It brings me into the freestyle argument.
Oh, you’ve have opened up a can of worms. Funny, I read KDM’s post earlier and was going to bring up Freestyle/Latin Hip-Hop but couldn’t reply at the time. I don’t like the term latin hip-hop, but I disagree with you on the reasoning. Most artist tagged “freestyle” are just pop or pop/R&B singers using hip-hop rhythms often with a touch of Latin rhythms.
So in that sense they are hip-hop in that their rhythms are based on sounds established in hip-hop. Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam – arguably freestyle’s most successful act – was put together and producer by Full Force. The name freestyle comes from the group Freestyle, whose primary producer Tony Butler also produced Debbie Deb’s and Trinere’s early hits. These hits, the hits of early hip-hop artists from L.A., Miami, and NYC (“electro” hip-hop; referenced and linked above) and Shannon’s “Let The Music Play” (produced by Carlos Barbosa and Mark Ligget) were popular among Latinos (and others), especially in those. Later Recording artists – many Latino – recorded music with
The “freestyle” label stuck, and thus was used later in the 80s to market primarily Latino pop/dance/R&B artists to the Latino and “crossover” audiences. “Freestyle” artists did crossover and their biggest hits ended up being pop or pop/rock ballads (“Toy Soldier” “If Wishes Came True” “Because I Love You” “One More Try” “Seasons Change” etc.). Unfortunately, record labels and radio stations care more about marketing and the bottom line than a particular recording artist’s or musical sound’s longevity, so when pop tastes changed, “freestyle” died. It had divorced itself so fully from the urban/hip-hop community that it had no roots (via radio stations, fanbase, TV shows, other media, etc.) to help sustain it – only a cult following, which is true to this day. This is actually a perfect microcosmic example of what has happened to the “dance” community since the early 90s.
A few questions for you:
1) Which of the following do you consider
not freestyle:
a) Afrika Bambaataa “Planet Rock” (1982)
b) Hashim “Al-Haafiysh” (1983) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1waaDyVt5lY
c) Aleem ft. Leroy Burgess “Release Yourself” (1984)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3qiVRYIhps
d) Freestyle “It’s Automatic” (1986) [linked above]
e) Jesse Johnson “Baby Let’s Kiss” (1987) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y57JRE5XtjM
f) Sweet Sensation “Hooked On You”
g) Jody Watley “Don’t You Want Me”
h) Expose’ “Let Me Be The One”
i) Tracie Spencer “Symptons Of True Love”
j) Linear “Sending All My Love”
k) Janet Jackson “Pleasure Principle”
l) Steve B “In My Eyes”
n) TKA w/Michele Visage “Crash (Have Some Fun)”
m) Ghost Town DJs “My Boo”
o) Shanice “I Bet She’s Got A Boyfriend”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBNy3vMQBsc
p) Pebbles “Two Hearts”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jSzdhKk9g8
2) Out of a, b, c, d, and m above, which do you
not consider hip-hop?
3) We all know Carlos Barbosa is mentioned as a pioneer (often “the” pioneer), do you consider Aleem (Taharqa and Tunde-Ra Aleem), Tony Butler, Bambaataa Khayam Aasim, Full Force (Bow Legged Lou, Paul Anthony, Brian George), Arthur Baker, and Hashim (Jerry Calliste) also pioneers?
4) Do you consider the producers in question 3 to
not be hip-hop producers?
5) Besides Stevie B and Shannon, are there any other African-American freestyle artists?
6) Do you consider Information Society and NuShooz “freestyle”? (NuShooz refers to itself as a pop/R&B band).
By the way, singing and hip-hop are not mutually exclusive. Mary J. Blige is an R&B singer but she is also considered hip-hop. Hip-hop is an umbrella term for the music and culture that arose from urban streets and communities in the 70s and 80s. It was essentially “grassroots” contemporary music and culture coming from the bottom up rather than the trickle down route that artistry took in the new corporate-driven music world. Therefore hip-hop does not equal rap. Rap is the primary vocalization style that arose out of hip-hop culture.
So, that’s where the “Latin Hip-Hop” label comes from. My problem with that label is that the ethnic identifier implies (a) that this music came mainly from Latinos, when many African-Americans and others helped lay the foundation, and (b) that “other” hip-hop must be Black Hip-Hop, yet while hip-hop is a primarily African-American culture there where others like Nuyoricans who were part of its development. Freestyle artists IMO were just pop-R&B-postdisco-hiphop artists. I sparingly use the term “freestyle” because it’s shorter and because the artists marketed and labeled as such usually stuck with a very defined, but not unique, part of the urban sound.
