Tracing the Roots of Trip Hop: How One City’s History Influenced a Global Genre (original) (raw)

Just Don't Call it Trip Hop: Reconciling the Bristol sound style with the trip hop genre

Trip hop music emerged in the early 1990s, however, as a label the term ‘trip hop’ has always been problematic. Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky, the artists frequently credited with creating trip hop, have unanimously rejected the label, claiming their music has nothing to do with trip hop. Despite the artists’ objections, music industrialists, fans and academics continually label their music trip hop or its alternate term ‘Bristol sound’, though specifics are never given as to what, if anything, distinguishes the two terms. This article seeks to mediate the discussion between opposing viewpoints by describing the Bristol sound as a style that relates to the trip hop genre. Following the introduction, the second section discusses the controversy surrounding the term ‘trip hop’ and suggests possible reasons behind the artists’ rejection of the label. The third section addresses the terms ‘genre’ and ‘style’ and outlines their similar points of reference while also highlighting their different areas of inquiry. The final section analyses several trip hop songs and identifies common elements that relate to the trip hop genre, before identifying explicit differences that distinguish the Bristol sound style. The analysis of style focuses on the spectral quality of the works and draws from Smalley’s (1997) theory of spectromorphology.

Hip-Hop in the UK - EPMOW Vol 11

The emergence of localised sub-genres of hip hop around the world has been well documented (Bennett, 1999; Mitchell, 2001), however the genre of UK Hip Hop (or British Hip Hop) has been largely overlooked in scholarly research. Although largely an underground music scene with very limited commercial success, UK hip hop has been recognized as being pivotal in the development of the more commercially successful genres of grime, trip hop and drum’n’bass (Hesmondhalgh & Melville, 2001; Campion, 2006). Existing research into UK hip hop has often been from a cultural or sociological, rather than musicological perspective (Hesmondhalgh & Melville, 2001; Webb, 2007; Bennett, 1999; Dedman, 2011). Using semi-structured interviews with key UK hip-hop producers alongside analysis of published interviews from selected hip-hop media publications alongside analyses and discussion of examples of the producer’s musical works to support the interview data, the aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the amalgamation of British and hip-hop musical aesthetics and its impact on the development of UK hip-hop production practice during what is widely considered its most prolific period between 1998 and 2005 (Speers, 2014). References Bennett, A. (1999) Rappin’ on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England – an Ethnographic Study. The Sociological Review, 47 (1), pp.1–24. Campion, C. (2006) Inside grime. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/may/23/urban1 [Accessed 14 November 2012]. Dedman, T. (2011) Agency in UK hip-hop and grime youth subcultures - peripherals and purists. Journal of Youth Studies, 14 (5), pp.507–522. Hesmondhalgh, D. & Melville, C. (2001) Urban Breakbeat Culture - Repercussions of Hip-Hop in the United Kingdom. In: T. Mitchell ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop outside the USA. Wesleyan University Press. Mitchell, T. ed. (2001) Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop outside the USA. Wesleyan University Press. Speers, L. (2014) Keepin’ It Real: Negotiating Authenticity in the London Hip Hop Scene. PhD Thesis. London, Kings College London. Webb, P. (2007) Hip hop’s musicians and audiences in the local musical ‘milieu’. In: P. Hodkinson & W. Deicke eds. Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes. Oxon, Routledge.

The Cultural Context of Hip Hop in Brixton in the 1990s

Born out of the second Black cultural renaissance of Britain in the 1980s (the first having occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s, with the work of the artists and writers of the Caribbean Artists Movement, such as George Lamming and Aubrey Williams, and the emergence of an extensive network of Black performance poetry (such as Linton K. Johnson), hip-hop could be seen as a British Black form of expressive movement in Black Britain in the 1990s. The performance poets’ movement could be considered as a precursor to the international explosion of rap and ragga in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as with the poems of Amiri Baraka in the 1960s, who was one of the pioneers of the Black bohemian movement. The institutionalisation of the Notting Hill Carnival in West London as Europe’s biggest street event, the explosion of sound systems in south London clubs in the 1960s and 1970s and later that of reggae in major Black areas in Britain and the Brixton riots in the 1980s, were all instrumental in the development of hip-hop in Britain. The 1990s Black Britain witnessed the normalisation of race in mainstream popular culture and the growth of the Black intelligentsia, the result of the Thatcherite enterprise culture of the 1980s, which further helped the access of hip-hop culture in mainstream British culture.