Through The Telescope: The Digital Age

As a culture, Hip Hop has always been a product of technology. From turn-tableism to modern PC sequencers, Hip Hop’s always manifested from whatever current technologies are available. Depending on how you view it, this could be a good or bad thing. However, with the growth of technology becoming more apparent, has the accessibility turned Hip Hop into a burdened culture through it’s up rise of anyone-can-do-it rap artists and producers? Or has it helped Hip Hop in bringing it to a wider scale?

The originators of Hip Hop - or even heads who have been listening long enough - that Hip Hop started from “two turn tables and a mic”. This has been the goto quote for getting the message across that this culture started from few things, and blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Even though that notion rings true, Hip Hop still started with the use of technology. What occured (if you haven’t already read here) was Bronx native, DJ Kool Herc started parties using two-turntables and a microphone; what set this apart as apposed to the normal block parties was Hercs use of “The Breaks”. What are those you ask? They were segments in a record that didn’t have the singer on them, these segments had much more percussion — they were considered the most danceable.

Later when Hip Hop started becoming incredibly popular producers took this style of looping the breaks and evolved on it. Eventually the classic style of Hip Hop took popular records and looped specific parts (eventually turning into the modernized term of sampling), having producers adding their own drum loops over top with the addition of scratches and such.

As technology progressed the more advanced the production became, with producers building their own samples, mixing different styles and using different techniques in the creation of their productions. One thing that was heavily effected by the uprise in technology was the word-of-mouth aspect of Hip Hop. In it’s earliest days Hip Hop was spread through on-street promotion and then - granted the performance was good - was generally talked about. As the culture grew of course, Hip Hop was played on radios and eventually made it’s way to Television.

Even though by todays standards that technology is considered quite old, it’s still technology, and without it you wouldn’t have the industry you have now. In other words, Hip Hop has always relied on Technology; granted you’re not counting Beat Boxing and Graff Art, but keep in mind those were still heavily influenced by technology.

Lets fastforward to our current era, were now we have more cell phones then people, and base social status on who has the latest iPod and Soulja Boy ring tones. This is what most reffer to statistically as: “The Information Age”, and to a more suitable degree - in context of this article - “The Digital Age”. Hip Hop like many other cultures, has taken full advantage of the Digital Age; whether it be through your average web browser or your cell phones music service, Hip Hop has become dependant on this. While this has a lot of positives, it’s also got quite a few negatives as well.

As the Information era has grown, so has Hip Hop. A lot of people who were unaware of the culture but remotely interested could find out about it a lot easier than before; with only a handful of books that weren’t available everywhere, without the Internet a lot of people wouldn’t understand the culture as well as they do now unless they knew someone who had been apart of it.

Additionally the digital market gave birth to the downloads of music — Hip Hop taking huge advantage of this. With many artists selling more albums digitally then they have physically; based on the convenience aspect of being able to download mass amounts of music without having to go to the store. This has also lead to the accessibility of letting Hip Hop music being purchased in other countries without that country having to wait for physical copies of the album to ship, thus builing a bigger fan base to whatever artist - and possibly bringing in new Hip-hop heads.

Another aspect of the rise in technology (and costs lowering) is that a lot of people can create and record rap music with minimal costs. Thus allowing a lot of people to be apart of the art. Another sub sector of PC-recording-artists (or more commonly referred to as Audio Heads) would be “Textcees”. These rappers in the traditional sense aren’t really rappers nor are they emcee’s they’re more-so lyricists under the context of Raps many elements. They generally engage in more poetic writings, and partake in text battles; Much like real life - but more tight-woven in terms of community - these battles have two textcees post a verse of how ever many lines stated dissing each other. People apart of the sites community then vote (usually under a specific format stated by the site), after a certian amount of votes are added (generally takes three to win) the winner is declared.

With all these positives however, there are a lot of negatives. With people being able to find Hip Hops information so easily, it could be argued that the idea of learning Hip Hop through the community aspect of Hip Hop has been tarnished. With people sticking to their home PCs as apposed to going out and experiencing Hip Hop; this is the case for some people, however this Isn’t as big of a problem as some of the other ones.

Even though there are a ton of sales digitally, there is also an even bigger up rise in bootleggers as it’s almost a google-search away to download the latest albums. Now there was always bootlegging before the digital age, however it is much more rampant with the bigger percentage of people using the internet. Additionally leaks of albums have lead to people downloading albums earlier, hampering sales; for underground artists who live solely on their albums selling this can also be considered problematic.

With a lot more people making rap music than before, also comes with a lot of quality issues. A lot of artists are making music, showing it to their friends (which also serves as their fanbase) and feel their music is top-notch, blinded to any mistakes or setbacks they have. In turn building a lot of bad artists, making it hard for quality artists to let their music become played.

Textcees can be problematic in the context of anonimity. While there is no problem with text-rapping, text rappers often times consider themselves “real rappers”, despite shielding themselves behind their computer screens; when it comes time to demonstrating rapping ability, their confidence takes over and they aren’t able to deliver. Now in the grand scheme of things, how does this effect Hip Hop? Well since Hip Hop has taken a lot of it’s community aspects online, you’re getting a lot of Text-Heads who will post on any sort of Hip Hop feeling they have credible knowledge becuase they’re a Textcee. Now this isn’t the case for ALL Textcees, but it isn’t uncommon.

With a combination of things here, some may feel that the idea of Hip Hop as a community structure is dieing. Which can be true based off of where you live, however on the flip side of this argument It’s not unheard of for a person to start a Hip Hop scene in their town (chances are if you live in a city, there’s already one), whether it be through Emceeing or having a crew of graff artists.

While you can argue that through Technology, the idea of Hip Hop being dead has been propelled through the mass commercialization of online ads and sites supporting what people do not consider real hip hop; also since a lot of Hip Hops traditional aspects haven’t made the leap to the commercial market like Rap has, you’re not seeing it become as huge as Rap has become — further supporting that Hip Hop is dieing due to the digital age. Since it’s taking the community aspects of Hip Hop  that housed the traditional elements of Hip Hop and only really marketing rap, If you feel that the community aspect is dieing, then you may feel that Hip Hop as a culture is dieing in its entirety.

In conclusion, it’s quite clear that the Digital Age has heavily effected the Hip Hop culture through the uprise of digital downloads, websites and commercialization. With all the positives, there are also negatives. In truth, the Digital Age has mostly brought Hip Hop to a larger scale, but with this expansion of Hip Hop as a culture, all the problems were expanded to. To some this may be fine, to others this may be hampering on their culture. Despite this, Hip Hop is always changing, and this is just another page in it’s history book.

What do you think about Hip Hop and the growing use of it on the Internet? Post your thoughts in the comments section below!

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Posted by LostMoniker on November 12th, 2008 :: Filed under Through The Telescope: Hip Hop and Society
Tags :: cell phone, classic hip hop, commercialization, Digital Age, digital downloads, Information Age, iPod, new hip hop, soundclick, world hip hop, youtube
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