Indeed, and as David Toop points out, in the rush to get rap onto disc, the most common way to transfer live throwdowns onto records was to take the instrumental B sides that were being used by MC crews at the time, re-record them in their simplest form (guitar, bass and drums playing the chords and rhythmic structure), then overlay the rapping (Toop, 1991, p. 88). As a consequence, once rap music moved into the recording studio, house bands very frequently took the place of the DJ.  DJs like Flash, who was one of the most prominent and skillful of all the pre-record era hip-hop DJs, were no longer as influential in the music-making process

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as they used to be. Record labels would often have their in-house band re-play their breaks to have MCs reciting their lyrics over the newly-­ recorded tracks. As Mtume Ya Salaam recounts, Grandmaster Flash was not even in the recording studio when the band was replaying his mixes or when his MCs were laying down vocals for the records that would end up bearing his name (2012). Loren Kajikawa has pointed out how this transformation of rap music into recorded commodity produced other important changes and shifts. Without the DJs, the emphasis was no longer on process but on production, which can also explain the initial reluctance of the latter to transition from live performances to studios where musical spontaneity and dynamism would dissolve into the interpolation (i.e. the musical rendering performed by studio musicians) of their breaks (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 39). Flash and the other early DJs and MCs, as I have already made clear, were obviously not concerned with crafting songs, only with skillfully mixing records and rocking parties. However, the advent of rap recordings irremediably altered the original spirit and led to the creation of the rap song, “tipping the balance of power away from the DJ and toward the MC” (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 22). If the mid to late seventies had been a period where rap music was a live performance medium controlled by the DJ, 1979 marks the beginning of rap as an artistic profession and a recorded medium dominated by the rappers. By then, rhyming on the microphone had evolved from standardized crowd-controlling phrases to rapid-fire bravado. One of the most enlivening and prominent features of rapping as David Toop points out, was the dissing aspect of the lyrics (1991, p.  167). The putting down of other rappers, enemies, or imaginary objects of contempt as well as the parading of pure ego and malice had indeed become constitutive elements with which every aspiring rapper had to comply. These elements were ubiquitous in the first rap records released in 1979 which marked the establishment of urban-playboy bragging and battle-rhyming as the backbone of emceeing (Costello & Foster Wallace, 1990, p.  24). As William Eric Perkins puts it, this amalgamation of b-boy phrases and urban playboy bragging “set the tone for the blossoming of rap” and established the blueprint of emceeing (1996, p. 13). Interestingly, when rap music transitioned from live to recorded performance the change of location (from the stage into the studio) and medium (from live to recorded performance) did not entail significant formal changes as far as emceeing was concerned. As David Toop notes in Rap Attack, rap was unquestionably a performance medium and “a throwback to the days when musicians made

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singles which approximated to their live show” (p.  93). Although their lyrics were transmitted by technological media and no longer communicated in a specific spatial context, MCs kept reciting rhymes as if they were performed live, as if conveyed in a context with slight or non-existent distance between performer and audience and with a high degree of interaction. Even if new ‘vibes,’ themes, and rhyming styles were introduced, battle-rhyming and boasts remained a predominant style of emceeing. In fact, emceeing remained greatly interactive and party-oriented, simply because the first rap records were, fundamentally, an enhanced rendering, on wax, of the live jams.

4.3   From the Stage into the Studio In a 2013 interview to The Village Voice, Furious Five MCs Kidd Creole and Rahiem explain how pivotal the release and immediate success of “Rapper’s Delight” were (Kangas, 2013). All the competing crews realized overnight that their routines could successfully be made into songs. The two MCs also provide valuable insight of their creative process and on the making of some of their singles. They particularly detail how the concept of making records was only slightly remote from what they were doing at parties. In fact, as they explain, recording in the studio required very few adjustments since they simply took their stage routines and put them on record, trying to condense as many of them to a 12-minute song. They even claim to have recorded their lyrics on “Superappin’” and “Freedom” in one take, being so used to performing these same lyrics every weekend. A similar set up of five microphones was also put up in the booth to maintain the group dynamics they had refined on stage and to stay as close as possible to their live performances. All the members could then perform collectively and, most importantly, put their lyrics down for “switch overs,” (the technique of rapping in succession to “make five MCs sound like one” that the band had perfected over the years). In the wake of the popularity of “Rapper’s Delight,” several successful rap singles were released. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five and the Funky Four + 1, who were amongst the most established crews at the time, put out, respectively “Superappin’” and “Rappin’ and Rockin’ the House.” Shortly after the release of Sugar Hill Gang’s hit single, Melle Mel and some other members of the Furious Five (but without Flash) had also recorded on Brass Records and under the name Younger Generation a rap single entitled “We Rap More Mellow.” These records were followed

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by a series of singles, some more significant than others, like Spoonie Gee’s “Spoonin’ Rap,” Willie Wood and Willie Wood Crew’s “Willie Rap,” both recorded by Sound of New  York, The Sequence’s “Funk You Up,” Family’s “Family Rap,” Scoopy’s “Scoopy Rap,” Neil B’s “Body Rock,” Eddie Cheba’s “Looking Good” and many others. These formulaic singles generally consisted in fast-paced grooves (disco or funk) played by studio musicians or existing band (like Brooklyn Express which provided the backing beat for Neil B’s “Body Rock”) with some non-stop rapping on it, as well as a few call-and-responses thrown into the mix. The transition from a live performing environment into a recording studio having been immediate, emceeing did not change significantly. In fact, rhymes barely even changed at all in some cases. Grandmaster Caz’s rhymes were used verbatim by Big Bang Hank on “Rapper’s Delight”, and it was quite common for MCs to reutilize rhymes that they had used in previous jams and perform them on records. For example, the Furious Five’s “Superappin’” contains a direct reference to the security of the ‘Blackdoor’ (both the club where Flash and his MCs were frequently playing and the name of their first label). The lyrics “Take your time and you will agree/that Black Door got good security” testify that these MCs were indeed recycling rhymes that had been in their repertoire for quite some time. If we examine the lyrics of celebrated and popular records of the 1979–1982 period like “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’” (1979), The Funky Four + 1’s “Rappin’ and Rocking the House” (1979) and The Treacherous Three’s “New Rap Language” (1980), we can see that pleasing the crowd and exhorting it remained at the core of emceeing. MCs had to find ways to connect with the audience although they were no longer performing live in front of it. One way was to incorporate ‘live’ elements like cheers, hand claps, and call-and-response routines with live sounding recorded responses (like on “Christmas Rappin’”). As Cheryl Keyes remarks, most early rap recordings mixed in party sounds, such as audience cheers and kazoos and it was also quite common for rappers to bring neighborhood friends to studio sessions to provide ‘live’ audience cheers reminiscent of the street discotheques (Keyes, 2002, p. 70). Another way was to keep writing and reciting rhymes as if they were submitting them to the approbation and sociocultural validation of a live audience, getting them to dance and participate. Each line being addressed to the listener as if they were taking part in the recorded performance, thus prolonging the ‘live’ characteristic of pre-1979 parties

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Table 4.1  List of formulas prolonging the ‘live’ vibe of pre-1979 parties Rapper’s Delight “To the hip hop, you don’t stop” “Now” (x2) “See” (x5) Christmas Rappin’ “Hold it now! Hit it!” “Don’t you give me” “Now” (x2) “My rappin’ about to happen” “Well” Rappin’ and Rockin’ the House “This is” (x2) “Well” (x4) “Now” (x2) “Don’t stop!” Superappin’ Can’t stop, don’t stop Let’s rock Y’all/Rock the house (x4) To the hip hop, don’t stop Yes yes y’all

“Everybody go: hotel, motel … ” (x4) “Don’t stop ’til the break of dawn” (x5) “Come alive” (x4)/“on and on” (x3) “I’m rocking to the stereo” “Now just throw your hands” “Say yeah!” “The people in the back say…” “Don’t stop!” “To all the people” “Everybody out there” “Get on the floor” “Don’t stop” New Rap Language I rock your mind As you can see (x2) Check out/Hit it! Believe me

through a prevailing conversational tone. Table  4.1 lists the rhetorical strategies used in the aforementioned songs to maintain this vibe and highlights the aspiration of early MCs to remain as close as possible to the seminal practice. These songs also include popular park or stage routines. For example, on “Rapper’s Delight,” Sugarhill Gang’s MCs use standard incentives like “Let’s rock, you don’t stop,” “Check it out, ya’ll,” “Just throw your hands in the air…,” “Hear me,” “Everybody,” or “Say what?” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “Superappin’” also contains multiple calls to “young ladies,” and several “we’re,” strategically helping the MCs to connect with the listeners as if they were part of the audience at a club or park jam. The Treacherous Three employ comparable audience-oriented rhymes on “New Rap Language” (“And if you don’t believe it’s true/ Check out how we rock for you”) with the same ambition. To obtain this sought after level of spontaneity and conversation, MCs, while recording in the studio, kept addressing the listener personally, through the use of expressions like “y’all” or of standard DJ routines and prompts like “I said the hip hop the hippie…,” “Let’s rock you don’t stop.” They also extensively used the present tense to convey a dynamic texture in their raps and

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used prompts like “now” or “see” to introduce their lyrics to the listener as if they were in the process of performing them live (see Sect. 5.4 in Chap. 5). Although all these songs’ lyrics range from strict storytelling (on “Christmas Rappin’” and “Rapper’s Delight”) to boasts and battle-­ rhyming (on “Rapper’s Delight”, “Superappin’,” “New Rap Language”) they all contain interactive party rhymes and are undeniably party-­oriented. “Christmas Rappin’,” the rap single that began Kurtis Blow’s recording career, with its crowd sounds, and its extensive use of rap stock phrases and idioms (“Mucho Macho,” “get down,” “so-socialize,” or “yes yes y’all, to the beat…”) is a good illustration of the determination of all these MCs to remain as close as possible to the seminal practice and to its original loci (parks, community centers, nightclubs).

4.4   Maintaining a Live Feel in the Studio Onward In a 2013 article entitled “A Performative Survey of Call and Response in Rap,” Lars Russell remarked how “gospel records always sound live, because they capture the uncontainable energy unleashed by call-and-­ response, even if they were recorded in studios” (2013). I argue that the same comment applies to rap music. Were not the first record producers who became interested in making rap records specifically in search of artists that were somehow able to reproduce in the studio their rhythmical verbal agility displayed at live parties and jams? One way to do this and maintain the energy of live performance and the commitment to rock the house was to retain the percussive use of the voice which characterized early lyricism, where MCs peppered their rhymes with “uhs,” “yeahs,” and “one-twos” to establish a dynamic connection with the listener. The most manifest way MCs used to maintain the performer/audience connection on record was surely call-and-response. As Rahiem and Kidd Creole confess, they initially relied on some of their call-and-response crowd participation routines, which reflected what they were using at parties before they started recording (Kangas, 2013). In doing so, they reinforced call-­ and-­response as an important characteristic essential to successful rap performances. Maintaining call-and-response on records and re-creating a live, conversational atmosphere, MCs crafted rhymes that established a mediated experience where the listener remained somehow active, a “participant observer of sorts” (Corbett, 1995, p. 233) even though they were not physically part of it. The fact that MCs went into the booth with their stage approach induced a live element, blurring the line between live and

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recorded performance. Like Big Bang Hank’s ‘borrowed’ verses on “Rapper’s Delight,” many other recorded lyrics were coming from an existing repertoire of rhyming stories and party rhymes. Coming to the studio with the live performance frame of mind, these MCs simultaneously kept the essence of what was going on in the parks or at live jams while creating an engaging experience for the listeners. The call-and-response routines they greatly relied on while performing live were recreated in the studio to synchronize MCs and listeners within a performance that was recorded but aimed at sounding live. This practice was meant to re-establish a key aspect of the music “without which it would have sounded lifeless” (Keyes, 2002, p.  26). These fabricated exchanges, just like the numerous incentives directly addressed to the listener, although they were re-enacted and lacked physicality, were keeping alive the idea of communicating with an audience. This idea of collective participation was crucial to the status of MCs, since, as Master of Ceremonies, they needed the energy and support of the crowd whose presence was critical to sustain the heart and spirit of the original jams. For this reason, artists continued to rap as if they still had to thrive on audience response and as if nothing had changed. Battle rhymes where no longer delivered live on stage but were recited as if they were meant to be validated by a fictional audience on which MCs had to thrive. As a consequence, rap lyrics retained a highly personal face-to face character, addressed to an indiscriminate “you” (or ya’ll) from an “I” perspective (like “Rapper’s Delight” famous opening: “Now what YOU see is not a test I’m rapping to the beat/and ME, the groove, and my friends we’re gonna try to move YOUR feet”). Having spawned from a philosophy of interaction based on an idea of performance shared by performer and audience alike, these lyrics, once recorded, preserved the extensive use of cues like “ya’ll know what I mean.” “Ya’ll know what I mean” is a recurring expression in the substantial thesaurus of rap lyrics. One reason is that this musical genre, mainly during improvisation performances such as freestyle sessions or battles, rests on oral-formulaic composition (or semi-improvisation). Catch phrases such as “ya’ll know what I mean,” (the introductory) “yo check this out,” or (the recurrent) “you know my name” are meant to put the narrative or the delivery on hold momentarily to envision the next line (or to give the impression of improvisation). Loren Kajikawa has shown how MCs had to rely on such formulas during early live performances since DJs frequently switched breaks, “constantly shifting the musical surface” and had to

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adjust their flow to match it (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 31). “Ya’ll know what I mean” is, as linguists call such occurrences, a filler, the function of which is to defer the narrative process without disrupting it (Sebba & Tate, 1986; Le Lan, 2007; Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen, 2009). In this case, they helped MCs to accustom themselves to sudden instrumental changes, “getting their bearings before launching into a longer, more elaborate verse” (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 31). On a semantic level, “ya’ll know what I mean” articulates the assumption that the audiences of MCs whose function is to establish a brief “imagined community” between MCs and their audiences (Anderson, 1991, p. 52) and which helps them present highly interactive rhymes. Engaging the listeners and eliciting audience engagement was also done through the introduction of new aesthetics and rapping styles where MCs could showcase their “preternatural rhyming skills and the indisputable wackiness of their rhyme competitor” (Cobb, 2007, p. 98). Several groups stood out with innovative styles, like The Treacherous Three who, on “New Rap Language,” introduced a fast way of rhyming a continuous staccato flow (also called speed rap): “undefeated, never beat it, never cheat it, bust exceed it. If I need it, to delete it all guaranteed…” Their distinctive flow was extremely influential and went on to inspire many MCs who later came out with complex flows. Others, like the Furious Five introduced influential ways to rhyme and establishing some emceeing conventions like the breaking out of words into letters, a device still used extensively. Under their influence, rhyming complexity evolved as a “hallmark of hip hop lyricism” (Cobb, 2007, p. 103). The transition from the stage to the studio booth certainly shaped this evolution. As Loren Kajikawa remarks: with Rapper’s Delight a new kind of stability and symmetry emerged. With no scratching, no rapid transition between breaks, and no ruptures in the musical surface introduced by a DJ, MCs (or rappers as they increasingly became known) were granted an unprecedented amount of space to fill with their vocals. (2015, p. 37)

The recording process and the glossy interpolation of the breakbeats by studio musicians provided a more polished musical canvas and authorized the crafting of a more intricate rhymes and narratives. However, as Toop recounts, despite some formal innovations here and there, the records of that era cashed in on a similar formula and on MC clichés that gave each

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release a “similar feel” (1991, p. 112). A significant change nonetheless occurred with the release of “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. As Toop observes, rapping before “The Message” was not “all hotel/motel/Mercedes/young ladies” (p.  120). There surely had been records here and there, like Kurtis Blow’s “Hard Times,” which had gone beyond bragging and boasting, but the vast majority of the records released in the wake of “Rapper’s Delight,” or at least the most visible releases, were about rapid-fire bravado and braggadocio. Kurtis Blow’s “Hard Times” (1980) was certainly one of the first records to dispute Melle Mel’s famous quote according to which “No one wants to take their problem to a disco” (Ya Salaam, 2012), but its light social commentary was peppered with multiple party rhymes, and was delivered on an upbeat funky instrumental. In any musical genre, the popular shapes the trend and the aesthetics, until it becomes challenged by some emerging aesthetics and thematic innovations. Rap is no different. The rhyming on “The Message,” although not revolutionary (some of Melle Mel’s verses already appeared on “Superappin’”), opened up new avenues in cadence, in form and flow and in content and paved the way to further aesthetic experimentations. It made lyrical experimentation and novelty more visible and made rap enter its craftsmanship phase. In his article “Big Fish, Small Pond: Country Musicians and Their Markets,” Neil V. Rosenberg provides a template for the professionalization of recreational musical practices which breaks down their transition from ‘play’ to ‘work’ (1986). He examines the evolution from forms of collective entertainment performed by isolated groups (country musicians in his case study) to professional occupation, and establishes four determining stages in the socio-professional trajectory of musicians which cover in details their development and professionalization. Applied to the development of a juvenile community practice like rap, Rosenberg’s four statuses of musicianship (apprenticeship, journeyman, craftsmanship and celebrity) can help understand its evolution from recreational public performance initially performed by amateurs (i.e. non-­ professional musicians) to artistic profession. Rosenberg firstly distinguishes a phase of apprenticeship, which corresponds to the beginning and the shaping period of the musical form. This threshold stage is followed by that of the journeyman, during which styles and repertoires come to stabilize the music as a distinctive and full-fledged genre. Next comes what Rosenberg calls craftsmanship, a stage that corresponds to the normalization of the musical practice and to its phase of artistic legitimation.

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The last phase identified by Rosenberg (celebrity) corresponds to the development of the music as an industry. This latter stage corresponds, in the model established by Richard Peterson (1972), to a pop phase, namely a phase of large-scale production and distribution, possibly followed by a fine art phase. In his book on hip-hop culture, French rap scholar Hugues Bazin, offers a comparable three-period evolution process. He calls the burgeoning of hip-hop a stage of “juvenile effervescence,” quickly followed by two other stages: “professionalization” and “economic and artistic recognition” (2000, p. 10). These last two stages, which can be combined, correspond to the rapid increase in rap record sales, to the proliferation of rap groups and artists, to the start of a specialized press, and to what Patrick Simon calls “institutional recognition” with the creation of an award for “best rap artist” by the music industry (2000, p. 26). Graph 4.1 represents the aforementioned different phases of the development of rap. I will use it as a template to discuss the evolution of emceeing and to observe the stability of collective participation and audience engagement when rap transitioned from live to recorded performance (line [E]). The first line [A] includes the chronological landmarks of the music. The first arrow points to its beginnings with first informal block parties,

Graph 4.1 The development of rap and the emphasis on collective participation

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when rap was mostly spontaneous entertainment for ghetto youths and considered as such. Although it is quite difficult to determine exactly its limits, we can consider that this period roughly started with DJ Kool Herc’s first recreational parties in the early 1970s and ended when block parties evolved into organized self-promoted parties and when DJs started to play for money (roughly around late 75–76, even if a few pioneering DJs like Herc or Bambaataa had already secured gigs as resident DJs by then) (Chang, 2005, pp. 57–58). This semi-professionalization marks the beginning of what Rosenberg calls the journeyman phase [B]. In my opinion, his taxonomy is more comprehensive inasmuch as it includes an intermediate period between rap, say, as leisure, and rap as a profession; after a couple of years of incubation that had seen multiple DJs and MCs crafting the genre in clubs, in parks, “plugging up their systems to light poles” (Eure & Spady, 1991, p. xxx). We can consider that this period ends with the release of “Rapper’s Delight.” Next comes the craftsmanship phase (1979–1992), which marks the beginnings (1979–1984) and consolidation (1984–1992) of rap as an artistic profession and a period during which, I argue, lyricism developed from firmly established live-oriented conventions while retaining, though to a lesser extent (as the fading color indicates [E]), its ‘live essence’. The years which followed the release and success of “Rapper’s Delight” served as a rhyming blueprint for future MCs, establishing formal and thematic conventions. Over the weeks and months that followed its release, rap’s boasting, bragging and battling styles definitely consolidated. Early MCs like Grandmaster Caz, Cowboy, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, Kurtis Blow or Sha-Rock, to name a few, instituted formal and thematic conventions which would all prove to be fundamental to the formation of today’s emceeing. Several influential MCs of that era introduced rhyming styles that have certainly been revisited or enhanced over the years but which still inspire today’s MCs. As Pierre Bourdieu has shown, cultural practices obey to established canons that define their aesthetics and legitimacy (1965, p. 25). It is extremely important to consider in all their details and particularities the technical contributions of these emblematic MCs, as well as the different conventions that they established, to understand how this period, nostalgically referred to as ‘old school’ in the rap discourse, became a paradigmatic temporal frame of reference of rap music, and of emceeing in particular. “Rapper’s Delight,” “The Breaks,” “Rappin’ and Rockin’ the House,” the Fearless Four’s “Rockin’ it” defined the legitimacy standards of emceeing in attributing a glaring symbolic status to

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braggadocio, party-rhymes and call-and response and in establishing reference norms which would determine the ‘proper’ way to make rap. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s song “The Message” certainly represents a landmark, as it devoted its whole lyrics to political critique and social commentary and popularized new themes. However, although it brought contrast to commonplace rapping, it did not shift lyricism dramatically. For example, and as Reiland Rabaka points out in The Hip Hop Movement: From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation, that song appeared on The Message, an album which also featured party and love raps (2013, p. 58). In fact, it did not “cut across a stagnation” in rap lyricism as David Toop contends (1991, p. 120) or mark the demise of braggadocio, which continues to be a major part of contemporary rap. Nor did it alter the collective aspect of rap. As Rabaka explains: Instead of boasting about their rap skills, dissin’ their rivals (“sucker MCs!”), and asking audiences to raise their hands in the air and scream like they just don’t care, after “The Message” rappers began to increasingly offer political critique and social commentary. (2013, p. 59)

The major transformation was that after “The Message” other topical issues were no longer buried between more commonplace lines about partying, making lots of money, magnetizing women and surpassing the competition. Rap was still evolving as a musical practice and each successfully emerging topical or lyrical concept became a template to be developed and enhanced. The same way “Rapper’s Delight” had revolutionized rap, “The Message” was extremely influential in standardizing new musical, thematic and rhyming possibilities and expanded the lyrical scope of that music, still in the making and not fully bloomed yet at the time. It shifted the lyrical focus in new directions without outshining braggadocio, partying, and dancing which have remained leading themes. Likewise, collective participation and audience engagement remained an important feature of rap lyricism to this day. The fact that the first MCs initially performed for local hip-hop communities and were not focused on writing songs that transcended the local clearly had firmly rooted collective participation into the practice. As Rahiem and Kidd Creole pointed out, MCs were generally trying to record songs that were indicative of the energy and atmosphere of their live performances. My objective, in the next chapter, is to demonstrate how they managed to maintain that drive over the following decades.

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References Aijmer, K., & Simon-Vandenbergen, A. (2009). Pragmatic markers. In J.  O. Östman & J.  Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp.  223–247). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Bazin, H. (2000). Hip hop: le besoin d’une médiation politique. Mouvements, 11, 39–53. Bourdieu, P. (1965). Un art moyen: essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit. Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question. London: Sage. Chang, J. (2005). Can’t stop won’t stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: Picador. Cobb, W.  J. (2007). To the break of dawn: A freestyle on the hip hop aesthetic. New York: NYU Press. Corbett, J. (1995). Ephemera underscored: Writing around free improvisation. In K.  Gabbard (Ed.), Jazz among the discourses (pp.  217–241). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Costello, M., & Foster Wallace, D. (1990). Signifying rappers, rap and race in urban present. New York: The Ecco Press. Diallo, D. (2014). An odd blend of two cultures: Rap music’s street culture and the music industry. The State of the Music Industry—Civilisations, 13, 137–158. Eure, J.  D., & Spady, J.  G. (1991). Nation conscious rap: The hip hop vision. New York: PC International Press. Fabianni, J. L. (1986). Carrières improvisées: théories et pratiques de la musique de jazz en France. In R. Moulin (Ed.), Sociologie de L’art (pp. 231–245). Paris: La Documentation française. Fricke, J., & Ahearn, C. (2002). Yes yes y’all: Oral history of hip hop’s first decade. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. George, N. (2005). Hip hop America. New York: Penguin Books. Gracyk, T. (1996). Rhythm and noise: Aesthetics of rock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kajikawa, L. (2015). Sounding race in rap songs. Oakland: University of California Press. Kangas, C. (2013). Revisiting the Furious Five’s unsung classics with Rahiem and Kidd Creole. The Village Voice. Retrieved from https://www.villagevoice.com Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Le Lan, B. (2007). Les marqueurs de structuration de la conversation en anglais spontané contemporain: les cas de well et you know. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Université Paris IV.

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Miller, M. (2006). Bounce: Rap music and cultural survival in New Orleans. HypheNation: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse, 1(1), 15–31. Perkins, W. E. (1996). Droppin’ science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Peterson, R. (1972). A process model of the folk, pop and fine art phases of jazz. In C. Nanry (Ed.), American music: From Storyville to Woodstock (pp. 135–151). New York: Dutton. Poschardt, U. (1998). DJ culture. London: Quartet Books. Rabaka, R. (2013). The hip hop movement: From R&B and the civil rights movement to rap and the hip hop generation. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Rosenberg, N. V. (1986). Big fish, small pond: Country musicians and their markets. In P. Narvaez & M. Laba (Eds.), Media sense: The folklore-popular culture continuum (pp.  149–166). Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Russell, L. (2013, May 28). A performative survey of call & response in rap. [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://beatvalley.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/ you-say-nothing-call-and-response-rap/ Salaam, M. Y. (2012). The world of rap—Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five. Chicken Bones: A Journal for Literary and Artistic African-American Themes. Retrieved from http://www.nathanielturner.com/worldofrapgrandmasterflash.htm Sebba, M., & Tate, S. (1986). You know what I mean? Agreement marking in British black English. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(2), 163–172. Simon, P. (2000). Trop de gens sont concernés, le rap conscient et les entrepreneurs. Mouvements, 11, 22–27. Slovenz, M. (1988). Rock the house: The aesthetic dimensions of rap music in New York City. New York Folklore, 14(3–4), 151–163. Toop, D. (1991). Rap attack 2: African rap to global hip hop. New  York: Serpent’s Tail.

CHAPTER 5

“Coming to You Live and Direct!”: Performing Liveness and Immediacy on Record

Abstract  Focusing on popular rap songs from 1978 to 2010, this chapter considers the enduring emphasis of rap MCs on collective participation in mediated performances and provides insight into the creative process of their lyrics. To bolster the argument of rap lyrics as a “mediated-live” conversation, it surveys a corpus of over 350 relevant songs from 1978 to 2010. Keywords  Rap • Emceeing • Mediated performance • Collective participation • Audience engagement • Liveness

5.1   Introduction On “All in a Day’s Work”, the fourth track of his 2015 album Compton, Dr Dre announces to the listener that the latter should “best believe” he is “in the building.” He then declares, in a reverberated voice meant to provide a live feel, that he is coming to the listener “live and direct!” This catchphrase is quite popular in rap, having been used by many rappers. For example, in 2002, rapper Snoop Dogg opened his song “The One and Only” with the line “Aw yeah, coming to you live and direct from the LBC.” Mac Miller uses it twice on “Break the Law” (2015), including the variation “I bring it to you la-la-la-la-la live!” Multiple other occurrences can be found in the lyrics of Redman (on “On Fire,” 1996), Xzibit © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_5

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(“Live and direct in the flesh, I’m right in front of you” on “Say My Name,” 2002), Method Man (“Live and direct from the one-six-ooh” on “Meth vs. Chef” 1994), Cypress Hill (“3 Little Putos,” 1993), Schoolboy Q (on “Scenario,” 2011) and of many other rappers. This chapter examines how, by introducing or styling a studio recorded performance as ‘live and direct’, MCs try to communicate the energy and atmosphere of a performance shared with a live audience. As I have previously emphasized, the fact that the performing context of rap music changed (from the stage to the recording studio) did not alter nor suppress rap music’s collective ethos. I will now argue that MCs continued to inspire participation on records as the rap genre developed and show that its transitioning from craftsmanship to celebrity did not stifle the ‘live’ spirit of the formative years. Focusing on popular rap songs from 1985 to 2010, I will examine the enduring emphasis of MCs on collective participation and provide insight into the creative process of their lyrics. Although separated in time and space from the listener, I will analyze how they try to create an “inclusive communal sentiment” (Sloan, 2011, p. 33) through the crafting of mediated face-to-face interactions. To solidify my argument of rap lyrics as a mediated live conversation I have explored the corpus of over 262 relevant songs compiled by Adam Bradley and Andrew Dubois in their Anthology of Rap, the selection of which is drawn from three decades of history of the music and represents a diversity of region, genres, styles, and themes (Bradley & DuBois, 2011, p. 719). The examination of these songs demonstrates that the building of unity and harmony through lyrics has remained significant over the years and that MCs have stayed highly interactive in their creative process. It convincingly reveals that, during rap music’s craftsmanship stage (which encompasses Bradley and DuBois’s “Old School” [1978–1984] and “Golden Age” [1985–1992] periods) and celebrity phase (“Rap Goes Mainstream” and “New Millenium Rap” for Bradley & DuBois), rappers prolonged the “live and direct” atmosphere of the early jams and recordings in their technologically-­mediated performances.

5.2   Maintaining a Live Feel Through Technologically-Mediated Performance I have already pointed out to what extent the success of “Rapper’s Delight” and of other early landmark records set off a period of fertile creation which fueled the rapid expansion of rap music. As the craft of emceeing was maturing, established and up-and-coming MCs started to stray from

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the ebullient rapping style of the early years and explored new options in terms of flow, of rhyming patterns, and of cadences. They also began pushing past the once-dominant party rhymes, boasts, and chants with intricate storytelling, complex wordplay and sociopolitical consciousness. Although the rap genre evolved with emerging labels and MCs coming out and introducing aesthetic innovations and new eras, several of the old school crowd-pleasing routines remained. So did some of the conventional exercises of crowd exhortation previously discussed. As music journalist Jonathan Gold remarks: When you listen to early rap records, which were basically denatured re-­ creations of live performances, it becomes clear that the clichés of present-­ day rap performance were already well established in the ’70s. At least half the songs praise the deejay; half invite the audience to party down (…) Rappers—all of them—rely on the same old formulas. They exhort their audiences to scream, to stand, to yell louder than the kids on the other side of the auditorium, as if they were rocking a disco instead of the Sports Arena. (1990)

However, although rap’s craftsmanship phase had seen the opening of new lyrical terrains and the introduction of new vibes, themes and rhyming styles, battle-rhyming—a chief constitutive element of emceeing and a key aspect to maintain community involvement on record—remained a predominant style of emceeing. As we have seen, the serious-though-­ good-humored competition between DJ crews established bragging (or boasting) as one of the conventions of rap music (Edwards, 2009, p. 25) and led MCs to, on the one hand, recurrently brag about how their crew was superior to any other and how much more of everything they have than the next MC. On the other hand, MCs had to establish and sustain a critical performer-audience interaction. Even when they are not bragging about their rhetorical skills or sociocultural status and choose to explore themes as varied as the glamour or hardships of ghetto life, street entrepreneurship, motherly love or failed relationships, they implicitly ­ compete with each other in terms of skills. To put it simply, they constantly exhibit their rhyming abilities against the competition. Since rapping developed from battle-rhyming and crowd-controlling routines, MCs, regardless of the thematic content of their songs, are inherently engaging the competition and the audience. Hence the close attention they pay to their lyrics, whose sophistication, shock value or humor can earn them respect amongst their peers and impress the audience while outsmarting

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the competition. Whether they are aiming at lyrically crushing adversaries (be they purely conceptual or specifically identified) or at hyping themselves, battles rhymes are “commandeered as a collective enterprise” (Bradley & DuBois, 2011, p. 209). MCs indeed require the validation of their wit and rhymes by the audience/listener. Their performance is put on display and opened to scrutiny. In conformity with Richard Bauman’s observations on performed acts of communication, rapping “calls forth special attention and gives license to the audience to regard it and the performer with special intensity” (Bauman, 1992, p. 44). As English rap scholar Richard Bramwell notes, rappers need the audience/listener as a “witness” and assign them the task of appraising the skill and effectiveness of their verbal feats (2015, p.  90). Making similar observations, Philip Jerge remarks: In competitions against each other, emcees are celebrated by the collective for their unique renderings. Thus, hip hop inspires participation, both from the audience through call and response and the community in calling forth a collective stance (…). (2011, p. 14)

According to performance theory studies (Schechner, 2002; Auslander, 2008) live performance implies a communication act between a live performer and a live audience. Rappers, however, present their recorded performance as ‘live and direct’, challenging the traditional dichotomy between ‘live’ and ‘recorded’. They advertise their lyrics as if being performed before a live audience. They intentionally lay the emphasis on face-­ to-­ face interaction although separated in time and by space with the auditor by technologically-mediated communication. To recreate the live component of the earliest performances MCs then write performative lyrics that redefine ‘liveness’ in such a way that performers no longer need to be physically present—“in the flesh” to quote rapper Xzibit—for a performance to be experienced ‘live and direct’. In a 1990 article, Los Angeles Times journalist Jonathan Gold remarked that “the craft of rap these days is the recording studio” (1990). We have already seen how rap was a strictly live medium when it began in Bronx parks and clubs, four years before the first rap record was released and before the producer supplanted the DJ as the main creative force. Looking back with some nostalgia on the period that preceded the elevation of recorded rap to primary status, Gold regrets that “along with the demise of the live deejay went any opportunity for spontaneity on the part of the

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rapper” (1990). Gold’s contention is clearly in line with the argument of performance studies theorist Elizabeth Bell who situates the distinctiveness of live performance in its senses of risk, of intimacy, of unpredictability, of presence and of spontaneity (2008, p. 242). However, and as a close examination of the aforementioned corpus reveals, these senses were never completely dropped in the studio booth for they remained artificially sustained through production techniques (like echoing the voice or the instrumental track), inserts of live claps and cheers, and a live oriented discourse. Although recording, as musicologist Carolyn Abbate suggests, alters the basic alchemy of a live performance, turning it into an artifact and encouraging distance and reflection (2004) rappers, as we are about to see, compensate the spatiotemporal distance by instilling a certain degree of ‘liveness’ and spontaneity in their lyrics and the production of their songs. Amongst the 262 songs spanning over 25 years (1985–2010) selected by Bradley and DuBois (B&D) I have identified 93 songs in which MCs, through production methods or lyrics, explicitly convey an aesthetics of ‘liveness’ through the creation of an interactive network between performer and auditor. Other than stating that they are literally “bringing it live,” one of the most common ways chosen by MCs to create ‘liveness’ is to address the listener as if they shared the same spatiotemporal context, hence the multiple occurrences of “here” (1a, b), or of rhymes where rappers claim to be “in the house” (1c), “in the place” (1d) or “in the building” (1e). (1)

a - “the Wu is here” (“Daytona 500”) b - “I keep the facts here” (B&D, p. 263) c - “The R is in the house” (B&D, p. 179) d - “Oh party people in the house (…) that’s me in the place to be” (“La di da di” B&D, p. 290) e - “I’m DMC in the place to be” (B&D, p. 266) f - “Yeah, 2pac in this motherfucker!” (B&D, p. 521)

Pretending to share a location with the listener helps MCs create proximity and conjure up a live feel. Salt-N-Pepa’s lyrics on “Let’s Talk About Sex,” addressed “to the people at home or in the crowd” (B&D, p. 267) testify to this duality of rap lyrics which are recorded in a studio but proclaimed as being performed live in front of a pretend audience. Through such an approach, MCs not only convey a sense of presence (i.e. of being

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there) specific to live performance but also a magnetic presence (as in aura, charisma) (Fischer-Lichte, 2008) whose exaggerated staging is partially unaltered by reproducibility. This argument somehow conflicts with Walter Benjamin’s thesis that the ‘aura’ of a cultural product, that is to say the force that arises from its uniqueness disappears with its reproducibility (Benjamin, 2008). Obviously, the sensory experience is different between attending a rap concert where the performance is characterized by the presence of “living bodies” (Phelan, 1993, p. 148), and listening to a rap record. If we apply Benjamin’s thesis, the latter lacks the ‘authenticity’ of the live performance insofar as it offers a depreciated rendering of a performance experienced in person. However, I argue that in the mediated performance of the rappers, this ‘presence’ or magnetism is exuded through the lyrics and through a recreated live context meant to help them radiate an energy and a physicality comparable to those that take hold of the audience during a live performance. The performance is then no longer limited to the corporeal ‘here and now’, but meant to convey a sense of presence each time it is listened to. MCs, when they claim to be “here” and asking the listener to “check out” their flow and their skills fix the performance in a permanent present tense and on a fictional stage. As a result, the Wu Tang Clan sounds like it is “comin’ at ya” (the listener) every time their track “Protect Ya Neck” is played, presenting their rhyming style (“Here comes my Shaolin style,” B&D, p. 533) as if they were being performed at the listener right in front of them, making them physically part of the performance. The purpose is similar in Rakim’s lyrics on “Lyrics of Fury” (B&D, p. 179) or on “Microphone Fiend” in which the same live feel is conveyed through, respectively, expressions like “all you see” and “make way cause here I come” (B&D, p. 176) which express a shared (though mediated) spatiotemporal context. Another overriding device used to express the same sense of presence and of temporality is the use of “about” or similar expressions meant to inform the listener that MCs are on the verge of doing or saying something. For example, when Ice Cube, Too Short or Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg announce that they are “about to f∗∗∗ up the program” (B&D, p. 417) that “here’s another rap that I’m ready to spit” (B&D, p. 297) or that they are “about to rip sh∗t up” (B&D, p. 505) on, respectively on “The Nigga You Love to Hate,” “Cusswords” and “Nuthin but a G Thang,” not only do they try to project more of the sensory details to the listener, they also strategically “gain audience attention and arousal” (Keyes, 1984, p. 145). Obviously, the use of call-and-response is equally

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key at creating this live feel. So is the use of the party vernacular of the early years and the multiple nods to the DJ (or producer) that can be found in rap lyrics, past and present. Quite recurrent in the first recordings that followed “Rapper’s Delight” and early other landmark singles (2,a) calls and incentives directed at dancers and party rhymes such as “You can’t, won’t, don’t stop,”, “Get down”, “Say what?” or “Clap your hands” kept on being used by subsequent generations of MCs (2, b, c, d, e …) eager to both allude to a nostalgic era and to bring a more energetic vibe to their recorded performance: (2)

a - “All right ya’ll (…) here we go (…) clap your hands, stomp your feet” (“King Tim III Personality Jock”) (B&D, p. 746) b - “You can’t, you won’t, you don’t stop” (“Sure Shot,” B&D, p. 132) c - “And we love the hot butter on what? The popcorn” (“Shadrach,” B&D, p. 134) d  - “get on up (…) C’mon down” (“Welcome to the Terrordome,” B&D, p. 257) e  - “Clap your hands” (“MCs Act Like They Don’t Know,” B&D, p. 441) f - “Throw your hands in the sky” (“Simon Says,” B&D, p. 690) g - “Get down! Lemme hear you say” (“Fight the Power,” B&D, p. 256) h - “C’mon. Hey, yes yes y’all” (“The Next Movement,” B&D, p. 491)

According to Cheryl Keyes these formulas, like call-and-response, are a vital component of liveliness which help MCs manipulate time and effectively engage the audience (Keyes, 1984, p. 151). Similarly, the recurrent use of polyphonic interjections like “uh”, “yeah,” “let’s go” or “c’mon” in rap songs further enhances this sought after live feel and reinforces the physicality of the recorded performance. The sense of presence and of physicality is also cultivated through the iterative use of cues like “you know,” “you see,” “listen,” “watch”, “hey,” or by repeatedly asking the listener to “check it/this out.” The aforementioned interjections, while reinforcing the idea that the music is being performed live, also give the impression that the performance is spontaneous and unrehearsed, as if MCs needed to use fillers like the ubiquitous “yo!” (or “aiyo!”) to find their bearings on a beat. Such interjections, as I have already pointed out, were initially used in the late 1970s by MCs during live performances to adjust their flow to unexpected changes of breaks in a DJ mix (Kajikawa, 2015, p. 31). They also pepper freestyle performances where MCs recite

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“off the top” (i.e. unprepared) or pre-written rhymes on a beat. Improvised or semi-improvised sessions like those that can be heard on the popular radio show “Sway in the Morning” where guest MCs are challenged to rap on five different beats (the “Five Fingers of Death”), not knowing what they will be freestyling to until the next instrumental drops. MCs are then put in a situation similar to the one examined by Loren Kajikawa in his analysis of a Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five 1978 live performance where Flash’s mixes were suddenly changing and his MCs resorted to such fillers profusely to adapt to new beats. However, the fact that such gimmicks are used on recorded performances (where they could very well be edited out) confirms the ambition of the rappers to convey a live feel and a highly praised sense improvisation and spontaneity. This emphasis on spontaneity also testifies to the “one take” ethic which abounds in rap where MCs insist on presenting their studio performances as unedited, raw and very close to live conditions. For example, rapper Kendrick Lamar starts his song “Rigarmortis” with the line “Alright, here we go, third take, let’s go!” to draw attention to the challenging rendition of his intricate rapping in one take. The rap folklore abounds with stories of MCs coming into the booth and performing celebrated verses in one take (legend has it that “Rapper’s Delight,” “South Bronx,” “N.Y.  State of Mind,” “Hard Knock Life,” or “Lose Yourself” were recorded in one take.) This idea of spontaneity is recurrent in a rap discourse where MCs greatly value the idea of the inspiration of the moment, presenting their rhymes as if they were improvised, spontaneous or unrehearsed. Hence the insertion, generally at the beginning of a song, of bits like those presented below where MCs interact with the producer while getting ready to rhyme: (3)

a - “Take the bassline out, uh huh, let it bump” (“Hard Knock Life,” B&D, p. 430) b - “Dre just let it run (…) aiyo turn the beat a little” (“The Way I Am,” B&D, p. 614) c  - “Selector, wheel it back, I’m feelin’ that !” (“Hip Hop,” B&D, p. 693) d - “yo (…) turn it up” (“Bakardi Slang,” B&D, p. 762) e - “is this thing on ? (…) Ahem ! 1, 2, check me too” (“Benzi Box,” B&D, p. 606)

Such verbal exchanges from the booth between MCs and their producer or sound engineer express what Justin Williams calls ‘studio consciousness’

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as they draw specific attention to the fact the given song was recorded in a studio (2011). They also considerably increase presence and dynamism. Very much like lil Jon’s famous “Yeahs” or DMX’ grunts and shouts (Uhh, what? C’mon), Pusha-T’s “hurrrs” or Chance the Rapper’s “Ahs” they serve a complementary function, sustaining the energy brought to the recorded performance to involve the listener in it. Hip-hop journalist Jackson Howard calls such ad-libs “momentum trampolines.” In a 2013 article on back-up MCs, he explains how such trademark interjections between rhymes or verses can sometimes be expected on almost every song as they simultaneously “give artists signature identifiers and provide more emphasis to each verse” (2013). In an interview with Cheryl Keyes, Melle Mel describes his frequent use of “ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” as just something “to fill in the space on the record.” As Keyes points out, such fillers, as trifling as they may seem are in fact rhythmic structural devices that are essential to the musical idea and rhyming pattern (1984, p.  130). They simultaneously invigorate the lyrics of rappers while actively and physically engaging the listener into the performance. In an expressive form where interaction is a cultural dominant, rappers very frequently use them to infuse a live feel which is a very important point of reference in their mediated performance.

5.3   Staging Liveness in the Recording Studio On top of infusing their lyrics with a sense of spontaneity, rap musicians have used various techniques in the recording studio to have their songs sound “live and direct.” In 2016, rap duo Run The Jewels produced a song that featured a sample from a Ticketmaster radio ad from the 1980s–1990s for Madison Square Garden (“Li-Li-Li Live from the Garden”). Their blending of a live signifier with studio-recorded lyrics provided a specific spatiotemporal context for the song and, most importantly, helped it to encapsulate the live party atmosphere of that period. As I have already pointed out, another common way to blur the line between live and recorded performances has been to include live sounds and cheers from an imagined audience. This recurring trait of some of the earliest recorded rap is discussed in Greg Dimitriadis’s article “Hip-Hop: From Live Performance to Mediated Narrative” (1996) and in Murray Forman’s book (2002, p.  79). It is really audible in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Birthday Party Rap,” with a hum of background voices designating a party in session. As we have seen and as Dimitriadis

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and Forman made clear, during the first several years of recorded rap, live party sessions remained the primary spaces for performance and as such, reproducing them in recorded form in the studio was fundamental to create an authenticity effect. Of course, the practice of integrating background party sounds can be detected well before 1979 and there are lots of precedents, in various genres, for what the early rap producers may have been aiming for. In his article “Jazz/Hip-Hop Hybridities And The Recording Studio” Justin Williams remarks that rap music’s effort to create recordings that stage ‘live performance’ places it in the same group of music genres such as classical and acoustic jazz “where the studio attempts to (re)-create/(re)-present a live performance” (Williams, 2011). Blues records from the 1920s already used party chat as a framing device and situated the performances at parties, in cabarets or speakeasies, creating the illusion of a group of musicians drinking and trading tunes. So did some funk records of the 1970s like James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” or Marvin Gaye’s song “Got to Give It Up” which featured a noisy audience talking, laughing, and shouting encouragement. The rap genre however, ever since its transitional moment from the street to the studio, has displayed a strong proclivity for putting this effect on records, with numerous songs replicating a live party atmosphere. In Run DMC’s “Together Forever (Live at Hollis Park ’84),” a simulated audience is incorporated into the song. The final minute of the Beastie Boys’ “The New Style” (1986) also recreates a more intimate party-like street corner atmosphere. Lots of other records have prolonged this philosophy and summoned imagined audiences, inviting them to scream, wave their hands in the air, and party to provide a similar ethos of ‘liveness’ (Williams, 2011). Crowd sounds are for instance included in LL Cool J’s “Rock the Bells,” on Arrested Development’s “People Every Day” or on the chorus of Lady of Rage’s “Afro Puffs.” More recently indie rapper Jonwayne, on his track “Live from the F∗∗k You” featured a loud audience cheering in the background. In his “Mixing Rap Vocals” tutorials, sound engineer Matthew Weiss details less conspicuous methods used by sound engineers to implement a live feel (2011). Having worked with musicians like Snoop Dogg, Gift of Gab, Arrested Development and producer 9th Wonder, Weiss remarks that “rap is generally an in-your-face, visceral style of music” (2012). To preserve this sense of physicality and to get the vocals to the front, sound engineers use the mixing studio as an instrument and rely on several mixing techniques (equalization, compression) and artifices (doubling up

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vocals, adding effects—delay, reverb or echo—, saturation). In The Musicology of Record Production Simon Zagorski-Thomas calls the process through which a studio-recorded performance is altered through production techniques staging (pp. 71–72). First developed by Will Moylan and expanded upon by Serge Lacasse, this concept of staging—or phonographic staging—is very closely related, as Zagorski-Thomas acknowledges, to Allan Moore’s work on the ‘sound-box’ (2001) and Trevor Wishart’s writings on ‘sound landscapes’ (1996). However, Simon Zagorski-Thomas’ work fine tunes the pre-exiting ideas around the concept of staging, considering it as a collaborative (as opposed to individual) process constitutive of the overall performance. Although mixing can appear as a process which is ‘external’ to the performance, Zagorski-­ Thomas argues that it nonetheless contributes to the meaning of the performance as we perceive it. As he and Simon Frith contend in The Art of Record Production, “in the studio technical decisions are aesthetic, aesthetic decisions are technical, and all such decisions are musical” (Frith & Zagorski-Thomas, 2012, p.  3). Brendan Anthony concurs in his article “Mixing as a Performance” and similarly ponders the recording studio as an extension of the artist’s creative arsenal (2017). Although Anthony cites Brian Eno’s use of the studio as a compositional tool, his idea according to which the manipulation of the audio by a mixer corresponds to a performance-like process meant to create desired artistic outcomes definitely applies to rap records. The recording studio and its creative uses have been key in infusing rap songs with a live feel. Dressing up a performance in ways which alter the atmosphere and character of the finished recording to make it sound more live definitely stands out as one of the genre’s most prevalent c­ ompositional properties. A musicradar.com article providing hip-hop production tips (“16 Slammin’ Hip Hop Production Tips”) even insists that “Hip-­hop’s meant to sound live” (2008). This live sound can be achieved by adding slight reverb to the vocals, or by using delay (echo) and some stereo spread. It can also be produced while recording in a reverberant space. This touch is clearly noticeable on OC’s song “Time’s Up” where some slight echo is introduced in the mix to give a live feel to the Brooklyn rapper’s battle rhymes. A comparable ‘live’ shade is present in Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” where the clarity and definition (presence range) of the vocals, somewhere in the upper-mids, contributes to a feel of excitement and forwardness of the voice. On LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” the greatly physical kick and snare, quite high in the

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mix, and compressed vocals are also meant to get the overall performance to sound very forward. As Weiss explains in his Pro Audio Files entry dedicated to the mixing of rap vocals “compression with a very slow attack, and relatively quick release, and a boost to the super-treble range can indeed bring out the natural air of a recorded track.” (2011) Indeed, in both Big Daddy Kane and LL Cool J’s cases, the voice tracks seem to have been sculpted sonically in a three-dimensional space to convey a deep sense of ‘air’ around them. Frequently employed in the studio, this technique, meant to make the vocals sound more lively and vivid, can be achieved either through very short, wide, quiet reverb or through pushing the delay way in the background, with a lot of high-end rolled off. The contrast created through this technique is supposed to make them seem even more forward and live. As it tries to implement a level of live realism or authenticity (as opposed to studio artificiality) phonographic staging shapes the perceived spatial relationship between the performers and the listeners. In De La Soul’s song “Lord Intended” (2016), Pos and Mase, the group’s two MCs can be heard checking their microphones as if they were on their way to the stage. The mimetic staging of that sequence by audio engineer Morgan Garcia—through additional chamber reverb added to the voices and background—is strongly suggestive of a live performance on stage. It strengthens what Lacasse calls “the evocative power of vocal staging” (2000) where ‘live’ sounding vocals produce some spatial proximity with the listener (with higher volume and better clarity as the MCs are moving closer to the stage and the listener). Altering the sonic texture of the audio thus changes what William Moylan calls the “spatial aspects of the perceived performance environment.” As he explains in his article “Considering Space in Music,” the spatial qualities of a recording have an undeniable significance as they “enliven and enhance the delivery of the message or the emotive expression the song/music is communicating” (2009). Hence the ambition of rap musicians (and of their studio collaborators) to manufacture a specific ‘live’ texture in their studio recorded performance and infuse it with a sense of physicality that distinguishes it from other genres.

5.4   Present Tense and Immediacy Performance theorists generally agree that liveness “describes a quality of live performance—the sense that it is happening here and now—” (Allain & Harvie, 2006, p. 169). This idea of immediacy is strikingly apparent in

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rap lyrics. “At present I speak” raps Bahamadia on her song “Spontaneity,” clearly establishing her performance in a specific time frame (B&D, p. 336). This line (and the title of her song for that matter) perfectly illustrates the “now agenda” of rappers. In his book on stand-up comedy, Oliver Double uses this expression to describe the way comedians commonly incorporate the “here and now” in their routines (2005, p. 174). I believe this idea of the “now agenda” adequately applies to the emphasis MCs lay on temporality and place in their lyrics. Indeed, my data analysis reveals that in 72 percent of the 262 songs examined, the present moment stands amongst the rappers most major preoccupations. To get to this ratio I conducted a textual analysis of the lyrics of these songs, including the introductions that can sometimes be found right before a song and that establish an interplay with the listener that is “essential in the presentation of the main performance” (Keyes, 1984, p. 145). For example, I have included communicating formulaic lines like “What we’re gonna do here is go back,” “Are you ready to party?” or “Is Brooklyn in the House?” or other formulas through which MCs introduce themselves or salute the audience as a means to set the atmosphere and build intensity since they suggest the sense of immediacy under scrutiny in this chapter. I also numbered the occurrences of temporal and spatial adverbs “here” and “now,” of time markers like “today”, “tonight”, “right this minute,” “listen,” “look,” “see” or “check,” as well as expressions pointing at the present moment like “I’m about to”, “let’s go.” Questions directly addressed to the listener in the present tense such as “Are you with me?”, “You know what I mean, right?” or “Don’t I sound amazing”? were also included. The results revealed that through their lyrics or through some of the lyrical samples they use, rappers predominantly stage their performance as taking place in the present time-sphere. The present moment was the rappers’ playground in the early recording years (84.9%) and, as we can observe in Table 5.1, its significance has not meaningfully changed over the years (86.9% in the 1993–2010 period). It is equally interesting to note that this live feel is equally predominant in corporatized rap, that is to say, rap which has to comply with a set of imperatives, institutions, orthodoxies and dogmas which tend to homogenize and standardize its aesthetics (Fricke & Ahearn, 2002, p. x; B&D, p. 326) and in the rap songs of independently produced MCs. Although the liveness and immediacy of the performance is sometimes implicit in the aural context (audience cheers, reverberated voice, musical texture) it is frequently expressed by such adverbs as “here” and “now.” These two

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Table 5.1  Songs denoting ‘liveness’ and immediacy (1985–2010) Craftsmanship (1985–1992) Celebrity (1993–2010) Lyrics for further studya (1985–2010) 62 songs (84.9%)

126 songs (86.9%)

27 songs (79.4%)

In this section, Bradley and DuBois examine independent releases or songs from 1985 to 2010 (i.e. from the beginning of the craftsmanship phase to the end of the celebrity phase) that did not garner as much mainstream attention as those studied in the rest of their anthology but whose impact was equally significant a

Table 5.2  Occurrences of “here” and “now” (1985–2010) Craftsmanship (1985–1992) Now 15 (20.5%) Here 14 (19.1%)

Celebrity (1993–2010)

Lyrics for further s tudy (1985–2010)

31 (21.4%) 17 (11.7%)

5 (14.7%) 6 (17.6%)

adverbs, the use of which has remained steady over the years as the figures in Table  5.2 indicate, help build a spatiotemporal frame shared by the performer and the audience and infuse a deliberate sense of tangibility (“here”) and of immediacy (“now”) in their lyrics. MCs extensively rely on them to create a live atmosphere and they have been used extensively by artists like the Fugees who, on their song “The Vocab” ask the listener to “watch out now!” (B&D, p. 395) or like NWA who, on “F∗∗∗ the Police” inform the listener that the performance is taking place “right about now” (B&D, p. 237). Both “here” and “now” can also be found on the song “Renegade” where rappers Jay-Z and Eminem use them to locate their mediated raps in the present “Now, how dat sound to you (…) ’cause here we go” (B&D, p. 431). Clearly, MCs are concerned with present time and refer specifically to the present moment. As Noisey music writer Lauren O’Neil points out in her article “How About Now? Drake and temporality:” Rappers’ relationship with the present is fundamentally performed as if they were completely defined by it, to the point where it seems they are unable to exist meaningfully outside of it, being so deeply “of the present.” (2016)

In addition to “here and now,” MCs expose their temporal standing through a recurrent use of the present tense and of time markers indicating

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that the performance is taking place “at the moment.” This idea of immediacy is conveyed through strategic grammatical choices, most particularly through significant use of the present continuous. For example, on “Releasing Hypnotical Gases,” rapper Pharoahe Monch raps:      (…) I come      Riding the wind, thus eliminating      Competition from bird’s-eye view, I’m       Descending in helicopters, in a village raid       Flesh will burn when exposed to the poetical germ grenade      I’m highly intoxicating       Your mind, when I’m operating. (B&D, p. 686)

Relying on present continuous, Pharoahe Monch takes the listener right into the performance with him, building the present moment in the language of rap. Similarly staging his performance as being “in progress”—not just as recorded—, Rakim employs multiple verbs in the present continuous on his song “My Melody” (“Keep you going when I flowin (…) watch the mic start smokin’ (…) that’s what I’m doin’”) (B&D, p. 171). In his song “Tha block is hot” rapper Lil Wayne announces that he is “broadcastin’ live from that block” (B&D, p.  669) while Virginia rappers The Clipse are asking their listeners to “watch it” because they are “tryin’ to show” them who they are (B&D, p.  595) on their song “Grindin’.” These examples illustrate how rappers, through present continuous, display a performance in the making, not made, and construct an immediate reality where speech time and reference time exactly co-occur. This purpose of presenting a performance as ongoing can also be noted in instances where rappers relate past events in the present. The present tense then suggests spontaneity as it helps relate events as they unfold (like in lines such as “So, I’m at the liquor store,” or “Then I ask the guy to pass me the joint”). Such “performed narratives” or “performed stories” as linguist Suzanne Fleischman calls stories where the use of present tense is a marker for performance (1990, p. 78), help MCs transport their listeners back in time and recreate a moment with more immediacy. These elements add vividness to the situations described and, as Randolph Quirk remarks, convey something of the “dramatic immediacy of an eye-witness account” (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 181). Presenting “performed narratives” to the audience in a conversational tone has been a constitutive element of emceeing from the start. In fact,

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the term ‘rapping’, before it referred widely to the expressive form, was originally used to designate a stylized form of conversational folklore that linguist Thomas Kochman describes as “a fluent, lively way of talking characterized by a high degree of personal narration” (1970, p.  146). This verbal exchange, “verging on performance” as Kermit E.  Campbell remarked (2005, p. 36) is manifest in the “coordinated rap” of pioneering rapping DJs like DJ Hollywood. As Cheryl Keyes notes in a 1984 article, this “coordinated rap,” which consisted in “talking to the audience in a conversational fashion which further elicits call-response” may be considered the foundation from which the present-day rap evolved (1984, p. 143). Hence the persistence of this informal mood, expressed through storytelling gimmicks like “well well,” or imperative verbs like “see”, “look” “wait” or “listen” meant to grab the attention of the audience and to engage them. Through the use of such instructions, of immediate deictic adverbs such as ‘now’ or ‘here’ or deictic pronouns like ‘this,’ ‘these,’ MCs combine expressions signifying immediacy and create an effect of “displaced immediacy” (Chafe, 1994, p. 236). Indeed, setting their performance in the present, referring to an action in progress at the moment of rapping, MCs challenge the idea of a performance “trapped in time” as occurs on record (Symes, 2004, p. 43). Through a strategic use of deictic idioms, they position their lyrics in the moment of their occurrence and recontextualize the idea that a recorded performance inevitably loses excitement and spontaneity. Finally, this emphasis on the present tense coincides with the importance rappers attach to the notion of time. As Jeffrey Louis Decker notes in “The State of Rap: Time and Place in Hip Hop Nationalism,” time is a recurrent motif in rap. Listing expressions like “Time dictates the agenda,” “Time to let ’em know,” or “Time to come correct!” (1993, p. 64) Decker explains how they highlight the aspiration of rappers to reminds their audience and listeners that rap music exists within moments of community play time. On “Don’t Believe the Hype,” for example, high energy rapper Flavor Flav of Public Enemy exclaims: “Yo Terminator X, step up on the stand and show these people what time it is, boyeee” (Decker, 1993, p. 63). Again, adding vividness to the mediated performances of the rappers, these requests create the feel of a more genuine interaction. “Performance only life is the present” writes Peggy Phelan in her book Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (p. 146). The notion of ‘liveness’, as we have seen, is invariably bound to the present tense, and theoretically “to the presence of the artist and audience in a collaborative and inher-

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ently social experience” (Gardner, 2011, p.  103). On stage, the performer/audience relationship is direct and unmediated. The spatial and social distances between performers and audiences are slight or non-­ existent and there tends to be a high degree of performer-audience interaction (Narvaez & Laba, 1986, p. 1). However, in the recorded/mediated performances of rap songs, the listener does not tangibly witness MCs in the moment of performance. The relation is not corporeal. Speech time is recorded to be transmitted by technological media and communicated in mass, not “live.” Stage performing is therefore temporally immediate to its audience in a way that mediated performance is not. However, through the use of the present tense and strategic time markers in their rhymes, MCs cultivate a sense of live presence induced by a dynamic conversational tone which transforms the “fixed and passive form that recorded media seem to present” (Allain & Harvie, 2006, p.  203) into a lively performance meant to express the complete actual present, taking right place in front of a live audience. Displaying what folklorist Richard Bauman refers to as “emergent quality,” where text execution and composition are embedded in performance context (2012, p.  38), technologically-­ mediated rap lyrics nevertheless lessen the spatiotemporal gap between performer and listener. They present a “magnetic quality” (Dorati, 1981, p. 299) which, evidently, does not match that of live performances, but which projects some semblance of ‘liveness’ thanks to highly connotative and performative semantic and rhetorical choices which definitely blur the line between immediate and mediated performances.

References Abbate, C. (2004). Music—Drastic or gnostic? Critical Inquiry, 30(3), 505–536. Allain, P., & Harvie, J. (2006). The Routledge companion to theatre and performance. London: Routledge. Anthony, B. (2017). Mixing as a performance. Journal on the Art of Record Production. Retrieved from https://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/mixing-asaperformance-creative-approaches-to-the-popular-music-mix-process/ Auslander, P. (2008). Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. London: Routledge. Bauman, R. (1992). Folklore, cultural performances and popular entertainment. New York: Oxford University Press. Bauman, R. (2012). The emergent quality of performance. In L.  Monaghan, E. Jane, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication: Essential readings (pp. 38–40). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Bell, E. (2008). Theories of performance. Los Angeles: Sage. Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bradley, A., & DuBois, A. (2011). The anthology of rap. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bramwell, R. (2015). UK hip-hop, grime and the city: The aesthetics and ethics of London’s rap scenes. London: Routledge. Campbell, K. E. (2005). Getting’ our groove on: Rhetoric, language, and literacy for the hip hop generation. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Chafe, W. (1994). The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Urbana: The University of Chicago Press. Decker, J.  L. (1993). The state of rap: Time and place in hip hop nationalism. Social Text, 34, 53–84. De La Soul. (2016). Lord intended (featuring Justin Hawkins). On And the anonymous nobody (MP3 file). New York: A.O.I. Records. Dimitriadis, G. (1996). Hip-hop: From live performance to mediated narratives. Popular Music, 15(2), 179–194. Dorati, A. (1981). Notes of seven decades. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Double, O. (2005). Getting the joke: The inner-workings of stand-up comedy. London: Bloomsbury. Edwards, P. (2009). How to rap: The art and science of the hip-hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance: A new aesthetics. New York: Routledge. Fleischman, S. (1990). Tense and narrativity: From medieval performance to modern fiction. Austin: The University of Texas Press. Forman, M. (2002). The ’hood comes first: Race, space and place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Fricke, J., & Ahearn, C. (2002). Yes yes y’all: Oral history of hip hop’s first decade. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Frith, S., & Zagorski-Thomas, S. (2012). The art of record production: An introductory reader for a new academic field. London: Routledge. Gardner, T. (2011). The lives and times of performance. In J. Pitches & S. Popat (Eds.), Performance perspectives: A critical introduction (pp.  103–111). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gold, J. (1990, June 3). Why rap doesn’t cut it LIVE? The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com Jerge, P. (2011). How hip-hop helped a white boy out of the bathroom. Unpublished dissertation, California State University, San Marcos. Kajikawa, L. (2015). Sounding race in rap songs. Oakland: University of California Press.

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Keyes, C. L. (1984). Verbal art performance in rap music: The conversation of the 80s. Folklore Forum, 17(2), 143–152. Kochman, T. (1970). Rappin’ and stylin’ out: Communication in black America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lacasse, S. (2000). ‘Listen to my voice’: The evocative power of vocal staging in recorded rock music and other forms of vocal expression. Doctoral dissertation, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK. Moore, A. F. (2001). Rock: The primary text. New York: Routledge. Moylan, W. (2009). Considering space in music. Journal on the Art of Record Production, no. 4. Retrieved from http://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/considering-space-in-music/ Narvaez, P., & Laba, M. (1986). Media sense: The folklore-popular culture continuum. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press. O’Neil, L. (2016). How about now? Drake and temporality [Web log message]. Retrieved from https://hiyalauren.com/2016/01/26/how-about-nowdrake-and-temporality/ Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: The politics of performance. New York: Routledge. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Schechner, R. (2002). Performance studies: An introduction. London: Routledge. Sloan, E. (2011). Hip hop as neo-slave narratives: The modernization of redeeming bodies through sound, narration and performance. Unpublished thesis, Trinity College of Arts and Science. Symes, C. (2004). Setting the record straight: A material history of classical recording. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Weiss, M. (2011). Mixing rap vocals. Retrieved from https://theproaudiofiles. com/mixing-rap-vocals/ Weiss, M. (2012). Mixing rap vocals—Part 3: Compression. Retrieved from https://theproaudiofiles.com/mixing-rap-vocals-part-3-compression/ Williams, J. A. (2011). Jazz/Hip-hop hybridities and the recording studio. Journal on the Art of Record Production. Retrieved from http://www.arpjournal.com/ asarpwp/jazzhip-hop-hybridities-and-the-recording-studio/ Wishart, T. (1996). On sonic art. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

CHAPTER 6

Intertextuality in Rap Lyrics

Abstract  This chapter draws attention to the structuring role of the spirit of competition in the rap genre. It demonstrates that the active engagement with the audience, prompted by intertextual references and similes, is an indirect expression of collective participation and call-and-response insofar as the dialogical character of rap lyrics activates the listener’s shared knowledge, thus transforming them into a collective performance. Keywords  Rap • Intertextuality • Call-and-response • Collective participation In the final rap battle of Eminen’s movie 8 Mile, the Detroit MC rhymes over the instrumental version of Mobb Deep’s celebrated song “Shook Ones Pt. II.” During his one-minute-thirty-second bit, where his Rabbit alter ego tries to display his rapping skills and establish his rhetorical dexterity and superiority over his opponent, Eminem refers to two well-known rap records. Early on, he nods to famous rappers Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, borrowing in tone, metric cadence, and melody, the familiar introduction to their hit single “Nuthing but a ‘G’ Thang.” Later on, Eminem skillfully borrows “Shook Ones Pt. II”’s signature chorus to damage his opponent’s street credibility (“… shook, cuz there’s no such thing as halfway crooks,” with a chanting audience backing him up). He then puts a spin on the original hook of the song to further embarrass his opponent © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_6

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and to highlight his out of place, privileged upbringing (“He’s scared to death, he’s scared to look in his fucking year book, Fuck Cranbrook”). Eminen’s strategy to rely on pre-existing rap lyrics and cultural landmarks to create specific meaning is a recurring practice in rap music. Several scholars have convincingly demonstrated how the intertextual use of musical sampling opened up the possibility of creating meaning and interpreting preexisting texts, and served to broaden the musical experience (Rose, 1994, p.  89; Marc Martinez, 2010; Butler, 2012). Justin A.  Williams, in Rhyming and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip Hop, notably examined how the rap world, as an imagined community, “regards unconcealed intertextuality as integral to the production and reception of its artistic culture” (Williams, 2015, p. 11). He convincingly demonstrates to what extent borrowing, in its multidimensional forms and manifestations, is central to the aesthetics of rap music. My objective in this chapter is to follow up on the work on the intertextual aesthetics of rap of these scholars and to bring to light the uses of lyrics-based intertextuality. I will argue that verbal (as opposed to musical) intertextuality such as exhibited by Eminen’s grammar in the aforementioned example is a key “compositional practice” (Spicer, 2009, p. 347) of rap lyricists in a highly competitive rap genre and, I will posit, an indirect expression of collective participation.

6.1   Intertextuality: The Swiss Army Knife of Rap Music’s Rhetorical Devices An object of multiple, sometimes contradictory theorizations, intertextuality is an extremely flexible notion. Theorists who have studied it conventionally define this concept as the way a text is necessarily read in relation to other texts (Genette, 1982; Kristeva, 1969, p. 145). I shall point out at this stage that I will mainly use “text” here in the broad sense that has been prevailing in cultural studies since the surge of scholarly interest in semiotics of the 1960s and 1970s, including not only written and printed verbal texts but also music, spoken words, and visual images. It will therefore refer to any “symbolic vehicle” or “sign vehicle” (Hall, 1999, p. 508). As a relation of co-presence between two or more texts, intertextuality enables the sender of a message to draw a parallel between their own text and a pre-existing one (the hypotext) and to address themes, imagery, or symbols that the recipients will identify correctly, provided they are f­ amiliar

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with the original text. These transtextual links, to borrow Genette’s terminology, can either be in absentia/implicit—through allusion for instance— or in praesentia/explicit—through citation—(Genette, 1982). Although numerous studies have investigated intertextuality in literary canons like James Joyce’s Ulysses, in music (Hatten, 1985; Lacasse, 2000; Klein, 2004; Nicholson, 2006) or in television (Hitchon & Jura, 1997), fewer have looked at intertextuality in rap lyrics. Still, as Jonah Butler points out in his analysis of electronic intertextuality “intertextuality courses through the veins of rap music” (2012) and intertextual references, as Spicer contends, are to be found, quasi-systematically, in the vast majority of rap songs (2009, p. 347). These references are so abundant and intricate that rap music recently became the first musical genre to have a website fully dedicated to explaining its vernacular and its intertextual aesthetics—Rap Genius (renamed Genius in July 2014, this website was launched in 2009 with a specific focus on rap). Specialized in the explanation and interpretation of rap songs, it mostly relies on user-­generated content. Monitored contributors (rap fans or ‘verified’ artists) transcribe rap lyrics and provide insightful comments and relevant explanations. In fact, intertextuality is a formal convention as important as the expected emphasis of rap music on geographical origins highlighted by Murray Forman (2002). MCs depend on it because of the symbolic resonance it provides but also, as I plan to demonstrate, as a strategic stylistic device in their argumentative rhetoric. In a greatly competitive expressive form where MCs aim at crafting outstanding punch lines, intertextual references can be extremely valuable insofar as they help exhibit verbal creativity in an indirect yet greatly evocative way. Instead of providing lengthy explanations or description in their standard sixteen bars, MCs insistently define abilities or actions, theirs or someone else’s, against a pre-existing signifier. In other words, whenever they want to make a statement, rap lyricists will consistently do so in relation to another text. It ensures them of an engaging and highly practical transmission of their lyrics in a cultural environment where music (1a), television (1b), cinema (1c, 1d), literature (1e), current events/ entertainment (1f, 1h) and sports (1g) constitute some of the principal articulations of culture. The examples below suggest that a fairly wide range of intertextual references may in fact serve to express an idea and convey a specific message: (1a,b,d,f,g) illustrate straightforward comparative constructions; (1c,e,h) present assertions of shared characteristics; and (1a) and (1d) depict the way two very different entities are presented as similar:

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(1)

a - I’m the black Mozart/I lead these broads 2 by 2 like it’s Noah’s Ark (Ryan Leslie in “Black Mozart,” 2013) b  - I feel like Tony Soprano, who do I trust now? (Xzibit in “Don’t Approach Me,” 2000) c - Ever heard of Jason, you know my work (Method Man in “Cereal Killer,” 1999) d  - I’m feeling like De Niro in Taxi Driver (House of Pain in “Just Another Victim,” 1993) e  - Short fuse, modern day Langston Hughes (Busta Rhymes in “I.C. Y’all,” 2000) f - we eatin’ good like we Oprah’s roaches (Childish Gambino in “Tell Me,” 2013) g - I got more clothes than Muhammad Ali and I dress so viciously (Big Bang Hank in “Rapper’s Delight,” 1979) h - Made the beat then murdered it/Casey Anthony (Childish Gambino in “Bonfire,” 2011)

Comparison is clearly the most widespread intertextual practice used by rap lyricists. In the introduction to his Rap Year Book, Shea Serrano notes that “Comparative rapping has always been an especially popular form of rapping. It’s a thing that still happens very often today, and it will be a thing that happens until forever” (2015, p. 8). Comparison is generally employed as a figure of description and evaluation through the recurring use of the preposition “like” followed by a cultural reference (1a,1b,1d,1f). As music and pop culture journalists Kiernan Maletski and Akilah Hugues remark in their lists of, respectively, every simile on Lil Wayne’s album I Am Not a Human Being II and Nicki Minaj’s record The Pinkprint, rappers also use comparison through what Maletski calls “hashtag similes” or “verbal hashtags” as Hugues calls them (Maletski, 2013; Hugues, 2014). This variant (1h) consists in apposing a noun (generally at the end of a line) to a statement. In these examples, the use of similes is meant to grab the attention of the listener and to make a subject matter that may have been otherwise too demanding to articulate in one line and be comprehended specifically, easier to understand. Also, it conveniently offers new and engaging perspectives of viewing the world in a minimum number of bars. Comparisons serve a descriptive function by elaborating properties of a primary figure (like rapper Big Bang Hank in (1g) rapping about having fine and expensive clothes), by opposing or matching them with

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c­ orresponding properties in a secondary figure (the source, here, being famous boxing champion Muhammad Ali). Instead of using lengthy turns of phrases or plain and direct terms to describe ideas or deeply felt personal feelings, be they of pride, anger, love, isolation, or despair, MCs deliberately resort to intertextuality to bring them to the surface of common understanding in an elaborate and playful way likely to impress the listener. Further in this verse, bragging about his social status in the community, Big Bang Hank informs us that he is “driving off in an OJ.” This in-group metonymy, while it probably spoke to the audience of the late 1970s, is rather complex to decipher today. It refers to OJ Luxury, a car service located in the Bronx that rented high-end cars extremely popular amongst local hustlers. As one rap fan explains in the rapgenius.com transcript of the song, these cars “were in high demand and it was particularly hard to get one, especially on Saturday nights.” However, only a listener with the resources and tools to interpret this reference in an informed way would be likely to create what Stuart Hall calls “preferred” meaning (1999, p. 514). In his seminal article on “encoding/decoding” in television discourse, Hall also explains that when the “codes of encoding and decoding” of a message are not symmetrical, that is to say when the sender and the receiver do not share the same “frameworks of knowledge,” this message could either fail to get across or lead to misunderstanding or distortion. The OJ reference, since it can also be (very likely) considered as an allusion to the Hertz rental car commercials of the 1970s that starred football player O.J. Simpson, could be potentially misread, although here, its “distorted” meaning would almost certainly make sense to listeners. John Fiske, borrowing from Umberto Eco’s work, calls such difference of meaning, resulting from the reading of a text by someone with a different cultural grammar and who would bring a different code to it, “aberrant decoding” (2011, p.  74). In both cases (preferred reading/aberrant decoding), the poetics of intertextuality is used as a powerfully evocative tool for communicating ideas, for displaying verbal creativity, but also for eliciting the listener’s active collaboration in making meaning. Intertextuality’s functionality also resides in the fact that, through extremely figurative comparison (whether literal, or hyperbolical), it adds a powerful visual layer to the concepts it conveys. More powerful to the extent that they add an extra visual layer to the message they are trying to get across (1a). The listener might get a more detailed idea of what the original thing being described through what Catherine Addison calls

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“stated comparison” (Addison, 1993, p.  404). The lyrics then become more figurative, more effective and more admirable (especially through exaggeration). Adding an intertextual dimension helps create a mental picture for the listener and connects different parts of popular culture (1b, c, d, f). Avoiding simplicity, the communicative intention is then more likely to impress, especially if the rhyme is concise and snappy. For this reason and as we have seen, intertexts are occasionally conveyed through metonymy. In his song “Restless” (1999), MC Xzibit raps about how he is “Range Rovin’.” In Outkast’s Stankonia (2000), MCs Big Boi and Andre 3000 let us know how they “Fedex” their lyrics. These intertextual operations, in providing a compact and coherent image to describe the features of a single event, link up media texts co-constructed by advertising to rap lyrics. They succinctly direct the reader towards other symbolic vehicles, transmitting their symbolic range; respectively alluding to a figurative gangsta imagery and its conventional display of material wealth (cars, gold chains, mansions, champagne, cognac…), and to a renowned express delivery service that implies the verbal dexterity and skills of the MC. The allusions presented below, since they are implicit and non-literal, are more subtle intertexts: (2)

a- One, two, three and to the four (Eminem in 8 Mile) b- he’s scared to death, he’s scared to look in his fucking year book, Fuck Cranbrook (Eminem in 8 Mile) c- A lot of stars is trekking/Ain’t nothing final about the frontier (Talib Kweli in “Experience Dedication,” 2000)

These references solicit the reading competence of the listener and do not interrupt the continuity of the text through comparison or resemblance. Eminen’s allusions to preexisting songs in 8 Mile’s final battle (2a, b) illustrate the multi-functionality of intertextuality. On the one hand, his borrowing of pre-existing musical phrases, or “allosonic quotations” (Lacasse, 2000, p. 38), is a way of paying homage to eminent rap artists and of establishing lineage in his discourse. By such artistic ploys, MCs acknowledge other artists by verbally sampling portions of their tracks, exhibiting recognizable correlations of a noteworthy motif in both the earlier and the later song. Blending his lyrics with rap music’s discursively constructed glorious past consists here in demonstrating sociocultural authenticity in a highly competitive rap terrain. As Butler noted, “this is at

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once a thank-you and a reconstruction” (Butler, 2012). Here, just as producers do with digital sampling, Eminem evokes a former song to incorporate its message and symbolic range into his own lyrics. Similarly to rapper Kanye West’s incorporation of a vocal line from Black Sabbath’s 1970 single “Iron Man” into the chorus of his song “Hell of a Life,” he achieves the intended goal of delivering his “I’m a skilled lyricist” message of “two separate songs but within the context of a single one” (Weaver, 2010). On the other hand, using Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s musical phrase “One, two, three and to the four” (2a) fittingly helps him create a legitimate rap discourse and makes the web of intertextual references in his verse especially meaningful. The cue here is clearly meant to make the content of his message culture specific. So is his allusion to Mobb Deep in his line “he’s scared to death, he’s scared to look.” In using parts of the chorus of this rap classic, Eminem creates a link with these rappers and their thematic space. Through this peer-reference to Mobb Deep’s lyrics, Eminem conveys the idea “You’re not what you claim you are,” intertextually stepping into the original “halfway crooks” reflection introduced by Mobb Deep. Here, the mention of hip-hop icons has multiple purposes. MCs simultaneous display knowledge about the genre’s past and establish some symbolic bond with the artists cited. As Justin A.  Williams remarks throughout Rhymin’ and Stealin’, this self-referential nature of rap music is essential to grasp the intra-musical and extra-musical discourses in the genre (2015). While it developed into a structured and highly normalized genre, rap became, as Oliver Wang has observed, an “internalized discourse” (2006, p. 167). In the same way rap producers and DJs borrow samples from preexisting audio materials to influence the reception of their creations through musical collages, rap lyricists fill in their rhymes with allusions, quotations, and references that point to other cultural productions (1a,b,c,d,e,f,g; 2c) or rap songs (2a,b), thus creating a vast intertextual network and enhancing the evocative power and symbolic range of their lyrics. Indeed, the fact that MCs increasingly resorted to the use of stylistic devices and linguistic idiosyncrasies has gradually established peer-­ references as an obligatory device. As Wang notes: Once the music and culture had a long-enough internal history, writers began to write more insularly. References no longer had to bounce off ­people, idea, and events outside of hip-hop; a writer could simply nod to someone or something within hip-hop, and readers understood. (2006, p. 167)

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For literary critic Pierre Fontanier, such verbal allusions consist in play on words, as the etymological sense of the word—from the Latin allusio coming from ludere (to play)—suggests (1993). Allusions such as (2c) bring to light the play element that establishes a particular complicity between the MC and the audience. Intertextuality, then, is a way to create humor or to trigger a positive response by using familiar references. As Norrick notes in his research on intertextuality and humor, the intertextual reference in allusive jokes is concentrated on the punch line and the audience is expected to respond to it with laughter (1989, p.  117). Of course, intertextuality in rap lyrics can have no other point (as in 2c) than to exemplify this element of play, a constitutive element of a musical genre where the formal aspect significantly prevails. As a consequence, relying on intertextuality aims simultaneously at providing aural and intellectual pleasure and at having more efficient punch lines in a minimum number of bars. I have contended, in this part, that rap lyricists depend on intertextuality primarily because of its multiple functions and in a practical manner. From a communicative point of view, it (A) enables the delivery of an idea in both a concise and evocative way, making it a weapon of choice in a mode of expression where brevity can be of key importance. In addition, the introduction of stylistic and strategic intertextual references (B) definitely contributes to enhancing the meaning of rap lyrics making their bustle of intertextual references essential in contributing to its resultant mood. Lastly, referencing other bits of culture to create meaning simultaneously (C) expands the possibilities in terms of assonances, alliterations or rhymes, as in the following example, taken from rap classic “The Message”: Now you’re unemployed, all null and void/Walkin’ round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd

Here, the explicit allusion to Pretty Floyd Boyd serves the purpose of the rhyming pattern (void/Floyd) and directs the listener towards a demeanor comparable to that of the well-known outlaw whose exploits have been romanticized in popular culture and songs. Whether sprinkled amongst other rhetorical devices like in “The Message” or pervading every second line, as is the case in the Killer Mike song I will examine next, intertextual references have been a significant element in the lyrical arsenal of MCs. Killer Mike’s exceedingly intertex-

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tual song “Big Beast,” from his 2012 album R.A.P Music illustrates how intertextuality significantly boosts the lyrical substance of the performance and helps to effectively evoke a specific atmosphere in a few allusive rhymes. In the first verse of the song, Killer Mike starts by informing his audience that nothing is sweet about “the peach.” Only an informed listener would understand here that the fruit in question is in fact a metonymy for the state of Georgia, also called the Peach State. Killer Mike is from Georgia and is proudly representing his home and clique (“Grind Time Rap Gang”) in accordance with a longstanding rap convention highlighted in detail by rap scholar Murray Forman (2002). Portraying his surroundings as dangerous (“nothing sweet”), Mike divorces them from the picturesque Atlanta presented in the festive video of Welcome to Atlanta by Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris (“monkey niggas looking for some Luda and Jermaine”) which presents a bus tour of various Atlanta landmarks clearly at odds with the gritty and violent images of the city portrayed in Killer Mike’s gangsta anthem and suggested by the use of metonymies referring to its threatening nature like the term “Ruger” (a firearm, gun or rifle) or the word “snub”; which refers to a snubnosed gun, a compact and easily concealable model with a short barrel. Likewise, Killer Mike’s choice of words and references to the local underworld clearly appears intentional and makes plain his definite agenda, one in which his web of intertextual references is made to evoke a violent gangsta atmosphere in accordance with the general theme of the song. Keeping in step with this agenda, the second verse, rapped by Bun B, is equally intertextual. The MC starts his verse about receiving words of inspiration from an older hustler by referring, verbally, in tone, and in cadence, to Ice Cube’s famed rap narrative “Once Upon a Time in the Projects.” Here Bun B, quoting Ice Cube, a prominent rap musician and former member of the infamous NWA (Niggaz With Attitude), aligns in a canonical pedigree to define his style. Using the musical phrase “Once Upon a Time in the Projects” fittingly helps him create a legitimate gangsta persona and, through allosonic quotation, conjointly displays his knowledge of rap history, paying some respect to one of its icons (Leonard, 2007). Blending his lyrics with rap music’s discursively constructed glorious past consists here in demonstrating sociocultural authenticity in a highly competitive rap terrain. Bun B repeatedly does it in the next lines which contain other intertextual references to the thesaurus of rap lyrics. His warning “And don’t come back til your ass get throwed” contains an

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explicit reference to his song “Get Throwed.” Beyond the self-referential acknowledgment, the cue here is clearly meant to make the content of his message culture specific. So is his reference to Method Man’s song “Bring the Pain” in his line “Bring the pain and leave ’em wet.” In using the title of this rap classic, Bun B creates linkage with this rapper and his thematic space. So does Killer Mike with his later reference to the early days and formative years of the hip-hop movement with his line “Like Def Jam circa ’83, you get rushed.” A nod to the early days of Def Jam Records and co-­ founder Russell Simmons’ management company Rush Management. Concluding his lesson in gangsterism, Bun B recommends wannabe gangstas to “Try to be a Jordan, but settle for a Pippen.” Intertextuality then becomes a key component of MCs’ self-centered rhetoric; it undeniably serves an ego function in the sense that it is extremely useful in the creation of a symbolic self as eminent as NBA superstars Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen. T.I. the second rapper invited on the track follows the same intertextual gangsta route and, without departing from the highly intertextual aesthetics of the song, describes his generic gangsta demeanor and hedonism as “Amerik-k-ka’s nightmare,” referring here to Ice Cube’s classic album Amerikkka’s Most Wanted. The last verse of “Big Beast” sees Killer Mike returning. Like the previous verses, it is unsurprisingly characterized by multiple references to hip-­ hop culture that are quintessentially gangsta. The mention of rap icons has a dual purpose. MCs simultaneous display knowledge about the genre’s past and “demonstrate some sort of connection with the artists named” (Williams, 2015, p. 68). Killer Mike starts his second verse with an homage to the hook of the Boogie Down Productions classic “9mm Goes Bang.” This other allosonic quotation corresponds to a “node of association” that Costello and Wallace, in their musicological analysis of rap music, call pavlov (1990, p. 90). This kind of borrowing of ideas and pre-­existing musical phrases is a way of paying homage to the artists of past and present. By this artistic play, performers and producers alike are perpetually acknowledging other artists by sampling portions of their tracks, exhibiting recognizable correlations of a noteworthy motif in both the earlier and the later song. Here, just like producers do through digital sampling, Killer Mike evokes a former song to incorporate its message into his own. Whereas KRS One, BDP’s MC, originally sung “Wa da da dang, wa da da da dang / Listen to my 9 millimeter go bang!,”1 Killer Mike raps “Wa-da-da-dang, wa-da-da-da-da-dang/Listen to my Kimber .45 go bang!,” using markedly similar metric cadence and melody but a different allomotif. His

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a­ llusion to this proto-gangsta anthem makes the web of intertextual references in “Big Beast” especially meaningful. While this intertextual analysis of Killer Mike’s lyrics only proposed a glimpse of the aesthetic richness offered by rap music, it nonetheless reveals how through strategic intertextuality, MCs definitely challenge the monolithic character of rap songs. If it has been regrettably selective out of necessity, I hope it has demonstrated nonetheless how, by intentionally introducing heterogeneous elements and referring to already constituted semantic fields, rap lyricists adopt an aesthetic that clearly redefines the nature of the text. Of course, intertextuality in rap lyrics can have no other point but to exemplify the play element, a constitutive key element of a musical genre where the formal aspect significantly prevails. But as this analysis has demonstrated, the introduction of stylistic and strategic intertextual references definitely contributes to enhance the meaning of “Big Beast,” making its bustle of references essential in contributing to its resultant mood. These dynamic rhetorical devices make communication considerably more effective through mutual recognition of a source, as they simultaneously make the prosody more fluid, inject humor, and help create new meanings that are, as Isabelle Marc points out, “signified for collective enjoyment and active engagement” (2010). This active engagement, I will argue, is an indirect expression of collective participation and call-and-response.

6.2   Intertextuality and Collective Participation In a 1992 article on call-and-response in rap music, Gregory Stephens wrote: Afrocentric culture sees texts not as fixed, but emerging from interplay between speaker and audience, created through call-and-response. (1992, p. 64)

This idea of culture in motion is widespread in works on popular music forms. It also finds a perfect illustration in Eminem’s intertextual rhymes and performance in the climatic battle of 8 Mile. Like pioneering MCs, Eminem conventionally starts his performance addressing a rhythmically bobbing crowd from the stage, establishing a relationship and asking them to participate in the performance by putting their hands up and moving them to the beat. Here, collective participation is solicited explicitly and Eminem’s reference to the 313 (Detroit’s area code), another

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standard practice in live (and mediated) rap performances, is, in the same way, meant to establish a sense of complicity with the audience. However, when Eminem soon after notes in his lyrics that his opponent is not up to the challenge (“This guy don’t wanna battle, he shook,”) the anticipation of his next line (“cause ain’t no such thing as halfway crooks”) by a hysterical crowd reciting it in unison is unsolicited. This interaction, triggered by a two-layer intertextual reference (Mobb Deep’s melody and lyrics) perfectly exemplifies to what extent the strategic resort to intertextuality fits into the call-and-response practice. In this second part I will argue that the active engagement of the audience, prompted by intertextual references, is an indirect expression of collective participation and call-and-response. In her authoritative study of rap, Cheryl Keyes notes how references to a pre-existing signifier operate as a call to the audience, meant to trigger a response and to produce “a sense of cohesion between informer and auditor” (2002, p. 26). The response can be vocal, as in Eminen’s case, with the audience recognizing the call (“he shook”) and responding immediately with the line (“cuz ain’t no such thing as halfway crooks”). It can also be articulated through an inner-emotional response as Keyes suggests, or even a physical response as Marcyliena Morgan remarks in her study of call-and-response in cyphers where the response is expressed through bobbling one’s head, moving one’s shoulders in quick succession, or throwing one’s hands up (2009, p. 60). In all these cases, intertextuality works as a fluid interchange meant to keep the audience (or the listener) involved in the performance. Like call-and-response, it entails a dynamic form of communication that has been traced back by literary theorists and scholars to Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theory. According to Bakhtin, communication and, by extension, any creative activity results from a dialogic process where the act of writing or speaking is connected to ideas and thoughts that have been communicated in the past. His dialogic theory reveals that we always create with an audience in mind, that what we say is intimately linked to our interlocutors and to the responses we can expect. This process occurs whether we are actually communicating with someone or not, and by extension, doing any kind of creative activity. As he wrote: Every extra-artistic prose discourse—in any of its forms, quotidian, rhetorical, scholarly—cannot fail to be oriented toward the “already uttered,” “the already known,” the “common opinion” and so forth. The dialogical orientation of discourse is a phenomenon that is, of course, a property of any

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discourse (…) every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence of the answering word that anticipates. (Bakhtin, in Holmquist, 1981, pp. 279–280)

This quotation provides valuable insight into the MCs’ creative process in formulating rhymes and sheds light on the involvement of rap lyricists with their audience. It reveals how a cooperative effort intervenes at the inception of their meaning-making practices, and helps clarify their strategy of interaction on an intertextual level, to the extent that they expect correct identification, or decoding (Hall, 1999), of the intertexts they exploit (the call), along with a concurrent interpretation of their connotative aspects and symbolic range (the response). As Imani Perry contends in her book Prophets of the Hood, a community of listeners proves equally central to the call-and-response. She argues that: when artists take turns of phrase or structures of rhymes from other MCs, and then reconfigure them into their own texts, recognizable and yet new, still another level of call-and-response emerges. (p. 36)

Perry particularly insists on the correct identification of the call/intertext insofar as only a listener with the resources and cultural grammar to interpret this reference in an informed way would be likely to create “preferred” meaning (Hall, 1999, p. 514). Samuel Floyd talks about a “resonant contact” that needs to be established within call-and-response (Floyd, 1995, p. 95). Perry even goes further and contends that call-and-response (overtly solicited or through implicit intertextuality), is a prerequisite to the rap practice, and that making “good hip-hop” requires to effectively employ its trope on several levels (2004, p. 36). The collective response to Eminem’s allusion to Mobb Deep’s classic is a compelling illustration of Perry’s point. It makes clear how MCs, through intertextuality, definitely engage the audience, whose role in the rap performance, whether live or recorded, is crucial as it determines the outcome of the battle and the cultural legitimacy and status of the performer. Their game of call-and-­ response, prompted by the insertion of familiar intertexts in their rhymes, is clearly aiming at firmly establishing or enhancing a sense of community that has remained at the core of the rap practice. Also drawing on Bahktin’s dialogics, David Caldwell uses the term engagement to describe how MCs use intersubjective rhetorical devices such as intertextuality to bolster a sense of community and to insist on the dynamic interplay between speaker and audience (2007, p. 1).

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Of course, since emceeing, considered as the ability to move crowds (both physically and emotionally), finds some of its origins in ghetto orality, it unsurprisingly displays the same tropes as some of its expressive forms. Such continuity or similarities among cultural productions from disadvantaged urban areas as well as the repetition or revision of tropes in popular music have already been documented (Tagg, 1989). Acknowledging the use of the call-and-response trope in rap music’s intertextual aesthetic, Justin A. Williams argues that hip-hop culture fits appropriately in the longstanding form of dialogism developed under the concept of Signifyin(g) by Henry Louis Gates and Samuel Floyd, respectively in The Signifying Monkey: a Theory of African-American Criticism and The Power of Black Music. As Williams explains, Floyd uses Gates’s theory of signifyin(g) to apply it to musical expressions, placing much of music-making into what he calls “call-response, with musical signifying as its master trope” (2015, p. 11). Signifying (or Signifyin’) which refers to a way of encoding messages or meanings is, as a rhetorical practice, clearly intertextual. As Claudia Mitchell-Kernan explains, “labeling a particular utterance signifying involves the recognition and attribution of some implicit content or function which is potentially obscured by the surface content or function” (1973, p. 318). It certainly connects it to intertextuality, and by extension, to call-and-response, as this definition from The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature makes clear: Intertextuality: Term used to connote a form of signifyin(g) that is established by interdependence between texts; cultural codes, allusions, references, and other rhetorical tropes shared between texts that stand in some relation to each other. Refers to the inclusion of intertexts within a text, to constructs that not only connect the author to the reader, but a text to all other texts, past and present. (…)

Relating rap’s rhetorical strategy of posing inferences through intertextuality to call-and-response makes it possible to emphasize how the dynamic and collective elements from the stage performances and battles of the formative years of rap have remained relevant in the creative process of this music. The incentive to have the audience or the listeners ­participate in the live or recorded rap performance, though not always explicitly articulated, is nonetheless activated through an intertextual network selected for its artistic and functional merits. Intertextuality, as I have already established, is a powerfully evocative tool for communicating ideas and for dis-

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playing verbal creativity. Widely used by the first battle-rhyming MCs during their stage performance, it has remained central even though rap music has moved to other media (records, CDs and digital copies). The way it elicits the listener’s active collaboration in making meaning and enhancing the performance is, I believe, evidence of the enduring importance of collective participation in this expressive form. Rap music was born as a product of the creativity of the first turntablists to become increasingly intertextual as technology allowed the incorporations of multiple layers. While I have made clear that collective participation has remained important after rap’s transition to records, I did not include present-day rappers who have signed major deals after having emerged through more recent platforms like SoundCloud or YouTube. Rappers like Lil Pump, XXXTentacion or Tekashi 6ix9ine can certainly be included in that discussion insofar as their recorded performances align with those discussed in depth in the previous chapters. Audience-focus has shaped the practice of rapping in such a profound way that each new generation intuitively aligns with its enduring conventions. For instance, Tekashi 6ix9ine’s delivery on his first verse on “Keke” (2018) patently borrows Juvenile’s flow on “Back That Azz Up” (1998): Rollin’ through the city, yeah, with my niggas yeah. (6ix9ine, “Keke”) I’m a Big Timer nigga, yeah, pulling trigger, yeah. (Juvenile “Back That Azz Up”)

To make the reference to that song even more explicit in “Keke”’s music video, 6ix9ine raps his verse next to a dancer in a thong; a visual nod to Juvenile’s original video. Similarly, on his song “Blood Walk” (2018), a remix of Rich the Kid’s “Plug Walk,” 6ix9ine borrows in tone, metric cadence, and melody, Snoop Dogg’s famous lines “I keep a red flag, hanging out my backside/Only on the right side/Yeah, that’s the Blood side” (from his hit single “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (2009)). Takeshi’s strategy to rely on pre-existing rap lyrics and cultural landmarks to create specific meaning (he does it again on his song “Stoopid” on which he interpolates Ronny Godz’s “Are you Dum”) exhibits that the latest generation of ­rappers who emerged on audio and video distribution platforms—rappers who are not positioned as lifelong participants well-versed in hip-hop conventions and history—are in fact equally mindful of the possibilities of creating meaning and interpreting preexisting texts opened by lyrical intertextuality.

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Throughout the years, rap lyricists have adapted this composing principle in quasi-systematically referring to preexisting texts through similes, allusions, metonymies and other stylistic figures, making this inclusion of a high degree of intertextuality within its aesthetics consistent with what Richard Shusterman had in mind when he wrote: Artistic appropriation is the historical source of hip-hop music and still remains the core of its technique and a central feature of its aesthetic form and message. (2000, p. 202).

Note 1. That line is in fact inspired from a 1984 reggae song called History by Super Cat.

References Addison, C. (1993). From literal to figurative: An introduction to the study of simile. College English, 55(4), 402–419. Butler, J. (2012, April 19). Electronic music and intertextuality [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://elit.umwblogs.org/author/jonahbutler/ Caldwell, D. (2007). The rhetoric of rap: A challenge to dominant forces? Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings. Retrieved from http://www.asfla. org.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/the-rhetoric-of-rap.pdf Costello, M., & Foster Wallace, D. (1990). Signifying rappers, rap and race in urban present. New York: The Ecco Press. Fiske, J. (2011). Introduction to communication studies. New York: Routledge. Floyd, S. (1995). The power of black music: Interpreting its history from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Fontanier, P. (1993). Les Figures du discours. Paris: Flammarion. Forman, M. (2002). The ’hood comes first: Race, space and place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Genette, G. (1982). Palimpsestes, la littérature au second degré. Paris: Seuil. Hall, S. (1999). Encoding, decoding. In S.  During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 508–517). New York: Routledge. Hatten, R. (1985). The place of intertextuality in music studies. American Journal of Semiotics, 3(4), 69–82. Hitchon, J. C., & Jura, J. O. (1997). Allegorically speaking: Intertextuality of the postmodern culture and its impact on print and television advertising. Communication Studies, 48, 142–158.

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Holmquist, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M.  M. Bakhtin, Ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Hugues, A. (2014). A definitive list of every simile on Nicky Minaj’s “The Pinkprint”. Retrieved from https://splinternews.com/a-definitive-list-ofevery-simile-onnicki-minajs-the-1793844535 Intertextuality. (n.d.). The Norton Anthology of African-American literature. Retrieved April 25, 2019, from http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/africanamericanlit2e/welcome.aspx Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Klein, M. L. (2004). Intertextuality in western art music: Musical meaning and interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kristeva, J. (1969). Semeiotikè, recherches pour une sémanalyse. Paris: Seuil. Lacasse, S. (2000). Intertextuality and hypertextuality in recorded popular music. In M.  Talbot (Ed.), The musical work: Reality or invention? (pp.  35–58). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Leonard, D.  J. (2007). Ice Cube. In M.  Hess (Ed.), Icons of hip-hop (pp.  293– 316). Westport: Greenwood Press. Maletski, K. (2013, March 23). Every simile on Lil’ Wayne’s “I am not a human being II.” The Village Voice. Retrieved from http://www.villagevoice.com/ music/every-simile-on-lil-waynes-i-am-not-a-human-being-ii-6630479 Marc Martinez, I. (2010). L’intertextualité sonore et discursive dans le rap français. Trans, Revista Transcultural de música, 14. Retrieved from https://www. sibetrans.com/trans/articulo/8/lintertextualite-sonore-et-discursi Mitchell-Kernan, C. (1973). Signifying. In A. Dundes (Ed.), Mother wit from the laughing barrel: Readings in the interpretation of African-American folklore (pp. 311–328). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Morgan, M. (2009). The real hiphop: Battling for knowledge, power, and respect in the LA underground. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Nicholson, S. W. (2006). Beyond quotation: Intertextuality in popular music since 1990. Doctoral dissertation. Norrick, N. R. (1989). Intertextuality in humor. Humor, 2(2), 117–139. Perry, I. (2004). Prophets of the hood: Politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rose, T. (1994). Black noise. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Serrano, S. (2015). The rap year book: The most important rap song from every year since 1979, discussed, debated, and deconstructed. New York: Abrams Image. Shusterman, R. (2000). The fine art of rap. In R. Shusterman (Ed.), Pragmatist aesthetics: Living beauty, rethinking art (pp.  201–235). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Spicer, M. (2009). Strategic intertextuality in three of John Lennon’s late Beatles songs. Gamut, 2(1), 347–375.

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Stephens, G. (1992). Interracial dialogue in rap music: Call-and-response in a multicultural style. New Formations, 16, 62–79. Tagg, P. (1989). Open letter about ‘black music,’ ‘Afro-American music,’ and ‘European music’. Popular Music, 8(3), 285–298. Wang, O. (2006). Trapped in between the lines: The aesthetics of hip-hop Journalism. In J.  Chang (Ed.), Total chaos (pp.  165–174). New  York: Basic Civitas Books. Weaver, C. (2010). In defense of the sample: Intertextuality in Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. Retrieved from https://suchisthelifeofa. wordpress.com/category/colt-weaver/ Williams, J. A. (2015). Rhymin’ and stealin’: Musical borrowing in hip-hop music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

CHAPTER 7

From the Stage to the Booth to the Stage: Sustaining Collective Engagement During Live Performance

Abstract  This chapter looks into live performances to study how rap lyrics cultivating collective participation on vinyl (and other media) connect powerfully with live audiences. It also analyzes the stage dynamics of rap MCs and their use of call-and-response on stage, with the audience, with back-up MCs or with their DJs. Keywords  Rap • Live performance • Call-and-response • Collective participation • Audience engagement Rap music, as I have pointed out multiple times throughout this book, is definitely audience-oriented. From its early years when rapping DJs or trailblazing MCs directly engaged with the dancers, to its transition to recorded media where MCs and producers sustained collective participation through lyrics and production, it has retained an undisputable collaborative flavor. Although I have made clear that collective participation has remained significant after rap’s transition to recorded media, I have hardly mentioned digital media and did not consider more contemporary media such as listening platforms, and the current state of making one’s songs available on-line. Yet, music consumption has clearly evolved since the release of “Rapper’s Delight”, with consumers now exploring digital channels like Sound Cloud, Spotify, iTunes or Tidal and video platforms like YouTube. According to the Global Music Report of 2017, that year’s © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_7

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revenues for physical copies declined by 7.6% while digital sales grew by 17.7%, driven by a sharp 60.4% growth in streaming revenue (with streaming now making up 59% of digital revenues and 50% of the share of total music industry revenues). However, the fact that rap listeners now tap into the growing pipeline of streaming music to listen to this genre has in no way corrected the determination of present-day MCs to preserve in their mediated performance, whatever the medium, the communal vibe displayed on older listening formats like records, tapes or CDs. The original live performances of the 1970s, when DJs were at center stage, relying on MCs to keep the energy level of their mixes high, were extremely influential insofar as they established collective participation as a guiding principle for the rap practice. On stage, this level of interaction was originally sustained through conversations between songs, call-and-­ response routines and crowd-controlling techniques. When MCs no longer primarily performed on stage but in a studio, they managed to uphold a certain level of live, face to face interaction by using various rhetorical strategies. They continued to make use of DJ formulas, incentives, and of call-and-response, advertising their performances as ‘live and direct’. Additionally, to adapt to the format change, they employed stylizations of speech and a conversational tone to bridge the spatial gap and social distances between themselves and their listeners. Building on these observations, this final chapter examines live performances of studio recorded rap songs to highlight how lyrical content and production techniques encouraging collective participation in the booth connect powerfully with live audiences. I will first examine the stage dynamics of various MCs, the way they engage the audience from the stage, and how they interact with back­up MCs, with bandmates, or with their DJs, to study how rappers uphold, sometimes enhancing it, the ‘perfected social interaction’ established by rap pioneers in Bronx parks and community centers and prolonged in the recording studio. I will focus on eight live performances ranging from 1981 to 2015 (all available on YouTube and Daily Motion): Kurtis Blow performing “The Breaks” live in a news segment (July 9, 1981), The Funky Four +1 performing “That’s The Joint” on Saturday Night Live (the first national appearance on TV of a rap act, February 14, 1981), Kurtis Blow’s performance of “If I Ruled The World” in the movie Krush Groove (1985), the Fantastic Five and Cold Crush’s performance in the 1983 movie Wildstyle, Busta Rhymes performing live in Cologne, Germany (2002), Joey Bada$$ performing in Tilburg, Netherlands at the Woo Hah! Festival in 2015,

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Vince Staples’ performance in Austin at SXSW in 2016 and Run The Jewels’s Boiler Room set in London (2015). These performances, although they are in no way representative of all the various stage dynamics that can be found in the rap genre, nonetheless cover a wide spectrum in terms of time (from 1981 to 2016), represent various line-ups, with solo artists (Kurtis Blow, Busta Rhymes, Joey Bada$$ and Vince Staples), a rap duo (Run The Jewels) and rap groups with multiple MCs (Funky 4 + 1 and the Fantastic Five and Cold Crush Brothers) performing in various contexts (festivals, documentary, jams, concerts, TV show, movie) and locations (domestic and abroad). Their study will bring to light the various strategies employed by MCs to galvanize their audiences.

7.1   From MCs Backing up DJs to DJs Backing up MCs In a 1981 ABC news report about the rise of the hip-hop movement (20/20 Flashback; July 9, 1981), rapper Kurtis Blow, when asked about his emceeing skills, lays the stress upon the use of crowd response, which he deems critical to successful emceeing. The report also features a live performance of his hit single “The Breaks” where Blow can be seen conversing with the audience (“C’mon, you know the song!”) and controlling it with MC clichés like “Somebody scream!,” and call-and-response routines like “All the ladies in the house say Aw!” More than thirty years later, rapper Joey Bada$$ relied on the same incentives and formulas to get the crowd pumped up during his concert at the Woo Hah! Festival, asking repeatedly to the audience to respond to his calls or to put their hands up. As soon as he walked on stage, Joey Bada$$ launched into loud “Say hos” and “Hands Up C’mons” before starting his set with his popular song “World Domination.” Vince Staples started his NPR concert the same way, encouraging the crowd to “bounce!” before launching into his upbeat song “Lift Me Up.” Later into his set, Staples, like Kurtis Blow thirty-five years before him, uses standard crowd controlling gimmicks like asking “everybody in the crowd” to sing along (“if you know the words, sing along”) to “bounce” and to respond to his various calls (“repeat after me it’s very important, it’s vital”). A similar approach characterizes the live set of the rap duo Run The Jewels where MCs El-P and Killer Mike constantly encourage the audience to “bounce.” These similarities reveal how rap live performances are certainly highly interactive but also how they have hardly evolved since their inception in Bronx parks and community

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centers. They still rely heavily on collective participation. The most noticeable change being the role of the DJ whose duties are, of course, to provide the instrumentals but also to keep the energy level up through constant interactions with the crowd. I will focus here on this noteworthy deviation from original performances (where MCs had to engage the crowds for the DJs, not the opposite) and examine how, with the help of a hype man or of a DJ, rappers enhance their audience-oriented songs on stage. When they started taking center stage, with rapping gradually replacing mixing as the core of breakbeat/rap music, MCs had been slowly graduating from wingman to main act. Although their primary role had been ornamental, their greater proximity with the audience on stage, the blossoming of emceeing and the success of the first rap records gradually led to them outshining the acts they were meant to complement. Supporting DJs and hyping the crowd was no longer their primary function. MCs were no longer subordinate and their rhymes no longer a “musical ad campaign for the DJ who ran the show” (Cobb, 2007, p.  17), but a quickly maturing expressive form. DJs (at least the fortunate ones) were then demoted to production, providing musical canvas for MCs to weave their lyrics. The same way the first DJs needed MCs to energize their sets and keep the audience engaged at all times while they were focusing on mixing records, MCs now needed someone to back them up for live shows to connect with the crowd and to reproduce the aliveness carefully crafted on their records. Having added intricacy and complexity (through double-­ layers for example) to their rhyming, MCs, at least those who performed solo, had to enlist a back-up MC to help them convey on stage the energy sought after on records and to handle the required crowd controlling duties while rapping. Such support came from the hype man, whose responsibilities include entertaining and keeping the crowd ‘hyped’ for the main performer. In her book The Languages of Global Hip Hop, Marina Terkourafi describes a hype man as a “performer responsible for backup rapping and singing, and increasing an audience’s excitement with call and response chants” (2010, p. 332). According to hip-hop journalist Jackson Howard: The hype man, has been an integral part of hip hop since its inception in the late 1970s. The concept of a hype man makes perfect sense for rap culture, as freestyling and battle-rapping—two of the most basic forms of hip hop— are as dependent on the cheering of the crowds as they are on the individual lyricist’s ability. (2013)

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Supporting the main MC by drawing attention to their lyrics and punchlines, hype men regularly roar out the last few words or syllables of every line to reinforce the conveyed message and to build intensity. During his lip syncing performance of “If I Ruled the World” in the movie Krush Groove, Kurtis Blow’s dancers act as hype men and repetitively echo the ends of his lines (“time for a #change#”). Comparably, Cold Crush MCs, in a performance featured in the movie Wildstyle frequently close lines for each other (“I’m the number 1 # Breaker #”) and pepper their fellow rappers’ rhymes with ad-libs like “hu, hu,” “well,” or “what.” According to rap scholar Mickey Hess, such support is central for keeping the crowd stoked during live shows (2007, p.  176). Paul Edwards similarly highlights the importance of performing live with a hype man in his book How to Rap, especially for solo artists, who otherwise need to make more of an effort to keep the audience engaged (Edwards, 2009, p. 304). In a 2008 article, music journalist Khalid Strickland gave due praise to these unsung heroes in his article “7 Famous Hip Hop Hype Men.” Although not necessarily required in the studio, where the vocals of the lead MC can be technologically echoed or double-layered, their presence is considered essential during a live performance to the point that they have become an integral piece of rap shows, pumping up the audience between songs and engaging with it during interludes and downtimes. Not only do hype men help the lead MC elicit collective participation, they also infuse more energy into the performance, and can be used, as Earl Aston II points out in his book How to Be a Rap Star, “to bring the best out of the artist on stage” (2014, p. 94). This is very much apparent in Busta Rhymes’ 2002 performance in Cologne where his hype man Spliff Star helps him sustain a highly energetic performance with steady encouragements, or by standing right next to him with high-speed piano playing finger motions to match his extraordinarily fast flow, hyping the lead MC as much as the crowd. As Hill Harper points out, achieving synergy with the hype man is what makes the act, which leads him to deem hype men “the most important resource, or asset, a rapper can have” (2013, p. 170). Having a DJ or a hype man on stage definitely offers several advantages. The synergy between Busta Rhymes and Spliff Starr is particularly striking with both rappers wearing similar oversized rap wear and performing rehearsed stage routines, with Spliff Star confidently echoing punchlines, barking ad-libs (“make some noise,” “here we go,” “can’t hear you”) mimicking Busta Rhymes’ choreographed moves and matching his high energy level. Interjections such as those used by Spliff Star and other hype men have

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multiple purposes. On the one hand they relieve the main MC at critical breathing moments, letting them gasp through non-stopping verses and fill in some of their lyrics. As rapper Royce Da 5’9 remarks in How to Rap, “other performers can help you keep the energy up, jump in to let you catch your breath (…) Like, a lot of my verses be so constant with the flow that I’d need somebody to help me do the hype man thing” (Edwards, 2009, p. 304). Californian MCs Lateef and Latryx make similar observations, stressing the requirements of a live rap performance: When you’re doing it live, you’re probably gonna have to figure out how to get a breath, because you’re moving around—you could be in the fifth song of the set, and you’re gonna have somebody say something somewhere to give your breath (…) usually it’s just a matter of getting somebody to hit some word in a line. (Edwards, 2009, p. 304)

For this reason, being a hype man requires great crowd controlling skills but also great timing to deliver the lyrics and add in the ad-libs on point. On the other hand, peppering the flow of the main act with ad-libs, interjections or reiterations upgrades the liveliness of the flow, making it travel lithely between performers. Very few MCs perform live without hype men. In fact, whether as a back-up MC or a DJ, the hype man is always involved. Although their main duty is to echo the lines recited by the lead MC, it is not rare for a hype man, as Hill Harper points out, to “put his own two cents in, which keeps the rhythm going and adds an occasional new layer” (2013, p. 170). Besides, there have been several charismatic hype-men over the years who have risen to prominence, going on to have solo careers. For example, rap superstars Jay-Z, Tupac and Snoop started off as rhyme partners for, respectively Jaz-O and Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground, and Dr Dre’s posse (Perkins, 1996, p. 272). As Jackson Howard remarks, in groups featuring several MCs, every member doubles “as both a rapper and a hype man” (2013). For example, in the SNL performance of the Funky 4+1, one half of the group’s MCs engages the crowd through call-and-response (“Yeah!, if you’re ready for this”) while the second half of the group comes in to complete the line and to reinforce the call (“Say you’re ready for this”). The highly energetic rap duo Run The Jewels operates similarly with each MC finishing lines for each other, with an extra help of their DJ, Trackstar The DJ, who like Busta Rhymes’ DJ, constantly act as additional hype man to let both fast-­ rhyming MCs breathe between lines.

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Without any fellow group mate or hype man to back up them up on stage, solo artists generally rely on a DJ to perform both DJ and hype man tasks. Vince Staples and Joey Bada$$ respectively perform with their DJs Westside Ty and DJ Statik Selektah as hype men. As Royce Da 5’9 explains in How to Rap, it is not rare for the DJ to act also as hype man and he himself often used his DJ “to help do some ad-libs” (Edwards, 2009, p. 304). Assuming the role generally assigned to the first MCs, DJs encourage the audience to sing along, use call-and-response routines and perform the lead rapper’s popular ad-libs, either by singing them or by playing the original studio track on top of the live audio. These iterative back-up vocals, where the lead rappers double up the same part for emphasis, as I have previously stated, can help convey more emotional intensity. They can also put more energy into a song through multi-tracked production. In a 2010 Billboard interview, Run D.M.C.’s Joseph “Run” Simmons lays the stress upon the importance of live or recorded ad-libs. Discussing the role of Public Enemy’s celebrated hype man Flavor Flav, he underscores how Flav’s ad-libs “colored the group’s songs” and ponders on the potency of their lyrics without them (2010, p. 42). Similarly, in his article on hype men and ad-libs, Howard notes how some rappers have released hit songs in which the backing vocals are just as important as the lead (2013). For example, Kendrick Lamar’s catchy song “Money Trees,” where the rapper ends most of his lines with the slang term “ya bish” sparked a social-media craze which resulted in it working its way to the collective lexicon (Mlynar, 2012). On top of highlighting or barking out ad-libs like “ya bish,” DJs, since they are responsible for providing the instrumental parts can also stop the beat or mute the audio track for the audience or hype man to rap along. Grandwizard Theodore, the DJ of the Fantastic 5 uses this technique repeatedly during their Wildstyle performance, stopping the track to draw attention to the lyrical dexterity or wit of his MCs. This device is also used by Busta Rhymes and Joey Bada$$’s DJs who, on multiple occasions, mute the audio track for the audience to participate in the rapping and recite popular phrases. DJ Statik Selektah, Joey Bada$$’s DJ, frequently engages the crowd with standard formulas like “Everybody say,” “Hands up C’mon,” “Jump!” or “C’mon Louder,” inviting the crowd to wave their hands (“all my people on the right…left”). Vince Staples’s Westside Ty fulfills similar hype man obligations through various calls to the audience (“Who came here to have a good time?”, “Put your mother f∗∗∗ing hands up”) and frequently engages the audience to energize or re-­energize

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it between songs and keep the momentum going. This supporting role is clearly acknowledged by Staples who, at some point during his set informs the crowd that his DJ is going tell them “to do something, and you have to have to follow his directions.” When performing live, MCs need back up performers to at least match, or if possible surpass the liveness infused in their records. Enlisting a back­up MC or having their DJ acting like one can, of course, help them reinforce some of the points they are trying to make through their lyrics, or express some critical ideas more forcefully. With regard to collective participation and audience engagement, it definitely helps them keep the crowd involved in the performance and convey on stage the energy sought after on records without hampering their rapping. As I will show next, keeping the crowd involved and the energy level high is also accomplished through the use of expressive body language.

7.2   Non-verbal Communication and Body Language on Stage (and in the Studio) In his song “Pimps,” MC Boots Riley from rap group The Coup imagines a rap battle between billionaires David Rockefeller and John Paul Getty at a Fortune 500 event:       [Rich Lady] John Paul, why don’t you entertain us with something as well?       [John Paul Getty] Well, what should I do?       [Rich Lady] Why don’t you rap for us?      [JPG] No, I…       [David Rockefeller] Come on, old boy, I did mine      [JPG] I…      [Rich Lady] It’s so… tribal      [JPG] Well… very well      [Rich Lady] Oh goody!       [JPG] But hold my martini I have to do those hand gestures.

This skit humorously illustrates how hand movements are an important part of a rapper’s performance. It suggests that without them, rappers cannot perform satisfactorily. Performance, as Simon Frith argues in Performing Rites, “defines a social—or communicative—process that requires an audience and is dependent, in this sense, on interpretation” (1998, p.  205). Since its vocation is to convey meanings, each perfor-

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mance should then be understood, Frith claims, as “a rhetoric of gestures in which, by and large, bodily movements and signs (including the use of the voice) dominate other forms of communicative signs, including language” (p. 205). If hand gestures and non-verbal communication do not surpass language in importance in rap music, they certainly play an important part in the performance of rappers. In a 2013 article entitled “The Language of HipHop Hands,” journalist Charles Mudede brings to light the way MCs rap as much with their hand as with their mouth. Relying on the work of theoretical neuroscientist Michael Arbib and of neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti, Mudede explains why the hands of rappers do not stand still when they rap and cannot help but to move around and through the air (2013). While conducting research on language evolution these two scientists demonstrated the proximity of the language area of the brain with the neural area for grasping and concluded that hands were used for human language long before vocal language was developed and are still tied in the communication system. Since rapping is closer to speaking, in tone, cadence, and delivery than singing, and given its highly conversational quality, Mudede’s observations on the extensive use of hand and arm gestures by performing MCs seem particularly accurate. Although the significance of body language is widely acknowledged for communication in general, its role has rarely been discussed in the rap scholarship. The primary focus having generally been on gestures affiliated to the cultural environment of rap, breakdancing and graffiti (Kitwana, 2002, p. 8) or postures of masculinity. Yet, the gestural language of rappers is clearly a vital component of their communication process as artist Rashaad Newsome exhibited in his visual work The Conductor. In this short film, Newsome explores the visual language of rap music. Based on a seven-year survey (2005–2012) conducted for New York radio stations Hot 97 and Power 105.1 and for which he dissected over 100 music videos, Newsome reviewed the hand motions and gestures of prominent MCs and edited a video which presented digitally enhanced and iterative versions of the gestures he had tracked. The gestures displayed in this footage are quite similar to those that can be found in all the performances examined for this chapter, where MCs continually use their arms and hands while singing or rapping. Kurtis Blow, The Funky Four +1, Run The Jewels, like the vast majority of MCs, use their hands to beat out significant parts of their songs or sentences and to emphasize the point they are trying to make. For example, Kurtis Blow starts his performance of “The Breaks” yelling “Yeah!, Come on now,” while snapping his fingers

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to the beat. His facial expression, with his raised eyebrows, his hand gestures and body movements (shaking and thrusting his hips) are clearly meant to engage the audience and to encourage it to participate in the performance. While performing “If I Ruled the World” he similarly supplements his rhymes with hand gestures, pointing his thumbs to his chest when rapping “This is where I belong” or “you better stop and listen to me” or emphasizing the word “stop” with a clenched fist and an arm gesture. His body and gestural languages are clearly in line with his verbal encouragements (“C’mon”) and, as Holler and Geoffrey have demonstrated in their work on gesture production and its communicative intention, greatly increase the value of his message (2007). In fact, in rap, hand and arm gestures very frequently accompany the delivery of the rhymes. These gestures have multiple functions. They can help MCs demarcate parts of a line which they think is most important, as Kurtis Blow does when pointing his thumb to his chest for example. They can also help hold the attention of their audience, directing the vocal delivery specifically to them, with a pointing finger or an outstretched hand. In their SNL performance of “That’s The Joint” for example, several members of The Funky Four +1 constantly rap their arm outstretched or their hand raised, intermittently shaking them while reciting their lyrics. They also put one hand behind their ear to encourage the audience/spectator during call-and-response phases (“What’s the deal?/Sugarhill”). Additionally, they point a finger at the camera and the audience when addressing them directly (“you” or “y’all”) (or show five fingers when mentioning the number of MCs in their group), thrust their hands in the air, and twist their body to the rhythm. The use of arms and hands in rap music is in fact so prevalent that it spawned a couple of taxonomies listing the standard gestures performed by MCs. In “The Language of Hiphop,” Charles Mudede details the most common gestures used by rappers, each of which can be found in the performances studied in this chapter. The most commonplace is what he calls “the One-Finger Chop” where rappers repeatedly move one hand up and down with one finger outstretched (Joey Bada$$ uses two, though) to convey the idea that what is being said is critical (Fig. 7.1). This gesture is quite close to its variant “The Ninja Star,” generally used with laid-back flows and where the open palm of the MCs aims towards their face, with the bottom fingers curled into it, leaving the middle finger, index finger and thumb extended. As rappers recite their lyrics, wagging their hand left and right, they look as if they are tossing off ninja stars, hence the name (Fig. 7.2).

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Fig. 7.1  The one-­ finger chop. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)

Mudede then identifies another common gesture he calls “the Not-­ Having-­It-Hands” where rappers wave one (when carrying a microphone) or both their hands, palms down, from side to side as they rap. Although he acknowledges that this gesture has its origin in standard body language he nonetheless remarks that rappers indisputably give it “greater expressive depth with more pronounced rhythmic articulation” (2013). Sometimes called “the Mos Def Wave” (named after rapper Mos Def) whether the hand of the rapper is angling farther up or down (almost as if they were scratching a record), this gesture is used profusely by rappers, especially in park bench freestyles and battles according to The Guide to Hip-Hop Hand Gestures insofar as it helps MCs rap more confidently or trigger quick witty remarks (Fig. 7.3). Among other popular gestures listed in this guide one can also find “The Slim-Shady Chop,” named after Eminen and which describes the way rappers energetically recite their rhymes with one arm extended far out in front of them, throwing it in the air before dropping it vertically to their side, either with fingers pointing or all flat. Joey Bada$$, Busta Rhymes, Killer Mike and other rappers whose performances are under scrutiny here constantly flash their palm at the audience in this commanding position (Fig. 7.4). This arm gesture is quite frequent in rap performances as it openly displays power and dominance, two key ideas behind the art of emceeing. According to psychologist Spencer Kelly, gestures make people pay attention to the acoustics of speech. “Gestures are not merely add-ons to

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Fig. 7.2  The ninja-star. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)

Fig. 7.3  The not-­ having-­it-hands. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)

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Fig. 7.4  The slim-­ shady chop. (Maxime Derouen ©. Used with permission)

language—they may actually be a fundamental part of it” he remarks (Kelly, Manning, & Rodak, 2008, p. 569). Exploiting their relevance in the constitution of meaning, MCs greatly rely on gestures and other forms of non verbal communication and in their performances. In his book The Elements of Expression, Arthur Plotnik compares the expressiveness of early rap performers to tribal storytellers whose body language signals excitement and entrances their listeners and whose ebullience can inflate the message (2012, p.  56). In order to connect with the crowd efficiently, rappers logically use body language as an important part of their communication. Claiming the space in front of them, they project the image of being open to the audience and can thus hold its attention effortlessly. However, if non-verbal signals and cues help better connect with the audience, they also seem to aid rappers perform better in finding the rhyme beat as Cathy Covell Waegner remarks in her observations on battle rap (2003, p. 181). This can particularly be seen during studio or radio performances where MCs do not have to hold a microphone and use both free hands to complement their flow. As Jürgen Streeck and Douglas Henderson argue in their study of body motion during freestyle sessions, hand gestures play a big part helping MCs get into a groove (Streeck & Henderson, 2010). Although microphones may on the one hand limit the performers hand gestures—and consequently, their instinctive expressivity—, they can, on stage, serve as an interactive tool and be pointed at the audience to elicit a response to a rapper’s call.

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Rappers also use other forms of non-verbal communication like facial expressions, eye contact and tone of voice as effective devices that can help them bond with the audience, reinforce what they are saying, and build a stronger relationship with it. Through particular facial expressions or through eye contact, which is equally important in maintaining crowd involvement, MCs express excitement or urge the crowd to participate in the performance without saying a word. Posture is another effective way to interact more forcefully with the crowd. The members of the Funky 4+1 for example, rap with the upper body leaning towards the camera, as if battling an opponent. This ‘aggressive’ body language accompanies the performances of all the MCs studied in this chapter, with movements (sways of the upper torso) facial expressions and postures supplementing their verbal delivery. In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies, Barbara Ahrens describes body language as follows: nonverbal visual elements of communication, which are referred to as kinesics or body motion communication (Birdwhistell, 1970) and are frequently grouped under the term “body language,” are considered an inseparable part of the verbal communication process. These elements of nonverbal communication include gestures and other kinetic elements, such as facial expression, eye contact and posture, as well as proxemics, that is the interlocutor’s spatial constellation in a certain situation. (…) the can limit, accompany and complement the verbal components of interaction. (2015, p. 36)

Body motion communication and the gestures described by Ahrens are in no way decorative and function to enrich, enhance, and even dramatize the things a rapper is saying. If rappers were just stiffly standing still while performing, connecting with the audience or building intensity would not be as effective. Hence their use of unrestrained body language to grab and hold the attention of the audience and to increase the communicative effect of their lyrics. Their ostentatious gestural language, as I have pointed out, serves multiple purposes. It makes the performance more dynamic, helps convey a message or point across, adding emphasis to lines, and helps MCs feeling, regulating or balancing out a flow, keeping it in rhythm. Used effectively, emphatic gesturing can support and optimize the communication during the performance, boosting the confidence of a MC, and therefore make a significant contribution to the meaning of the lyrics delivered.

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Interestingly enough, other means of non-verbal communication, such as a big boisterous chest-out way to rap are present in studio recorded aural performances, where they obviously would not make much of a difference, and where the emphasis is already put on voice, intonation and vocal interpretation. The presence of expressive gestural language in the booth (like hand gestures accompanied by head movements) demonstrates how critical it is in the rap expressive form. Although hand and arm gestures are generally amplified on stage where the energy of the audience is palpable, their presence in studio performances exhibits the extent to which they remain clearly woven into the fabric of the rap performance, constantly supplementing the flow of the MC regardless of the performing context. Aiming at surpassing the competition and at wowing the crowd, rappers clearly aim to reinforce the sense of connection present in their songs on stage. Live performances, as Radbourne, Johanson, and Glow remark in their discussion of the differences between live and mediated performances, offer the opportunity to experience the voice and body language of the performers firsthand, of seeing their expression and being physically involved in the performance (Radbourne et  al., 2016, p.  66). The way MCs like Killer Mike and El-P, Vince Staples, Joey Bada$$ or Busta Rhymes constantly stride the stage, engaging both sides of the crowd enhances this experience. As David Pattie points out in Rock Music in Performance, the fact that rap artists generally perform on a bare stage, with no other instrument than a set of turntables or a computer and a mixing table allows free movement “unencumbered by the need to avoid musicians who might be tied to one location on stage” (2007, p. 150). In the performances of Busta Rhymes (and Spliff Star) and of the rap duo Run The Jewels, the performances have, except for the DJ set up, no clearly defined visual center, the flow constantly moving from MC to MC (and sometimes to DJ). The audience’s perception of the performance is not located in one place (unlike the static performance of Funky Four +1, where MCs did not have analogic cordless microphones), being dispersed across the stage with rappers engaging in call-and-response routines or conversations with the audience or with their DJs between and during songs to maintain the energy level high and the dynamic flowing throughout the stage. Pumping, pounding and crisscrossing hands, waving one’s arms, or pointing fingers; all these spontaneous movements clearly represent meaningful information in a rap performance and should be acknowledged as

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part of its language. They benefit both the MCs, helping them to keep the energy level high and to convey more pregnant messages and eliciting cooperation, and the audience, whose attention remains sustained, listening to the lyrics and watching the hands rap at the same time. Although the constant crossing over of various musical genres has resulted in live performances sharing many similarities in terms of call-and-­ response and gestures, rap music can nonetheless be singled out due to its relying critically on the collective energy of crowds and audiences for its life force. As Cheryl Keyes remarks, rappers, due to the party-oriented beginnings of the genre and the importance of controlling the crowd, thrive on audience response to the extent that the success of a performance is measured by the active interplay between the two (Keyes, 2002, p. 26). In this chapter I was able to demonstrate that performing with a back up MC and keeping the audience engaged through body language helps rappers invigorate their performance while physically engaging the audience into it. Most importantly, it helps them reach the ‘perfected social interaction’ discussed throughout this book and at the core of the rap aesthetic.

References Ahrens, B. (2015). Body language. In F. Pöchhacker (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of interpreting studies (pp. 36–37). London: Routledge. Aston, E. (2014). How to be a rap star. Santa Fe: Upland Avenue Productions. Billboard Magazine. (2010, January 9). Issue 1. Cobb, W.  J. (2007). To the break of dawn: A freestyle on the hip hop aesthetic. New York: NYU Press. Edwards, P. (2009). How to rap: The art and science of the hip-hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. Frith, S. (1998). Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harper, H. (2013). Letters to an incarcerated brother: Encouragement, hope, and healing for inmates and their loved ones. New York: Avery. Hess, M. (2007). Icons of hip hop: An encyclopedia of the movement, music, and culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. Holler, J., & Geoffrey, B. (2007). Gesture use in social interaction: How speakers’ gestures can reflect listeners’ thinking. In L. Mondada (Ed.), On-line Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the International Society of Gesture Studies, Lyon, France, 15–18 June 2005.

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Howard, J. (2013, November 14). A history lesson in hip hop’s hype men and ad-libs. The Michigan Daily. Retrieved from https://www.michigandaily.com/ arts/11jackson-howard-hip-hop-column14 Kelly, S. D., Manning, S. M., & Rodak, S. (2008). Gesture gives a hand to language and learning: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(4), 569–588. Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kitwana, B. (2002). The hip-hop generation: Young blacks and the crisis in African-­ American culture. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Mlynar, P. (2012, November 1). Kendrick Lamar wants us all to say “bitch.” The Village Voice. Retrieved from http://www.villagevoice.com/music/kendricklamar-wants-us-all-to-say-bitch-6652643 Mudede, C. (2013, March 27). The language of hiphop hands. The Stranger. Retrieved from https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-language-ofhiphop-hands/Content?oid=16346921 Pattie, D. (2007). Rock music in performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Perkins, W. E. (1996). Droppin’ science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Plotnik, A. (2012). The elements of expression: Putting thoughts into words. Berkeley: Viva Editions. Radbourne, J., Johanson, K., & Glow, H. (2016). The value of ‘being there’: How the live experience measures quality for the audience. In K. Burland & S. Pitts (Eds.), Coughing and clapping: Investigating audience experience (pp. 55–68). London: Routledge. Streeck, J., & Henderson, D. (2010). Das Handwerk des Hip-Hop. Freestyle als körperliche Praxis (The handiwork of hip-hop. Freestyle as embodied performance). In C.  Wulf & E.  Fischer-Lichte (Eds.), Gesten: Inszenierung, Aufführung und Praxis (pp. 180–208). München: Wilhelm Fink. Terkourafi, M. (2010). Languages of global hip hop. New  York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Waegner, C.  C. (2003). Rap, rebounds, and Rocawear: “The darkening” of German youth culture. In H.  Raphael-Hernandez (Ed.), Blackening Europe: The African American presence (pp. 171–186). London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 8

Rap Music and Singing Along to the N-word

Abstract  This chapter addresses the use of the controversial N-word by non-black fans or performers during live shows and reflects on it may reshape the performer/audience relationship. Crowd involvement and cooperation being instrumental to creating and building intensity and unity, can the rap performance still work as a cooperative venture with non-black fans singing black rappers’ unaltered lyrics? Keywords  Rap • Call-and-response • Collective participation • Audience engagement • Racism

8.1   Introduction In October 2017, the organizers of a Lil Uzi Vert concert on an Illinois campus displayed the following announcement on the stage where the artist was about to perform (Fig. 8.1). It read: A&O announcement. Lil Uzi Vert’s catalogue includes songs containing the N-word. If you are not black, A&O insists you omit this word from your vocabulary—both at our show and in general. A&O shows are for all students, and when non-black (not just white) students say the N-word, they alienate our black peers.

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_8

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Fig. 8.1  A&O announcement before Lil Uzi Vert’s concert (Colin Boyle, The Daily Northwestern/used with permission)

The following month, rapper Aminé, while performing for the NPR series “Tiny Desk Concerts” similarly warned those attending his set who were not black to self-edit their collective participation. While singing his popular song “Caroline,” he replaced the assertive “Killa, west-side nigga” line from his chorus with “if you ain’t black don’t say it,” in reference to his use of the N-word. Having explained throughout this book the importance of audience engagement in rap performance, whether live or mediated, these warnings appear as if they could hamper the vital collaborative spirit otherwise created to establish a strong bond between performer and audience. Indeed, differentiating audience members could impede the “perfected social interaction” theorized by Robert Farris Thompson and referred to multiple times throughout this work. Such warning is therefore at odds with the philosophy of performance examined here as it calls into question the ambition of rappers to synchronize with the audience. Crowd involvement and cooperation being instrumental to creating and building intensity and unity, can the rap performance still work as a cooperative venture under such limitations? Also, can the idea of intentionally losing part of the audi-

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ence be detrimental to the notion that everyone in the audience is needed to nurture the collective participation dynamics sought after by MCs? To be clear, I am in no way questioning the validity of those announcements and warnings. I am only reflecting on how limiting collective participation to a specific group may affect the live performance and reshape the performer/audience relationship. I am in fact primarily interested in examining how rap musicians have dealt with non-black fans singing their unaltered lyrics during live shows and how the controversies around this “troublesome word” (Kennedy, 2002) have influenced their live performances.

8.2   My Concert, My Rules Can the organic bond crafted by MCs in the studio lead to a total and unrestrained audience engagement during live performances if one part of the audience must intermittently step out of it every time the N-word is uttered in the original lyrics? Los Angeles rapper Schoolboy Q does not seem to think so and encourages his black and white fans to sing the controversial N-word along with his lyrics at his shows. In a 2013 interview recorded around his live set at Power 106 Cali Christmas Concert, Schoolboy Q explained that asking both black and white fans to sing along to his lyrics is a way to make sure that everybody participates in the performance and enjoys the group dynamics without feeling excluded. Although he is fully aware of the radioactivity of the term (—quick note: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People condemns use of both “nigger” and “nigga,” which they literally buried during a mock ceremony in 2007—) Q nonetheless considers that given the context of “a rap show,” with an audience having paid to see him perform, he not only tolerates the use of the N-word but encourages white fans to use it. As he argues, he would just “feel stupid” if fans remained quiet when he dropped the beat which is why he instructs them to quote his own lyrics, including that controversial word. As reported by NOW journalist Sumiko Wilson, Q addressed the issue with his fans during Toronto’s 2016 edition of the NXNE in these terms: I’m not telling you to go say “nigga” after this, but this is a rap show, I want y’all to participate. (Wilson, 2017)

Although he appears to be fully aware of the history around the N-word and certainly capable of understanding the dynamics and nuances about

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the right and wrong of screaming it, Schoolboy Q believes that the passion that fans display buying his music and coming to his shows gives them license to sing it out loud, in this particular context and moment. In other words, Q considers that his shows and his songs as a safe place for his fans to recite lyrics word for word carefree. His concert, his rules. Musician Anderson Paak seems to share the same outlook as he similarly encouraged the NPR staff members attending his 2016 Tiny Desk concert to sing along to his “Come Down” lyrics. He started his performance with the lyrics “Y’all niggas got me hot,” and continued by asking the black and white audience members to participate (“If you know this shit sing along/Y’all niggas got me hot”) seeking to establish an optimal cohesion with them. As Slate music journalist Jonah Weiner reports in a 2012 article entitled “Niggas,” in “Practice,” rapper Lil Wayne comfortably used the word during a New Jersey concert where he called a 17,500-strong crowd to respond to his “If you came to have a hell of a motherfucking time tonight” with “Hell! Yeah! Nigga!” (Weiner, 2012). In a 2018 DJ Booth article on the same topic, music writer Ben Taylor relates how rappers like Kanye West, Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) and Tyler the Creator similarly encouraged white fans to use it during live renditions of their songs (Taylor, 2018). The diversity of approaches and points of view around this issue was highlighted in a series of interviews posted between 2011 and 2017 by DJ Vlad on his YouTube channel. This channel features numerous videos of rap musicians like Too Short, Ja Rule, Fat Joe, Jidenna, Immortal Technique, Yelawolf, Cardi B and many others weighing in on the use of the N-word by non-black fans and rappers. Recording artists like DJ Premier, Jidenna or Ja Rule deem it offensive and see no way around non-­ black fans or rappers using it. Other musicians, although they consider it fundamentally disrespectful coming from non-blacks and concede its utterance’s harmful potential, find its use acceptable in the context of a rap show. Overall, all the interviewees are aware of the bendable connotations of the word, with some musicians deciding to neutralize them during their shows while others, like Aminé, are making a point to reserve the use of “nigga” to blacks only. Artists whose position seem more flexible on the N-word conversation commonly argue, rightfully or wrongfully so, that the racist intent is somewhat nullified at a rap show where everyone is expected to participate. Caught in a dilemma between their mindfulness of the word’s toxicity and its pervasiveness, they seem to favor collective participation over putting a

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tough-to-realistically-enforce restriction on singing along to music (and lyrics) that fans paid to listen to or go to see live. DJ Vlad’s interviews are quite insightful as they bring to light the core ideas which lie behind both the arguments of those for whom no license should be given to non-black fans and of those who consider that a rap show provides a context, although problematic, where the word can be used freely. On the one hand, some artists consider that “nigga,” re-­ branded by African-Americans and re-purposed for use at what they consider to be their sole discretion, either endearingly, casually, or pejoratively can only be employed by them. Therefore, unless you identify as African-­ American, it is best to steer clear of it for you do not have agency or ownership of the word due to lack of history with it. In other words, the word originates in African-American experience starting with slavery and post slavery traumas and, as such, is African-American jurisdiction (as opposed to non-black Hispanics and more recent African immigrants who believe their geo-cultural connections or skin color give them agency to say who can or cannot say the word). In contrast, other artists consider that at rap shows, the specific use of the word through sing-alongs can be approved as normative in a unifying cultural environment where its use has a somewhat different cultural significance. This point was made by influential MC KRS-ONE in 2006 while discussing the use of the N-word by black rappers and black comedians in “When the N-Word Is Part of a Routine,” a roundtable organized in the wake of Michael Richard’s controversial “nigger” rant. He argued that when spoken as part of what he calls the “hip-hop language,” the word is inclusive and a strong hip-hop signifier. However, he insists that slipping it outside of this cultural framework is clearly a violation and a sign of disrespect.

8.3   A Culturally-Branded Signifier Becoming Mainstream Still, MCs who share KRS-ONE’s culturalist viewpoint can nonetheless be conflicted about the use of the word by non-black audience members. During a 2012 interview for Noisey Kendrick Lamar, then a rising rapper who had not yet gone to prominence, discussed the issue of its use by white fans at his shows. Although he admitted that inadvertently making eye-contact with white fans singing “nigga” sometimes made him uncomfortable, he nonetheless conceded that once the word is put in your music

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you should then expect people to recite it back to you, simply because, as he pointed out, “they are following your lead” (2012). Lamar had to revisit this issue recently, after a video of one of his shows had gone viral. As he was headlining the final day of the Hangout Festival in Alabama this past May, the Compton MC brought a young white female fan on stage to sing his song “m.A.A.d city” with him, as he had done at many of his concerts and already twice that night. As a public thread posted on Twitter reveals, two previous non-African-American fans had already been invited to sing that song, where the N-word is used multiple times. The first fan to be invited up, a young man named Will could not follow Kendrick’s flow and was quickly replaced. After him, another young man, Rohan Ghosh, rapped the entire song along with Lamar without uttering the N-word once, moving the mic away from his mouth every time it got to the parts with it. Then another fan, Delaney, was invited up. As opposed to Rohan, she did not self censor or refrain to say the N-word audibly. She started, self-edited one time, used “nigga” once, twice, then three times. The crowd then turned vigorously on her. At that point, Lamar interrupted her, asked her not to say the word and let her continue. Unfortunately, like the first fan invited up, she could not keep the pace of the song and was booed off stage for her lack of rhythmic delivery. Footage of that episode led to varying reactions on social media and in the online press. Some understood Lamar’s handling of the situation, making it clear that non-black fans have no excuse for not excluding the word from their singing along. In sharp contrast, others pointed out the hypocrisy of rappers like Lamar whose songs have the N-word in them to demand that their white fans not recite the lyrics. Most importantly, that conversation attests that today’s black rappers, as a recent Billboard article highlighted, sit “at an uncomfortable intersection of race, commerce and culture.” As Billboard journalist Stereo Williams recently observed: So much Black art is consumed by non-Black people or disseminated by non-Black platforms; and once non-Black people find resonance in that art, they can oftentimes occupy it. (Williams, 2018)

In November 2018 rapper Vince Staples released a music video for his single “Fun!” the last seconds of which epitomize the situation described above by Williams. The scene shows a suburban (or so it seems) white teen, who, from the safety of his bedroom, is shown trying to relate to the day-to-day experiences of black ghetto dwellers through Google Street

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View snapshots of the Ramona Park neighborhood in Long Beach, California. That portion of the music video seems meant to illustrate how some white rap fans primarily get access to the lifestyles of black ghettoes through the lens of consumer culture and by way of music, music videos and other forms of entertainment which only provide a fractional glimpse. Also, that scene perceptively addresses the question of the success of rappers like Vince Staples or Kendrick Lamar who perform sold out shows in front of legions of non-black fans who love their music but who, at the same time, have had little to no direct interaction with blacks. Yet, the familiarity built through rap songs and their inherent “hip-hop language” can produce an elusive feeling of fluency in that language and in the culture it derives from. The mainstream success of songs like Aminé’s “Caroline,” Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” or of “Niggas in Paris” has certainly been instrumental to reinforcing that feeling and to putting the intrinsic nature of the N-word in an even more perplexing state of fluidity. As music journalist Jonah Weiner points out, “Niggas in Paris” is “probably the most popular piece of Western culture to ever feature the word nigga so prominently” while being the ultimate “resisting-the-N-word endurance test for white people” (Weiner, 2012). This duality can result in crowds being led to sing the N-word by rappers, as Lil’ Wayne, Schoolboy Q, or Kanye West have reportedly done at their shows. This can also lead to awkward exchanges, like the one between Delaney and Lamar where the young fan wrongly assumed that the stage (as opposed to the privacy of her car, her home, or even the concert pit) would be similar to her usual safe place, and was chastised for it by the audience (similar backlash had occurred in 2017 after a sing-along video of a New Hampshire sorority cheerfully shouting the lyrics to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” had gone viral). It is quite paradoxical that rap music, a genre where authenticity is a core idea and where the legitimacy of MCs is constantly questioned, has become the battlefield around the appropriation of the N-word by non-­ black fans or rappers. Rap musicians have indeed created a restricted expressive form and discourse through which they have symbolically arrogated and renamed urban spaces, imagined an exclusive cultural matrix (hip-hop) and fashioned a common tongue (the hip-hop language). For instance, rap signifiers like ATL or CPT underline the “lived” or “experienced” dimension of particular places and spaces, limiting their use to a specific group. So does the use of “nigga” which narrows access to some parts of hip-hop culture to blacks. However, the popularity of the genre

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seems to have diluted its black exclusivity, turning a term the use of which is heavily informed by specific historical, sociocultural, and esthetic contexts into a normalized rap signifier employed as an innocuous term by non-black rappers like Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Tekashi 6ix9ine or Lil’ Pump, or by non-black fans. Is the tension between making a racialized vernacular idiom available to a wide audience and the uneasiness it can cause the reason why rapper Aminé decided to stop using it when performing his hit single “Caroline” on stage? The warning he issued in the NPR office was indeed clearly at odds with the performance he gave at VEVO’s Halloween concert a few days prior and where his multiple “Say what?” encouraged a predominantly white audience to sing-along the original lyrics (“Killa, west-side nigga”). However, that “Killa, west-side nigga” verse was later replaced at his Coachella set by the line (“if you ain’t black, don’t sing it”…). Whatever reason prompted that sudden change, this variation illustrates how rap musicians have decided to adapt their performance to the context and to what extent their handling of the situation can differ. In a 2017 article published on SPIN, music journalist Brian Josephs offered a possible answer. The article, entitled “How Do Rappers Handle “Nigga” During the Rise of White-Dominated Festivals?” examined the rise of rap performances at Coachella, Governors Ball and at other popular large corporate backed festivals. The author pondered the difficult position of MCs who had gone from underrepresented or sidelined at these festivals to ubiquitous today. Artists like Kendrick Lamar, A Tribe Called Quest, Jay-Z, J.  Cole, Chance the Rapper, or Childish Gambino are now headlining what has become the dominant form of live music entertainment in America and where, according to data from Nielsen’s 2016 Music 360 Report, 75% of the audience is composed of white people (SPIN, 2017). The discrepancy between the unambiguous cultural, spatial, and racial preference expressed in rap lyrics and their dissemination in what sociologist Elijah Anderson calls “white spaces” (Anderson, 2018) has certainly complexified the relation to the N-word and the conversation concerning its use during sing-alongs.

8.4   An Ongoing Conversation Obviously, the use of the N-word during sing-alongs is complex and not as harmless as those who say “if it’s in the lyrics why not sing it” imply. In a 2012 piece meant to defend the use of the N-word in an enthusiastic

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tweet written by actress Gwyneth Paltrow after a Jay-Z concert, rap mogul Russell Simmons explained how, attending a Jay-Z charity concert at Carnegie Hall, he enjoyed the communality of the show where everyone in the hall, “EVERYONE (…) White, black-everyone” he insists, was singing along every word of every song of the entire set, which included song like “Ain’t No Nigga” and “Niggas in Paris” (Simmons, 2012). He points out that “Every white girl (and there were a lot of them) was singing it to their man…“Ain’t no nigga like the one I got!”” Although Simmons was not really bothered by it, large groups of white people hollering this word might nonetheless have made several black people uncomfortable. However inoffensive Simmons might have found those scenes, other testimonies have shown that the usage of the word in a similar context can have direct impact on the safety and comfort of black audience members or of the artists themselves. For example, in his song “Souvenir” rapper Milo addresses the conundrum he is faced with when white audience members sing the N-word to his face simply because it is in his lyrics. He raps: And pretended we didn’t hear/When white fans said “Nigga” fast. (2015)

Atlanta rapper T.I. is equally perplexed by having thousands of white fans rapping along his own lyrics and using the N-word. Although he considers that in the context of a rap concert, the utterance of “nigga” is not used with malice and does not mean any disrespect nor harm, he nonetheless admits that “it stings a lil’ bit” (HNHH, 2018). Producer Just Blaze, who has backed rapper Jay-Z on tour is equally ambivalent and similarly acknowledges the discomfort built in that situation: Sometimes it really hits you hard when you have a crowd of 10,000 screaming it back to you while you’re playing, even though they don’t know any better or don’t understand the history of the word. (Josephs, 2017)

In a 2017 article entitled “Is It Okay for White Fans to Sing the N-word at Concerts?” music writer Sumiko Wilson described a similarly painful episode taking place at a Solange show where she found herself in a sea of white fans singing “All my niggas in the whole wide world.” Wilson reflected on the circumstances which have made such a scene, unacceptable under other circumstances, acceptable and quite common at shows by black performers. As she admits: “as a black woman in the audience of those shows, it always puts me on edge” (Wilson, 2017). When it comes to collective participation, her position reveals that non-black fans singing

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along the N-word can clearly hinder the participation of audience members (blacks but also whites) who, in situations like these, instead of enjoying the music and escaping into the experience, can end up being disturbed by the discomfort caused by that scene. Such testimonies prolong a conversation that has sometimes left the confines of rap music to infiltrate comedy. Comedian Jimmy O.  Wang reflected with humor on the best way to handle a singing-along-the-Nword situation in his stand-up bit “Can Asians say the N-word?” (2015). Singing along NWA’s “Fuck the Police” with a black friend, he explained how he got excitedly carried away and almost uttered the word. He concluded his bit siding with those who believe that no license should be granted and that everyone should stay in their own “racial space” (Kennedy, 2002). When he asked his black friend: “Is it cool for me to say the N-word if it’s just in a song, man?” the latter blankly answered “What the hell you think?” This idea of staying in one’s own racial space is pushed even further in “How A White Man Says “Nigga” to a Black Man” a comedy skit from the Chocolate Sundaes Comedy Show by comedians Bill Dawes, Eric Blake, Justin Mitchell where Dawes’ white character is using the term by proxy, having his black friend uttering it on cue. The shock value and humor of both parodies derive from the understood radioactivity of the word and the extreme complexity of race relations in the US.

8.5   Handling the Situation, or Not? Although profuse apprehension generally characterizes the use by white people of any variation of “nigger” or “nigga,” (evidenced by Kate Perry’s 2012 cover of “Niggas in Paris” and her substitution of the word with “ninjas”) the rules and the conversation surrounding their use in the very strict confines of rap shows remain unsolved. Some MCs do not mind it, some see no way around non-black people using it (how can you prevent a whole crowd from not singing it along?) and some encourage its use. As we have just seen, even the “my concert my rules” philosophy can alienate race sensitive and “woke” audience members. Does the fact that it is their show grant rappers the right to handle “cartes blanches?” And what makes the term sung along by a predominantly white audience innocuous during a Kendrick Lamar concert at one moment, prohibited the next, when a young white woman tries to sing it on stage. To return back to that episode, it is worth mentioning that it was the audience that censored Delaney, not Lamar, whose intervention to defuse

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the situation was prompted by the mounting hostility of the crowd. After Rohan had self-censored his performance (as Lamar can be heard reminding her of: “My boy Rohan kinda knew the rules a little bit”), it is believable, in this particular context and under those specific circumstances, that the audience expected Delaney would follow suit. I personally attended a Kendrick Lamar concert in 2013 where there were definitely white people and other non-black people singing “m.A.A.d city” in the audience, without him seeming to take offense. Nor did he take offense when he invited, multiple times, a fan to perform on stage his song “Look Out for Detox.” While touring in Texas in 2012, Lamar brought on stage a non-black fan named Kyle Gonzalez. Footage of that performance shows the rapper first teasing Kyle, whom he refers to as “this nigga right here,” and asking him “Do you want to battle me, nigga?” (an allusion to Kyle’s crossed arms and B-boy stance). Lamar then asked his DJ to turn the beat on so that he could see what “this “nigga” could do.” Kyle then starts rapping “Look Out for Detox” word for word, rapidly energizing the crowd with Lamar acting as hype-man. He then reaches the following segment, which he raps verbatim in a double time flow (i.e. ou at a speed twice as fast as the song’s bpm), encouraged both by Lamar and a wild audience:       Water in the pot, flow crack rock like Bam Bam nigga       Have two grams nigga pay up or blam blam nigga.

Later in the performance, Kyle lets Lamar complete his lines through a call-and-response routine:      (Kyle) Problem and Hootie/(Kendrick) nigga       (Kyle)Tell the government come shoot me/(Kendrick) nigga.

The performance went so well that Kyle was invited back on stage to perform that song with Lamar on two other occasions, in Austin and San Antonio. Gonzales’ energy, his expertise in the art of emceeing and at occupying the stage effortlessly, intuitively and without awkwardness, and his fluency of the “hip-hop language” (validated by Lamar calling him “nigga”) might have made the use of the word less offensive, at least for Lamar and those hyped up and unbothered by his multiple utterances of “nigga” during the rendition of the song. If Delaney and others were denied license, there have also been times— like the one I just described—where non-black fans or rappers performing

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on stage with black MCs have used the N-word without backlash. For example, some concert footage shows rapper Eminem using the N-word while backing up Dr Dre on “The Watcher” calling the crowd to sing “if you’re feeling me niggas holla back” or echoing Dre’s “nigga my last album was The Chronic” on “Still D.R.E.” He can also be heard stepping out his “racial lane” while acting as hype man for Royce Da 5’9’s during a live performance of their song “scary movie” and uttering the word multiple times. Some will argue that given his symbolic capital in the rap genre, his proficiency in the “hip-hop language” and under the circumstances (acting as hype man), his uses of “nigga” seem to be acceptable. Others will not. Especially because, as Randall Kennedy explains in his book “Nigger:” the Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, quoting Michael Dyson, Eminem had previously asserted that the N-word was not part of his vocabulary (2002, p. 51). Nevertheless, Eminem’s multiple utterances of “nigga” while he was supporting Dr Dre and Royce Da 5’9 seem to have been appreciated with more benevolence than Delaney’s, perhaps because they derived from his acting as hype man, enhancing the impact of the lyrics and bringing extra energy to the performance. It is difficult to establish the reason with certainty. On a similar note, the absence of backlash after Kyle Gonzales multiple utterances of “nigga” while performing with Lamar can be explained by both the intricacy of the lyrics and the extremely fast rapping nature of the segments featuring the word, where a considerate omission of the word would have thrown him off and hindered the momentum of the flow he was mimicking. So, are there contexts or double standards where it is appropriate for some people but not for others to use it? If it is the case, who then controls the situation and defines the rules of engagement with “nigga?” As Sumiko Wilson reflects in her article, even if the context and the intent might seem acceptable for some, it may always bother others, as evidenced by the contrasting reactions which can be found in the comment sections of the YouTube videos showing Eminen and Gonzales rapping the N-word. Even amongst blacks the nigga-as-a-term-of-endearment defense can be problematic. For example, in 2013 a Harlem black manager was convicted for harassment and sentenced to pay $280,000 in damages for throwing the word at one of his black employees (The Guardian, 2013). NPR journalist and Code Switch’s editor Gene Demby perceptively summarizes the conversation around the word in a blog entry entitled “Who Can Use the N-Word? That’s the Wrong Question” (2013) where he argues that “there

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are no rules, just consequences.” This observation extends to all issues related to the equally thorny question of cultural appropriation where interlopers from a group with a history of sociocultural and symbolic prevalence get lectured when they use emotionally charged signifiers from a group with a less potent symbolic capital (for example, the use of black skinned emojis or cornrows by non-blacks). To come back to my opening question on how the utterance of the N-word by white fans at rap shows can affect collective participation, we can observe that context is very much central to the way the performance is going to turn. For example, rappers who put the N-word in their lyrics have little to no way to prevent large audiences of thousands of white fans from singing it along at their shows. They rarely attempt to do so anyway and when they do, their efforts are generally met with indifference. Aminé’s effort to educate his white fans at Coachella, asking them to skip the sing-along ready utterance of the word failed miserably. His well-­ meaning attempt to remind the audience that “nigga” is an in-black thing turned out to be cosmetic at best. Audience members, either because they were caught off guard or maybe because of the confusion caused by the fact that they were simultaneously being addressed as “nigga” and denied using that same word, can be heard sticking to the original line throughout the whole song, even after Aminé’s repeated warnings. His Tiny Desk Concert at NPR’s headquarters however, much more intimate and where the message was conveyed with better clarity seems to have come across more efficiently, the pragmatic competence of audience members and the location playing an important part. As for the warning displayed before Lil Uzi Vert’s concert, it was not met with indifference but with disregard and deriding comments (Reed, 2017). These examples suggest that the use of a racialized discourse not to be appropriated is quite complex as artists have adjusted their level of tolerance based on the context and the intent while sometimes expressing discomfort. Furthermore, the fact that the manifold solicitations of MCs to have the listener involved in their mediated performance are commonly received in a private listening context where the singing along of the N-word may not be inhibited by some social etiquette (through the ­listener’s headphones for example) is equally hazardous during live performances where the audience is following a rapper’s lead. The collision of a prior private experience with sing-along ready lyrics can lead to a potentially controversial situation where the utterance of “nigga,” transitioned from a consequence-free environment to a social space where it becomes

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potentially harmful, can collide with the social etiquette otherwise required in white/black interactions. However, as far as audience participation is concerned, the Rohan example demonstrates that a skillful self-edited performance of a N-word laden song is not necessarily deflated. The energy level and competence alone can trigger a strong emotional response and validation from the audience. Live dynamics can be sustained through the energy of the performer, their rhythmic delivery, their verbal dexterity and the momentum of the responding crowd. The diversity of episodes discussed in this chapter, from Delaney being booed to Kyle Gonzales or Eminem being given (kind of) a pass reveals a complexity similar, say, to fair use, where situations have to be examined and decided on a case by case basis, without ever being totally satisfying. Like with other thorny issues lying at the intersection of race and culture, some people will continue to rate faux pas and offenses in a way that makes sense to them while others will find a way to explain them without being unsettled. This might increasingly be the case as today’s digital music platforms have created ecosystems where listeners play substantially more diverse music (Datta et al., 2018) thus connecting rap music to even larger audiences whose proficiency and legitimacy—or lack thereof—in the hip-hop language will certainly prolong the conversation brought to light in this final chapter.

References Anderson, E. (2018). Black in white space. Penn Institute for Urban Research. Retrieved from https://penniur.upenn.edu/index.php/publications/blackin-white-space Datta, H., Knox, G., & Bronnenber, B. (2018). Changing their tune: How consumers’ adoption of online streaming affects music consumption and discovery. Marketing Science, 37(1), 5–21. Demby, G. (2013, September 10). Who can use the N-word? That’s the wrong question [Web log message]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ codeswitch/2013/09/06/219737467/who-can-use-the-n-word-thats-thewrong-question Josephs, B. (2017, September 13). How do rappers handle “nigga” during the rise of white-dominated festivals? SPIN. Retrieved from https://www.spin.com/ featured/how-do-rappers-handle-nigga-at-white-dominated-festivals/ Kennedy, R. (2002). Nigger: The strange career of a troublesome word. New York: First Vintage Books. Milo. (2015). Souvenir (featuring Hemlock Ernst). On So The Flies Don’t Come. Ruby Yacht.

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Reed, C. (2017, October 27). Disregard of N-word warning at A&O Blowout disgraceful. The Daily Northwestern. Retrieved from https://dailynorthwestern.com Simmons, R. (2012, June 5). Why is everyone so cray about Gwyneth’s tweet? Global Grind Entertainment. Retrieved from https://globalgrind.cassiuslife. com/1843519/russell-simmons-defends-gwyneth-paltrow-niggas-inparis-blog/ Taylor, Ben. (2018, May 24). White people, you don’t have to say the N-word. The DJBOOTH. Retrieved from https://djbooth.net/features/201805-24-white-people-n-word-conversation Weiner, J. (2012, June 12). “Niggas,” in practice. Slate. Retrieved from http:// www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2012/06/gwyneth_paltrow_and_ niggas_in_paris_is_it_ever_ok_for_white_people_to_use_the_word_.html Williams, S. (2018, May 24). Kendrick Lamar, black language and what white fans don’t get about the “N-word”. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8457834/kendrick-lamar-n-wordwhite-fans Wilson, S. (2017, November 8). Is it okay for white fans to sing the n-word at concerts? NOW. Retrieved from https://nowtoronto.com/music/features/ is-it-okay-for-white-fans-to-sing-the-n-word-at-concerts/ Zidel, A. (2018, May 22). T.I. gives his take on Kendrick Lamar fan rapping “N-word” on stage. HNHH.com. Retrieved from https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/ti-gives-his-take-on-kendrick-lamar-fan-rapping-n-word-on-stagenews.50821.html

CHAPTER 9

Discussing Collective Participation and Audience Engagement with Sugarhill Gang’s Master Gee

Abstract  Why is crowd response and audience participation so essential in your live performances? It’s important. It’s a connection of energy. You know, you transfer your energy to the crowd and have the crowd transfer the energy back to you. And that creates a situation. And it’s what it’s always been. It’s been a call-­ and-­response, an answer, because you connect with the audience, it’s a connection. You’ve got to make a connection with the crowd. That’s what every MC’s goal is. To connect with the crowd. Keywords  Rap • Emceeing • Call-and-response • Collective participation • Audience engagement Bordeaux, France June 21st, 2017 Why is crowd response and audience participation so essential in your live performances? It’s important. It’s a connection of energy. You know, you transfer your energy to the crowd and have the crowd transfer the energy back to you. And that creates a situation. And it’s what it’s always been. It’s

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_9

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been a call-and-response, an answer, because you connect with the audience, it’s a connection. You’ve got to make a connection with the crowd. That’s what every MC’s goal is. To connect with the crowd. I can understand why connecting with the audience is critical when you’re on stage, performing live, but what do you do when you’re in the studio? Do you still see yourself performing in front of a crowd? Do you adapt your lyrics to this new environment? You have to understand that we’re rappers by nature, so we did this at parties, we did it in basements, high school dances, wherever we could do it. When we started writing songs, we already knew what we wanted to happen, so we realized when we were in the studio what we had on when the show was live, we would get the same response. So we wrote it in the song so that the crowd would already hear it. So by the time we got there they knew what to say. Earlier you mentioned call-and-response as one of the techniques you would use to connect with audiences during live performances. Has your approach changed? No, I’ve been doing the same thing since I was 15 years old. Always done it the same way. In the 70s, how influential were club DJs like Hollywood or Cheba who, during their DJ sets, commonly sang bits like “Hip hop de hip bip de hop, de hip hop, hip de hop. On and on and on and on. Like hot butter on what…?” and whose rhyming resorted heavily to call-andresponse (“partytime”/“anytime”)? Were you aware of what these older DJs were doing or mostly familiar with the music and performances of younger DJs performing in parks and community centers? Hollywood and Flash were my inspirations. They were the ones that I heard about. You know the rapping was based on what I heard that was going on too. I was also a DJ first and it was based on what I heard going on in New York. And then I started rapping because I thought it’d be another way to make my particular DJ thing better.

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When it comes to rapping, MCs are sometimes separated into two groups, rhyme-oriented MCs and party-oriented MCs, do you see a clear distinction between the two? Absolutely! A party-oriented MC has a voice for that, an inch for that. Like, I’m a rhyme oriented MC because I wrote stories. You know like when I talk about living in the fast lane, it you’ve ever listened to “Fast Lane” with ideas like “take a look at yourself”, “analyze your life;” those are based on stories, actually on autobiographical stories. Hank had a really big voice you know, so he was a more crowd-oriented MC. And it was really just based on the way you found your niche. Like Cowboy with the Furious Five Perfect example. He had that big voice so he would go after the crowd, that was his job. It’s like a basketball team you know? You got one guy his job is defense. Another guy his job is to score… Well emceeing is like that too. Don’t rhyme-oriented MCs equally need the crowd since the audience is gauging their skills and their lyrics? Absolutely. But again, it’s like a basketball team. Just because I play defense doesn’t mean I can’t shoot if you’re following what I’m saying. So a rhyme-oriented MC also wants the crowd to say things too, so he can have that in there, but that’s not his forte. See, it’s just part of his situation. What you’re saying is that both can switch between party and rhyming modes, go back and forth? Right. You tell a story and at the end of the story you want the crowd to do something. Then you go tell another story, and you want the crowd to do something. But then you got one individual whose primary thing is to keep the crowd going. Getting the crowd open, one way or another, seems to have remained prevalent in the philosophy of performance of rap. For example, if you go to see a concert of Joey Bada$$ or Vince Staples, younger

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rappers, their live approach and interactions with the audience haven’t strayed too far from yours. It’s because that’s what rapping has always been about. Every MC, that’s really an MC, started out in somebody’s basement, dance hall, or whatever and they was rocking the crowd. The key is to rock the crowd. The only way that you can officially rock the crowd, is if the crowd responds to what you’re doing. So it’s gonna always be that. It’s gonna be stories, it’s gonna be messages, political contents, but it’s always gonna be MCs gotta rock the crowd. It’s always a conversation with the crowd. Always. Because the crowd is always as important as the MC. Even when MCs are battle-rhyming? Battle rhymes and party rhymes are two completely different things. Battle-rhyming is almost like claiming your territory if you will. Partyrhyming is again just rocking with the crowd, get the energy going. You made a record for Sugarhill with the Furious Five… … Showdown Yeah. We didn’t know that was a battle. It was supposed to be a collaboration, they turned it into a battle. The Furious Five did? Yeah. We didn’t know what was gonna be said. We went and wrote our lyrics and they wrote their lyrics. Then we came in the studio and recorded it. We lay our lyrics down first. So when we got out of the studio we thought they would be doing something that complemented that and they went in there and turned it into a battle.

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What’s quite interesting here is that you didn’t know what they were writing but you were claiming to be number one and the best. Absolutely. And these guys did exactly the same thing. Exactly. And every other group from the Bronx or from any other neighborhood was also claiming to be number one, there were no number twos. That spirit of competition was everywhere, and still is. That’s just human nature, you know. You always want to be number one. Everybody wants to be the best. And everybody thinks they’re the best. If you don’t think you’re the best, then you need to stop doing what you’re doing. Is there room for humility in rap music? Absolutely. But you still always gonna feel like the best. Everybody wants to have a number one record. It’s something that is definitely verbalized in rap music. Of course. You say it in basketball, you say it in football. Even novelists, everybody wants to be number one. That’s human nature. In this book I address the idea of creating proximity with the audience while in the studio, through technologically-mediated performances. Even though there is no face to face interaction with an audience, I have noticed that MCs nonetheless pretend that there is spatial proximity through formulas like “Who’s in the house,” or statements like “comin’ to you live from the Bronx…” even if they’re recording in a studio that’s located somewhere else… … but their roots are from that area. And they want people to know that that’s part of their roots. That’s why they say that in the records. They’re bringing their heritage with them. I didn’t do it myself because I didn’t

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feel it was necessary. But you have to understand that the culture of the Bronx was very important. It was important for people from the Bronx to let people know that the Bronx was where it came from (…) Something else that I have noticed throughout my research is that rap music is predominantly rooted in the present tense. You’re reciting your lyrics as if they were unscripted and spontaneous like on Rapper’s Delight when you start… … (rapping) “What you hear is not a test, I’m rapping to the beat, and me, the crew and my friends, we’re gonna try to move…” Yeah. And there’s this idea of immediacy infused in the lyrics even though you were recording in the studio and not performing in front of an audience. But again, we’re party rappers, so in your mind you envision being in front of a crowd. Ultimately, that’s where you’re gonna end up. Every record that you record ultimately you know you’re gonna end up in front of an audience. There are other genres where musicians record music in the studio without mirroring a live atmosphere. But other genres are not rap (…) Rap is totally more interactive, that’s the origin of it. In the studio, MCs very frequently use interjections like “uh”, “yeah,” “what,” “let’s go” or “c’mon” “listen,” “check it out,” or “look” in their lyrics, interjections which could be edited out, but are kept on the recording. To make them seem more natural. If I’m listening to it, if I’m a fan, I feel I’m hearing an intimate moment, with my favorite person. It’s not the norm, it’s not just: say the lyrics, chorus, verse, chorus, verse. You know it’s like, oh wow, he’s talking, ok. It’s like Wiz Khalifa talking about smoking weed, and you’re like, ok I can visualize that. And then again, it puts the fan in touch with that person.

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Often times, in groups featuring several MCs, members double as both a rapper and a hype man. They recite their own lyrics but also emphasize the last words from other MCs lines, for reinforcement for example. Is that something that you’ve done or rehearsed… No, it came out naturally. After a certain period of time, you just start to understand and know what sounds good, what’s accentuated and what should happen.

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion

Abstract  In February 2015, as the idea for this book was simmering, I went to see progressive rapper Busdriver play at a small venue in my hometown. As he launched into his first song, I felt as if all my assumptions on rap and collective participation were about to be shattered. Busdriver was rapping alone on stage, barely establishing eye contact with the audience. His minimalist DJ setup consisted of a smartphone, a portable Roland SP-404SX sampler and two microphones. There was no DJ or hype man working the crowd, only Busdriver moving from the stage to his sampler where he spent long bits bent over the device, playing with sound effects. Keywords  Rap • Collective participation • Audience engagement • Liveness • Mediated performance In February 2015, as the idea for this book was simmering, I went to see progressive rapper Busdriver play at a small venue in my hometown. As he launched into his first song, I felt as if all my assumptions on rap and collective participation were about to be shattered. Busdriver was rapping alone on stage, barely establishing eye contact with the audience. His minimalist DJ setup consisted of a smartphone, a portable Roland SP-404SX sampler and two microphones. There was no DJ or hype man working the crowd, only Busdriver moving from the stage to his sampler where he spent long bits bent over the device, playing with sound effects. © The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6_10

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His performance was quite singular and definitely (and maybe deliberately) departed from those studied in the previous chapter. It felt to me as if Busdriver was somewhat wavering, willing to rap for himself as much as for the audience. As quaint and distinctive (in the Bourdieusian sense) his approach might have been, he managed never to lose the crowd, frequently leaving his comfort zone and absorbed behavior to maintain the energy level high throughout his set and to keep the audience engaged, showcasing his mesmerizing fast delivery and verbal dexterity and triggering loud cheers from the audience. His off-kilter electronic beats kept our heads bobbling and the time spent over his sampler—Grandmaster Flash-­ style—was equally compensated by his frequent calls to the audience and incentives to make some noise (“Bordeaux, one time, make some noise in this b∗∗∗ and rock this mother∗∗∗ boat”—the concert was in the cargo deck of a boat—). As cutting edge, cynical and convoluted his approach might have been, Busdriver’s performance, during which he expertly shifted gears and MC/DJ modes, remained, in the end, very much in line with commonplace rap performances. It heavily relied on collective participation and audience engagement, even in the most unconventional effort. I could then proceed and write this book. In their authoritative studies of the rap aesthetics, Cheryl Keyes and Murray Forman convincingly demonstrated how the discursive and thematic diversifications of rap in no way weakened the solid anchoring of this music to street culture. Whatever ideological variations its lyrics may take, the street (what Forman calls “the ’hood”) is invariably invoked as the source through the consistency of a vernacular which holds sway in the rap expressive form. Comparably, the inclination of MCs to create an engaging experience for the audience never disappeared when the spatial and social distances between performers and audiences completely dissolved. As we have just seen, nor does it falter when innovative MCs like Busdriver and many others try to explore new aesthetic territories. As I have attempted to show throughout this book, MCs continue to maintain a high degree of performer-audience interaction, on stage, but also on records. Whether privileging chanted calland-response phrases or using rhetorical strategies in order to open up the listening audience, MCs’ focus on community building and successful performer-audience cooperation has remained prevalent on rap records. Lyrics and production techniques have actively encouraged the listener to become physically and emotionally involved in technologically-mediated performances.

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Audience engagement and collective participation are certainly not new concepts; neither are they characteristic of rap. However, their evolution in the rap genre deserved, I believe, particular attention. Rap music, perhaps more than any other musical genre, greatly relies on a collective ethos. As former party music, it used to rely on the involvement of the dancers in the events. Also, as a competitive genre where MCs are praised by the collective for their performance, thus inspiring its participation it requires ongoing interaction with the listener. A constitutive element of rapping, audience engagement then remained a guiding principle of emceeing, with rappers encouraging their audiences to become emotionally involved in the musical performance even if they were no longer physically present. My ambition here was to highlight how the communal orientation endemic to rap music effectively reified that collective ethos. The same way rap scholarship had already showed how contemporary rap bears the legacy of the inaugural generation and is governed by a set of conventions, the objective of this study was to provide insight into the structuring effect of the formative years on an under-examined feature of rap practice. Its observations may sometimes seem simple, but I believe they are particularly insightful and enlightening for understanding the aesthetic choices of rap musicians and their performance philosophy.

References Forman, M. (2002). The ’hood comes first: Race, space and place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Keyes, C.  L. (2002). Rap music and street consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Index

A Audience engagement, 2–4, 58, 60, 62, 110, 122, 123, 137–143, 146, 147

Conversational tone, 4, 48, 55, 79, 81, 104 Creative process, 4, 18, 53, 66, 97, 98

B Battle-rhyming, 3, 36, 38, 39, 52, 53, 56, 67, 99, 140

E Emceeing, 3, 25–43, 52–54, 58, 60, 61, 66, 67, 79, 98, 105, 106, 113, 131, 139, 147

C Call-and-response, 2–21, 28, 30, 31, 35, 41, 42, 48, 54, 56, 57, 62, 68, 70, 71, 95–98, 104–106, 108, 112, 117, 118, 138, 146 Collaborative (collaboration), 75, 80, 89, 99, 103, 122, 140 Collective participation, 1–4, 6, 18–21, 25–43, 47–62, 66, 86, 95, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 122–124, 129, 133, 137–143, 145–147

H Herc (Kool), 26, 27, 29–35, 38, 41, 43, 48–51, 61 Hype man (men), 106–109, 131, 132, 143, 145 I Immediacy, 2, 27, 65–81, 142 Intertextuality, 1, 2, 4, 85–100

© The Author(s) 2019 D. Diallo, Collective Participation and Audience Engagement in Rap Music, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25377-6

149

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INDEX

L La Rock (Coke), 31–34, 41, 43, 49 Live audience, 4, 54, 66, 68, 81, 104 Liveness, 65–81, 110 Live performance, 2–4, 6, 7, 19, 29, 40, 41, 43, 48, 52, 53, 56, 57, 62, 67–72, 74, 76, 81, 103–118, 123, 132, 133, 137, 138 M Mediated performance, 18, 70, 73, 80, 81, 104, 117, 133 Mel, Melle, 33, 40, 41, 50, 53, 59, 61, 73

R Rapper’s Delight, 3, 42, 43, 51, 53–59, 61, 62, 66, 71, 72, 88, 103, 142 Recorded performance, 2, 52, 54, 57, 60, 66, 68, 71–73, 75, 76, 80, 99 Recording studio, 3, 48, 51, 52, 54, 66, 68, 73–76, 104 S Spontaneity, 2, 52, 55, 68, 69, 72, 73, 77, 79, 80 T (The) stage, 4, 20, 40, 48, 52–56, 58, 66, 76, 95, 98, 103–118, 121, 127, 131, 145