Deconstructing Hip Hop music

[Pemulis]

Hip hop music can be considered, chronologically speaking, the last avant-garde musical movement to have reached widespread circulation in pop culture.

Despite the general tone of the lyrics found in many rap songs — "Poopy-di scoop / Scoop-diddy-whoop / Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop", from Lift Yourself by Kanye West — hip hop music stands in the history of music as the genre that pushed to the extreme the subversion of Western musical tradition—a process already initiated by rock music at the beginning of the last century: the dominance of rhythm over harmony.

Western musical culture, for centuries, made the study of harmony its defining stylistic trait.
To simplify this concept and connect it to your everyday experience, just ask yourself how many times you’ve found yourself unconsciously tapping your foot to the beat while listening to a symphony from the 19th century or earlier. The answer is likely close to zero.

Symphony orchestras, in fact, traditionally consist solely of instruments whose role is to play notes—in other words, pitched instruments. Even orchestral percussion instruments (such as timpani, marimba, glockenspiel, etc.) are tuned and play definable pitches that can be written on a staff.
There is, therefore, no instrument whose primary purpose is to explicitly mark rhythm; rhythm in Western classical music is present only implicitly, as an underlying structural framework.

Rock music disrupted this balance, bringing the essence of African tribal music into contact with the Western mainstream. Tribal music, as is well known, was originally composed of purely percussive, non-pitched instruments. These were not intended to play notes (a concept that didn’t even exist in traditional African cultures) but rather to mark time during religious rituals, allowing participants to dance in sync with the beat.

So, in the 19th century, the modern drum kit was invented. Jazz and rock music radically transformed the cultural landscape of Western countries, whose musical tradition was suddenly renewed through its encounter with African-American musical heritage.

But what does hip hop music have to do with all of this?

Hip hop music further radicalizes this aesthetic process through two key mechanisms: the simplification of musical structure—made deliberately repetitive and ornamental so that it serves only as a backdrop—and the transformation of the vocal line into a purely rhythmic element. The voice, traditionally the primary vehicle for melody, becomes a percussive instrument; it stops singing, and thus stops producing pitched notes (and existing within a harmonic context), becoming instead a purely rhythmic expression.

A precursor to this idea can be found in Sprechgesang, a vocal technique developed by Schönberg as a middle point between singing and speaking.

That said, the truly sad part of this whole story is that most rappers—and the people who listen to them—are completely unaware of this historical and cultural nerdiness.
They're like children using a nuclear reactor to warm up their steak.
Truly fascinating.

Poopy-di scoop / Scoop-diddy-whoop / Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop

 

 

 

[Deicide4u]

Hip-Hop music is just a perversion of rap music, which died together with Tupac Shakur.

EDIT: To clarify, rap was becoming too socio-political, especially in Tupac's lyrics. That is why the music industry decided to devalue rap and replace it with perverse, immoral and idiotic lyrics of hip-hop.

Edited yesterday at 07:18 by Deicide4u

[Pemulis]

You are right and I should have replaced "hip hop" with "rap". 

Regards the loss of socio-political topics in rap music, surely a product in order to be sold to the majority of public has to lose its divisive traits and trying to be as generalistic as possible. This process is applied to every underground social movement in the exact moment it become mainstream.

Anyway, my opinion on Tupac and most of the 'historical' rappers is generally very low despite the fact I can appreciate their activism.

I prefer when such activism is expressed working on the musical-aesthetic framework and the lyrics, not just through the latter: you can write books if you want to communicate exclusively with words.

[MarcusAureliu#s]

14 hours ago, Pemulis said:

You are right and I should have replaced "hip hop" with "rap". 

Regards the loss of socio-political topics in rap music, surely a product in order to be sold to the majority of public has to lose its divisive traits and trying to be as generalistic as possible. This process is applied to every underground social movement in the exact moment it become mainstream.

Anyway, my opinion on Tupac and most of the 'historical' rappers is generally very low despite the fact I can appreciate their activism.

I prefer when such activism is expressed working on the musical-aesthetic framework and the lyrics, not just through the latter: you can write books if you want to communicate exclusively with words.

Can you maybe give an example which you consider succesfull in expressing activism through the musical-aesthetic framework ? I think it can me more appealing to a broad variety of listeners if the musical framework is asethetically appealing to many, less experimental and simlpe to grasp, by evoking certain basic emotions.  Ofcourse when we talk about music as "art" more than activism i would agree with you. But overall rap is traditionally text heavy and more closely related to poetry. Also part of original subversiveness is the easy acces that does not require a high degree of musical education and is performed by those whose voice is not heard in mainstream music.

Edited 7 hours ago by MarcusAureliu#s

[Pemulis]

2 hours ago, MarcusAureliu#s said:

I think it can me more appealing to a broad variety of listeners if the musical framework is asethetically appealing to many, less experimental and simlpe to grasp, by evoking certain basic emotions.

It's true — in fact, I don't believe that an artist's aesthetic research necessarily has to be cerebral or experimental. I believe that an artist should simply use it as a means to express the emotions or concepts behind a piece, rather than delegating all the communicative power to the lyrics. This process, generally, can be carried out without creating anything too “weird” to listen to.

It all depends on the subject of your activism, and what you want to express about it.
For example, imagine you want to write a song about civil disobedience. Aesthetically speaking, expressing anger and violence certainly doesn't require any particularly elaborate musical tricks.
For example: 

On the other hand, if you want to talk about more complex topics, the aesthetic boundaries (at least the mainstream ones) of music must be pushed in order to fully express extreme emotions and concepts. The classic example is the attempt to write a song about war.
An artist can choose to write absolute garbage like Mad World by Gary Jules, turning the madness of war into a crying little tune that might as well be about a failed romantic relationship; or they can attempt to express that madness through the music itself.
It goes without saying that in such an attempt, the common aesthetic sense must be left behind — because the violence of war does not fall within common aesthetic norms. It therefore becomes necessary to break out of conventional frameworks if one wants to speak credibly about something like that.
For example:

Or:

2 hours ago, MarcusAureliu#s said:

Ofcourse when we talk about music as "art" more than activism i would agree with you. But overall rap is traditionally text heavy and more closely related to poetry. Also part of original subversiveness is the easy acces that does not require a high degree of musical education and is performed by those whose voice is not heard in mainstream music.

Music is art, and when some "music" is clearly not art then it is clearly not music as well: it becomes a commodity. Of course there's nothing criminal in enjoying consumer music, but as listeners we have at least to know what are we consuming. I am free to eat McDonald's, but I am not free to say McDonald's is a top class full of nutrients meal.
Also I don't believe that a high degree of musical education is needed in order to appreciate complex music, assuming you are talking about technical knowledge like music theory, harmony etc. The only thing needed is curiosity! I'm barely able to read a staff, for example, but I can enjoy a lot of contemporary classical music. It's more about ideas than technicalities!
About the original subversiveness of rap, I think both of those aspects were already true for rock/blues music.

[MarcusAureliu#s]

I imagine this could be something that matches your criteria and that is hip hop 

[Gurken Khan]

On 07/05/2025 at 9:02 AM, Deicide4u said:

Hip-Hop music is just a perversion of rap music, which died together with Tupac Shakur.

EDIT: To clarify, rap was becoming too socio-political

I don't know whether you consider Sugarhill Gang Rap or Hip Hop, but as far as I'm aware their Rapper's Delight was the first hit from that corner; and I wouldn't consider that song overly socio-political. So I wouldn't agree with that simple timeline.

 

4 hours ago, MarcusAureliu#s said:

Can you maybe give an example which you consider succesfull in expressing activism through the musical-aesthetic framework ?

How about folk rock in the anti-war movement in the US?

 

1 hour ago, Pemulis said:

I am not free to say McDonald's is a top class full of nutrients meal.

You are free to say that. Though that notion wouldn't find much support.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Sugarhill Gang

I was thinking about something more "gangsta", hence he mention of Tupac.