Rolling with Saget

Jamie Kennedy rapping with Bob Saget. Just some great fun and actually it is a pretty good rap.

Announncing the Street Dream Tour

"The Street Dream Tour," featuring Young Jeezy, Lil' Wayne, Jim Jones, Baby, Fat Joe and Rich Boy, has been announced.

This will be one of the biggest rap tours of 2007.

Following are scheduled dates and venues for the Street Dream Tour:

March 3 - Cricket Arena- Charlotte, NC

March 11 - Convention Center- Orlando, FL

March 15- RichmondColiseum- Richmond, VA

March 16- Bi-LoCenter - Greenville, SC

March 17- Coliseum - Greensboro, NC

March 18- Civic Center - Macon, GA

March 22- US Cellular Center - Milwaukee, WI

March 23 - US Bank Arena - Cincinnati, OH

March 24- Louisville Gardens- Louisville, KY

March 25- Gaylord Entertainment Center - Nashville, TN

March 28- Nassau Coliseum- Uniondale, NY

March 29- Dunkin Donuts Center - Providence, RI

March 30- Sports Arena - Toledo, OH

April 1- 1st Mariner Arena - Baltimore, MD

April 5 - Alltel Arena - N. Little Rock, AR

April 6- Municipal Arena - Kansas City, KS

April 8- New Orleans Arena - New Orleans, LA

April 14- Scottrade - St. Louis, MO

April 15- Target Center -Minneapolis, MN

April 21-Cohen Stadium - El Paso, TX,

April 29- USC -Los Angeles, CA

Is Rap Music?

Now we come to the age old fight, is Rap music by definition? Is Rap in the same category as, say, Jazz or is it something else entirely, such as another form of poetry?

To start with we need to answer two questions, what is music and what is rap.

What is music? Wikipedia defines it as

Music is a form of art that involves organized and audible sounds and silence. It is normally expressed in terms of pitch (which includes melody and harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo and meter), and the quality of sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, and texture). Music may also involve complex generative forms in time through the construction of patterns and combinations of natural stimuli, principally sound. Music may be used for artistic or aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The definition of what constitutes music varies according to culture and social context.

This gives us three major criteria to discern whether anything is music.

• Melody
  

• Harmony
  

• Rhythm
  

And then what is rap? According to answers.com

A form of popular music developed especially in African-American urban communities and characterized by spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a strong rhythmic accompaniment.

So according to its definition a rap song does not need harmony or melody. But does that mean rap is not music?

Before we jump to conclusions let us take a closer look at harmony and melody.

The Free dictionary defines Harmony as:

Music

a. The study of the structure, progression, and relation of chords.

b. Simultaneous combination of notes in a chord.

c. The structure of a work or passage as considered from the point of view of its chordal characteristics and relationships.

d. A combination of sounds considered pleasing to the ear.

And the Free dictionary defines Melody as:

1. A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds.
2. Music
a. A rhythmically organized sequence of single tones so related to one another as to make up a particular phrase or idea.
b. Structure with respect to the arrangement of single notes in succession.
c. The leading part or the air in a composition with accompaniment.

Now that we have gotten all our definitions done lets go on to the synthesis and my opinion.

In my opinion rap is music and rap is just the next evolution of music, one that has since been replaced by what The Mars Volta are doing now, but that is a discussion for another time. Rap is lyrically focused and the beats that the lyrics go over are generally created in the studio by producers, but it's still music. A lot of what is musically popular today isn't very good, in the opinion of many other people, when compared to other forms of music, but it's still music.

Listen to a rap song without the lyrics and you get a rhythmic beat that is more often than not very appealing to the ears. If you look at the lyrics, some are down right awful but others are actually well written. Unlike most other types of songs written these days, rap songs are filled with slang, which often causes confusion for those who are unfamiliar with it. Most people consider it misogynistic, but the context of the slang makes a big difference on whether or not it actually is misogynistic. Although there are many rap songs that are misogynistic, you can by no means characterize the entire genre as exploitative.

Some of the rhymes in today's rap are actually rather inventive and creative, while others are dull and unoriginal. Sadly, consumers don't often encourage originality. In fact they often punish creativity, which is sad, and lessen the quality of the music, but this doesn't change it to non-music.

What do you think?

The Canterbury Rap and Lit-Hop

Baba Brinkman, who has a master's degree in medieval and Renaissance English literature from the University of Victoria, has found a way to apply his scholarly work to his hip-hop artistry, by cutting rhymes from Chaucer's classic 14th Century, "Canterbury Tales." From the article:

"Ready to kill with their jagged-edged daggers drawn/The three aggravated braggarts staggered up the lawn/And without dragging on while the story is told/Beneath the tree they found a bag filled with glorious gold," Brinkman raps in a seamless cadence, updating Geoffrey Chaucer to hip hop.

For those skeptical that there really is the right kind of relationship between Chaucer and hip-hop to pull off such a seemingly unlikely task, I refer you to Brinkman himself:

There are remarkable parallels between "The Canterbury Tales" and modern rap, Brinkman said at Wellesley College during a recent stop on his tour of high schools and colleges across the eastern United States and Puerto Rico.

"Chaucer and rap are both performance-based and they're both battles of words where your proficiency gets you by," said Brinkman, whose master's thesis compared the two.

"The Canterbury Tales" was a storytelling competition among pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral, much like freestyle rap battles today.

"Before I ever read anything about (Brinkman) I could see the similarities between rap and Chaucer, especially the storytelling aspect," said Kathryn Lynch, a Wellesley English professor who teaches classes on "The Canterbury Tales."

"Like rap, the sound of Chaucer is important for the audience's experience, and they are both competitive verse forms."

It really should not be surprising that someone like Geoffrey Chaucer could be reimagined in 2006 using a freestyle, lyrical art form. This is especially true when you consider slam poetry, beat poetry, and other modern movements that sought to present social issues and themes in a direct, punchy, and explicit sort of way. It takes another leap, however, to arrive at old English literature and it provocatively explodes the wealth of directions that hip-hop can go while also giving back to their constantly expanding audiences. Of course, that doesn't mean that everyone has jumped on board with this new style:

"People have a narrow idea of what constitutes rap based on what they see on TV. Who's to say that white people are not supposed to rap, or Asians, or Hispanics? ... Hip hop is all about proving your skills. About keeping it real. Some people are skeptical at first, but when they hear me, they realize I can rap."

Academics sometimes sniff condescendingly. Brinkman performed at Harvard University to an audience that included the chairman of the English department, but Columbia University was not interested when he offered to bring his act to campus, he said.

But there are rap adaptations based on Shakespeare and "Oedipus," all part of a genre dubbed "Lit-Hop," which is also the name of Brinkman's latest CD.

Thinking about it carefully, it makes perfect sense. Shakespeare and Chaucer, after all, wove words and phrases together just as a needleworker threads a perfectly fitting fabric. In a similar way, rappers sew lyrics and beats together into jams. The big difference is that the language and some of the rules have changed, but therein lies the artful mastery. Brinkman has found a way to combine these previously disparate worlds and fuse them into something new altogether. After all, the lyrical prowess of Shakespeare could really only be fully realized by the hip-hop movement's fluid, linguistic mechanics. Or to quote the artist:

"If Chaucer was around today, he'd probably rap," Brinkman said.

For more: http://www.babasword.com/

Muhammad Ali and Early Rap

AP Entertainment writer Jake Coyle asked yesterday, "Was Muhammad Ali the first rapper?" This question was brought on by the publication of a new book entitled "Ali Rap: Muhammad Ali the First Heavyweight Champion of Rap," edited and designed by George Lois. To expand on this further:

"Before there was rap ... there was Ali Rap ... a topsy-turvy, jivey jargon that only Ali could create, but a language we could all understand," writes the book's editor and designer, George Lois.
The book is not a continued analysis of this claim, but nearly 300 pages of examples, illustrated by a quote roughly every page that issued from Ali's world-class mouth. Lois, a renowned ad man and graphic designer, recently told The Associated Press he wanted to condense Ali's many sayings and memorable utterances into a "small, fat book — like a Bible or a Quran."

Now this is a fascinating discussion. Muhammad Ali was a boxer, not an artist persay, and his verbal stylings and oratory assaults generally seemed to be for the purpose of psyching out his opponent and not necessarily to speak to and inspire urban youth as much of today's hip-hop does. But the article goes on to say that:

"He was able to engage his social surroundings into his whole persona. That's what hip-hop was able to do — to be an antenna for social reflection," Chuck D told The AP. "He's one of the few black people to get on TV in the '60s and speak their minds — thank God — and also back up what he talked about."
Ali often spoke out about racism, Vietnam and his religion of Islam — but it was usually in a purely self-expressionist, non-confrontational way. He once said of race relations in America — speaking in almost Yogi Berra-style contradiction — "Nothing is wrong, but something ain't right."
Ali's outspokenness was unusual in the Jim Crow-era South. Oddly enough, Ali infrequently seemed to use the boxing ring to let out his frustration — instead, his outlet was a steady stream of unabashed confidence.
"Where do you think I would be if I didn't shout and holler?" he once said. "I would be poor and down in Louisville washing windows, shining shoes or running an elevator and saying `Yes suh' and `No suh,' and knowing my place."

And there you have it. One side of a seriously compelling argument anyway. Of course, one cannot doubt hip-hop's early influences from artists such as the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, and Public Enemy. The idea, however, that Ali paved the way for early rap by going against the grain through his own social consciousness and magical wordcraft is thoroughly plausible. The Greatest (tm) in his own way defied the social and cultural customs of his day and his chief tool was not his fists but rather his words. More than simple, cleverly spun, improvised prose, Muhammad Ali exemplifed fearlessness and courage in a time when taboo would be far too gentle a term for his antics and mannerisms. Ali didn't provoke people through mere volume or self-aggrandizement, he invited thought, eschewed stereotypes, bucked the norm, and quite possibly sowed the seeds of early rap. Whatever verdict one comes too, I think it's easy to agree that whether in boxing or on the mic, aggressive intelligence and panache give style to substance - a necessary ingredient for success.