It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

-- jess

i'm assuming you're talking about the studio primier works in?

Okay so yeah the beats are totally four down as opposed to yr. standard hip-hop swing, and even when they keep the emphasis in the right place there's a sort of quantization going on, with the pauses trimmed, and reinforced by the other samples overlayed on the drums and the emphasis with snare on hitting the the third beat rather than the first. But more than that you have to confront Chuck D's flow which is equally chunky. I never read SFJ's magnum opus on shifts in flow in hip-hop (& I'm dying to if someone knows where I can get it) but there's a definite transition in rythmic and rhyme patterns of MCs which I'm going to take a stab at.

Chuck D took the classic Run-DMC flow about as far as it could go, but he kept the opening syllables of his lines -- four at least -- hard and solid to the beat, as well as the couple of closing ones so if you concieve of the line as four parts (each half a bar -- the doubling of the spoken line to the beat was pretty unique to PE), there's only room for play in the third (better yet the time between the first and second snare hit on the downbeat in each two bar set). And Chuck pretty much kept his discursive unit complete in each line. All of which was formed a complex which didn't have anywhere else to go except more intensity, faster beats, harder sounds, etc. since disruption of any element would throw off the whole complex. And Nation of Millions is maybe about as far as it could go without losing the audience.

The vocal innovation of G-Funk (and Golden Age -- > underground too) was in lines which didn't just punch the beginning and end but rolled into one another, lines which necessitated a different rhythmic basis, one significantly more flexible. Bomb Squad Productions on the other had you could pretty much lay any drum track under any other PE track, match the beats, and the song would still sound pretty much the same.

Compare with the "rock" imports carried out by Jay-Z, Em, and Freeway lately in rhythmic composition.

Also PE always seemed to me to fall in the afro-futurist tradition, re-imagining the present in dystopian sci-fi terms rather than projecting it outwards to space. I like Jesse's quip about "a band imitating a social movement" in that regards. And for various reasons, its worth noting, there's never been a continuity between afro-futurist artists -- its a tradition of outliers.

and even when they keep the emphasis in the right place there's a sort of quantization going on, with the pauses trimmed, and reinforced by the other samples overlayed on the drums and the emphasis with snare on hitting the the third beat rather than the first

What kind of mumbo-jumbo are you trying to sell here Sterling? I like your writing in general, but "quantization"? Like the Bomb Squad were using Pro-Tools? And if you are talking about general breakbeat samples - the snare hits are on the two and the four. So as a listener I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Also, this : better yet the time between the first and second snare hit on the downbeat in each two bar set. Dude, snare hits are on the upbeats. Christ.

And for various reasons, its worth noting, there's never been a continuity between afro-futurist artists -- its a tradition of outliers.

Sun Ra, Lee Perry, George Clinton - nothing in common? (cf. John Corbett's Extended Play bk)

And how fucking dumb do you have to be to read "no continuity" as "nothing in common"?

(ps i'm mainly pissed here coz yr. fucking with my man st for no good fucking reason)

Sterling, again, no offense intended but yr post is problematic that's all. No big deal, I do it all the time. You say Chuck D took the classic Run-DMC flow about as far as it could go (disagree - Beasties advanced it more on Paul's Boutique if anything; *gasp* white people shockah) then go on to say the doubling of the spoken line to the beat was pretty unique to PE: that was Run-DMC whole fucking thing!

Anyway I would like to contribute more myself, and I'm certainly not trying to come off like some expert on this shit. Specifically I really wanted to go back and listen to my X-Clan and Brand Nubian cds to directly address the political/lyrical bent of this thread, but i just haven't had time tonight.

I think the real headfuck really was Fear of a Black Planet, and thinking of that, I think this thread gets it.

Also, "She Watch Channel Zero" - nice conceit for the white kids (er, white critics) but why? Why is this cut on this record?

And that race baiting about the beasties is just petty. I find their stuff dull for the most part, and don't have any albums to refer to but all I know is that if they took it further then they forgot again by their later stuff.

I'll get back to you on the run-DMC stuff later (I actually sold my albums to a dj friend since she wanted the vinyl & i never rebought the cds, so I haven't listened properly in a while)

okay here's a question which i was talking about with alex last night...

so PE, along with Eric B, Pete Rock, Premier, BDP to some extent on the later stuff - just listing the Big Names now, mind - is hailed as being among the first hip-hop acts to link the genre with "soul" or "funk" mostly through the sampled breaks, supposedly engendering some sort of continuity between "Black Music" which wasn't there before (total bullshit of course, since it's mostly just that classical black musicians didn't want to be linked with guys shouting and out of tune drum machines going off, so they didn't - even begrudgingly acknowledge hip-hop - until you could drop a sax sample over a gently swining break recorded 25 years earlier.) but PE sounds so ANTI-soul now, mostly because of time and influence: the pounding looped breaks and squealing sirens/brass being turned into ahuman rave, techno-rock, whatever. PE NEVER sounded "funky" to me (one of the things i liked/hated most about "fear..." at age 12 was trying to play it to my mother - who is a big funk/soul/disco fan - and saying "look ma, they're talking about respecting women...hip-hop isnt all bad!" and her just not being able to get past the harshness of the production.) but could their "Datedness" also stem from the fact that the looped-break-and-Maceo-sample aesthetic mr. diamond talks about above has actually been revealed on only be a blip in the history of hip-hop rather than the Way, The Light, The Truth (cf. Sugarhill disco, early Def Jam drum machine rock, electro, booty, bass, bounce, the dancehall influence, right up to today with tim and the neptunes, etc etc.)

so can we move on to my old question as to why people think this is the greatest hip-hop album of all time? cuz, y'know, it's not.

You've got Chuck's politically / socially / historically conscious lyrics, bolstered by samples of black-power-themed oration; you've got the chopped and shredded and layered JB, funk and soul samples pushing the boundaries of the SP1200 as a compositional tool (and, as noted above, an explicit connection to a source-body of music that had fallen into relative obscurity at that point); plus there was Flav clowing on the sterotypes and realities of black performance simultaneously--his persona as complementary and contradictory to Chuck's kinda sealed the breadth complexity of what PE represented.

All these things were percolating in hip-hip at the time, and with Nation of Millions are presented at arguably the most fully-realized, well-formed degree up until then. I'm not suprised that the result wasn't emulated too much--who else could assemble such a complex package by design? Who would want to? PE were a group that was canonical not because they created a model or template for others to work with, but because they created something (of which music was just a part) that perfectly expressed and tied together what was happening at a particular moment in time.

Whether their work holds up for you now, particularly if you weren't following them back when Nation was released, is a different matter--but I think it still validates their inclusion in some kind of canon.

Greatest hip-hop album all time argument more to do with history than the music (not to say I still won't put Nations and 3 Feet High 1-2 on my list)

(didn't read any posts since Jess's but I will now)

Because people, musicians, especially hip-hop musicians, want to BE THEMSELVES.

Yeah, well I recall that was for MC's--PE's rating as a total package has to be higher cause there was no love for Eric B.'s turntable skills back in those days (and probaly even less since!)

i dunno really know what my favorite is. in a pinch it'd be fear..., but it might actually be illmatic or 36 chambers.

They were always fastidious about clearing their samples; as I recall they were all listed in the liner notes even at the time.

Tommy Boy vs Def Jam was a pretty huge difference in terms of the quality of how those labels handled their business

Is there new stuff being made that's influenced by this record?