[Archives] 'Underground Artists' in Newsweek, featuring Phase 2 (Oct, 1971)

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Mane One asks his friends: Is "Planet Rock" a hip-hop song? Professor XXL blogs his answer

Afrika Bambaataa

"Is 'Planet Rock' a Hip Hop song? I know some might put that song in the genre, Electro, but what do you think? My friend and I have been talking about this for a few weeks now." - DJ Mane One

Note: This post is actually in response to a really good conversation starter posed by DJ Mane One on his Facebook page. The question generated several good replies, many of which match up with my own. Before including my reply there, I figured I'd post it here.
 
[Placing professorial cap on head]  Ahem.

Mane, I would have to say that "Planet Rock" could be classified as a rap record (meaning hip-hop), but also as a funk/electro-funk record. But I'll try to explain just why I think that a special exception has to be made with this song.

It's mainly because of how the public first heard "Planet Rock."

That may sound kinda wack at first, but this is what I mean. While it may have been otherwise in NY (I kinda doubt it, tho), radio stations, discos, skating rinks, etc. were only playing the b-side of "Planet Rock" when it dropped -- the instrumental version. For upwards of 2-3 years after it was released, the instrumental was all that most people heard.

Thus, outside of maybe radio and club DJs, few knew that there was a vocal/rap version. And most didn't seem to care much for it when they did finally hear it; rap was still in it's infancy in '82, though, and the rap of Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force didn't sound like the rap of Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Melle Mel, and Sequence.

As for me, I think that I first heard the a-side version in early '85, when I bought a copy of "Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats." And, as much as I loved the instrumental (there were two instrumental versions being played in Chicago, one of which was a bootleg remix), I was not a fan of the vocal when I first heard it. But I quickly grew to love it.

Due to how it was most often heard by the public, particularly the listeners of R&B stations, "Planet Rock" was an electro-funk song, like "More Bounce to the Ounce." And funkadelic was clearly as much of an influence as Kraftwerk, and the very first thing that Bam says in the intro of the vocal is "Just taste the funk then hit me."

So, to be really fair, I think it's acceptable to also put "Planet Rock" in an electro-funk sub-category, as it has already been done for various record compilations. Despite my own territorial nature to classify it strictly as hip-hop, it's not. It's funk and rap. Well, rap AND funk.

– Professor XXL (aka St. Paco)

P.S. A Chicago DJ named Mike Macharello produced a bootleg remix of "Planet Rock" for WGCI, one of the city's two R&B stations on the FM dial then. Before his remix, they wouldn't even play "Planet Rock" -- but it was in the rotation for three years afterward. I have a cool memory of me, my sister and our friends dancing to it on the patio in our backyard. It's been uploaded to YKFS for your listening pleasure.

[Press-N-Play®] Planet Rock - Mike Macharello Remix 

Celebrating 75 years of American...rap music?

"Listen close, I don't want you to miss
none of this here story, 'cause it goes like this..."

Yeah, yeah, KRS-One. The Bronx may be the birthplace of hip-hop music, but some of its precious "blueprint" appears to have come from the rugged suburbs of Virginia. That's right, Virginia. It was in the Norfolk suburb of Berkley that the gospel music act known as the Golden Gate Quartet was formed in the 'durrty' 1930s. Negro spirituals were this crew's specialty, but they were famously known for rocking the mic with a trademark brand of toe-tapping gospel, marinated in the secular styles of jazz, blues, pop and rap -- decades before rap even had a name! And to my ears, the Golden Gate Quartet's 1937 cover/remix of the Arthur Collin's song "Preacher and the Bear" seems to be one of the earliest and best examples on wax of a familiar sound that would come to revolutionize music four decades later, with the release of Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight." Yowza! Talk about old school.

Submitted for your approval ... "Preacher and the Bear."

[Press-N-Play®] Golden Gate Quartet – Preacher and the Bear
[Press-N-Play®] Golden Gate Quartet – Mockingbird

  
Shout outs to Word Is Bond for the heads-up, and to the ever reliable Archive.org for an even better version of this song, as well as others by the Golden Gate Quartet.

Breaking and the New York City Breakers

If Spraycan Art, the book by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, is considered the bible of graffiti, then Michael Holman's Breaking and the New York City Breakers might be the equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls of hip-hop–because copies of this publication are extremely effin' rare today. Released to magazine racks back in 1984, Holman's visionary trade paperback documented the short history of the Floor Masters, the b-boy crew that he would groom and rename the New York City Breakers. In the process, Holman explores the roots of hip-hop music, dance, graffiti art, language and fashion, and renders a vivid portrait of this vibrant culture in its incredibly defined infancy. Of all of the artifacts in my archive, Breaking and the New York City Breakers is one of my most treasured. As you can see from the cover, my copy is as tattered and torn as a thousand-year-old religious scroll. But since most modern disciples of hip-hop culture have probably never heard of, let alone seen this rare gem, it seemed like a good time to share a few of its pulse-pounding pages.

So sayeth

St. Paco

Archive #1: Another 'Great Day in Harlem'

The original image is called "A Great Day in Harlem," and it's probably the single-most famous image associated the with the jazz music culture. Taken in 1958, within the image's borders stand 57 jazz musicians all assembled on the sidewalk and on the stairs of a Harlem brownstone. Artists like Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Mary Lou Williams and 51 other jazz greats.


In 1998, XXL magazine paid homage to "A Great Day in Harlem" by remixing the image with 144 contemporary hip-hop artists, and a smattering of actual hip-hop legends. Photographed by the even more legendary Gordon Parks, the fold-out cover graced the magazine's November issue. Submitted for your perusal: another 'great day in Harlem'