Word: hops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...union of hip-hop and jazz has gone from oddity to commodity in just one year. In 1993 the rap trio Digable Planets released its jazzy, idiosyncratic debut album Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space); since then the record has sold more than 500,000 copies and won a Grammy as well as two naacp Image Awards, and other jazz-rap bands, like US 3, have followed in Planets' wake. Meanwhile, some of the most respected musicians in jazz -- from Harvard summa cum laude saxophonist Joshua Redman to veteran trumpeter Lester Bowie -- have recorded songs combining jazz with...
...form combines the rich sounds of jazz playing with the insistent rhythms of hip-hop. The jazz performances are often samples -- snippets of music from classic jazz records. These pieces of sound are then reassembled into a sonic collage and set to a new beat with a rapper speaking over them. On Blowout Comb, Digable Planets draws not only on jazz but on R. and B. as well. In addition to relying on samples, Planets employs live musicians on many of the tracks, a move that allows the songs to breathe and flow into extended jams. Pop songs tend...
...mostly successful CD Home, Spearhead too takes on a variety of social concerns, from poverty to black nationalism. The songs draw on hip-hop, jazz and soul. One song, Positive, is about getting tested for the aids virus; another, Caught Without an Umbrella, describes the allure of suicide. A few of the tunes on Home are pedestrian, but all are jaywalkers -- flouting the rules and going where they please...
...rebels." Rap is a form of rebellion, but it can be a trap when it plays into violent stereotypes. By adapting the humanism of jazz and channeling the power of rap away from antisocial braggadocio, Digable Planets, the performers on Stolen Moments and Spearhead are helping make hip-hop truly revolutionary...
...part of the picture -- the touch she must have counted on to arouse the primal sympathies of her neighbors and to cut short any doubts -- was his race. The suspect had to be a black man. Better still, a black man in a knit cap, a bit of hip-hop wardrobe that can be as menacing in some minds as a buccaneer's eye patch. Wasn't that everyone's most familiar image of the murderous criminal...