Sunday, January 17th, 2010
DJ Kool Herc likes to say that The Incredible Bongo Band’s version of “Apache” is the national anthem of hip-hop. Its famous drum and percussion break reliably put bodies on the dance floor through hip-hop’s prehistory and has been sampled untold numbers of times. Here’s the break:
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On the left is the record where the break first appeared, and on the right is DJ Kool Herc.
You could also call the Apache break the national anthem of drum n bass and all the other electronic microgenres based on sped up and scrambled hip-hop beats.
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Tags: apache, breakdancing, cold tech hot beats, copyright, dance, dna, double dee and steinski, drum n bass, drumming, evolution, funk, goldie, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, history, kool herc, mashups, memes, missy elliot, nas, pop, questlove, roots, sampling, seventies
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Friday, October 16th, 2009
Turntablists use a record player to play records in ways they weren’t meant to be played. By speeding up, slowing down and reversing the record under the needle, a whole universe of new sounds becomes possible. This new tool is still in its early stages of development. DJs already invented the instrumental sound of hip-hop. I wonder what else they have coming.
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Tags: a tribe called quest, afrika bambaataa, apache, cold tech hot beats, dj, dj premier, funky drummer, grand mixer dst, grandmaster flash, herbie hancock, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music notation, peter piper, rahzel, rhythm, rockit, run-dmc, sampling, scratch, turntablism, visualization, wu-tang
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