Word: hip-hop
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...call it alternative hip-hop. Don't call it neo-rap or jazz-rap or anything that would separate it from itself. What it is, straight up, is hip-hop. Call it underground hip-hop, if you have to; call it the Next Wave, if you need a name; but whatever you call it, it's already arrived...
Three acts--the Roots, Q-Tip and Mos Def--are at the front of hip-hop's new movement. All three have recently come out with accomplished albums. And all three are creating hip-hop that's more personal, political and spiritual than the bulk of what passes for Top-40 rap today. These are young acts but experienced: Q-Tip, 29, is a former member of A Tribe Called Quest and is releasing his first solo effort. Mos Def, 25, has performed with Talib Kweli as the duo Black Star. And the Roots has five albums under its belt...
...enough to say that you like hip-hop or rock or rap. It's probably even enough to say that you like classical. But to say you like the blues? The blues, it always seemed to me, was not something to be liked; it had to be understood. Singing the blues, even listening to the blues, was supposed to be a commitment to a type of emotion and a type of experience. And what on earth, I used to wonder, could a middle class white boy from the New Jersey suburbs possibly know about the blues...
...Yeah, especially King Tubby, that kind of stuff. The Clash, of course. And then I kind of took a step back from what I think of as guitar-based music, when hip-hop started to kick off and got into that and then techno and a lot of electronic music. Kraftwerk were massive influences. I got into Detroit techno, especially early Detroit techno, Chicago house, and then I think it got a bit lame, it got a bit boring, and it got a bit obvious, and that's when I started going back to guitar-based stuff and Jesus...
...Well, the stations here are so...you've got your rock station, you've got your R&B stations, you've got your hip-hop stations... I tend not to listen. I don't listen a lot to the radio anyway. I mean, I listen to Radio Three at home, which is a classical music station, because if you spend all your life making loud rock music, you get home and you want something a bit easier on your ears...