The idea for this book started with a simple question: why do MCs try to nurture collective participation dynamics in their lyrics even though they perform them in a studio booth and not in front of a crowd? This question came up after I had presented a paper on intertextuality and rap music at the Researching Black Canadian Music/Black Music Cultures in Canada, held at York University, in Toronto, in May 2003. In that paper I examined the intertextual aesthetics of the rap genre but fell short of bringing to light its specific functions and the purpose of MCsā referential lyrics and immoderate use of simile. Although I drew attention to the way rap lyricists importantly rely on intertextual references I never went beyond the play element explanation to support their rhetorical inclination to nod to preexisting texts and to mention other artists. Considering the matter further for a recent article (the enhanced version of which would become Chap. 6 of this book), I established that rappers, through intertextuality, seek to connect with their listeners the same way they connect on stage with an audience. Letās take the example of Nicki Minaj, who chose to call her third album The Pinkprint (2014). Through this inferred reference to Jay-Zās widely acclaimed opus The Blueprint, Minaj, engages the listener through an alternate form of call-and-response in soliciting their reading competence and cultural grammar (in the process, she also relates her status in the rap milieu to one of the genreās most celebrated albums and MCs and asserts her sociocultural authenticity in the extremely competitive rap game). Of course the communication established through this spin on call-and-response is not as tangible as the physical connection that would occur during a live performance. It remains nonetheless interactive since the reader/listener responds emotionally to the reference and participates in the performance as critic. Although it is not the main focus of this book, this idea of intertextuality as one of several ways to engage with an audience which is ānot thereā through some kind of call-and-response would nevertheless lay down its foundations. It would lead me to investigate more comprehensively the idea of audience engagement in mediated rap performances and rap lyrics. Once acknowledged, this idea would pop up in every song I listened to or would emanate from every book on rap I read. In the same way Murray Formanās authoritative study on place and space had enhanced my approach to rap lyrics, this observation on the inclination of rap musicians to present their lyrics and studio recorded performances as live alteredāand somehow desensitizedāmy listening experience. Almost any song I would play would validate my point that rap lyrics are remarkably audience-oriented. It was for example the case the first time I heard the 2015 song āGreen Lightā by rappers Jonwayne and Anderson Paak. Although these two rap musicians are less popular than Nicki Minaj, and although that particular song comes from an independently released albumāwith greater artistic freedom and fewer constraints to comply with aesthetic, thematic and formal standardsā, its lyrics nonetheless display the same braggadocio, the same āIā vs āyouā battle rhymes (āSee Iām in tune and youāre not/Iām the truth and youāre notā) but also and most importantly, the same pronounced emphasis on collective participation, audience engagement, immediacy and spontaneity (āone more time,ā āayo,ā āOne-two, one-two (yeah, yeah)ā) as other songs produced for a mainstream audience. I found the same philosophy of performance oozing from numerous boxes of the first volumes of Ed Piskorās Hip Hop Family Tree (2013). Hence my decision to dig further and examine rapās transition from face-to-face performance to technologically-mediated performance more carefully since no other book-length study had been written on collective participation in rap, which, I believe, made this project highly original in its ambition to enhance our understanding of the compositional practice of rap lyricists and of their performance philosophy.
This book begins with a study of the first rap performances and examines how the formative years of the hip-hop movement were fueled by collective participation. Before it flourished as recorded music, rap performers and their audiences had a direct connection, principally because they were located in the same place. The move from the streets or from the clubs into the recording studio completely altered this relationship by breaking the link of time and space. The rap performance was no longer live and there was no back and forth banter between the rapper and the audience anymore. However, MCs, I will argue, manage to offset the isolation of the performer from their audience and maintained stage dynamics on records, especially through the battle-rhyming type of lyrics, which rely heavily on similes and intertextual references.
The Chap. 2, before plunging into the shaping of rap as an audience-oriented musical form, explores call-and-response as a rhetorical device and re-contextualizes it in the academic discourse and in rap studies. It reflects on call-and-response as a longstanding rhetorical and musical practice that is unquestionably prominent in the sociocultural practices of some black communities in the US, but not, as many scholars contend, a uniquely āblackā feature. It also revisits the prevalent discourse on the African roots of call-and-response, examining how it came to epitomize āblackā music and highlights the chief functions of this rhetorical practice.
Chapters 3 and 4 explore the influence of the formative years of rap music on the practice of emceeing as well as the structuring role of live performances on the lyrical content of the MCs. Both seek to demonstrate how rap, when its first records were released, was still very much a party-oriented musical practice. Chapter 3 first examines how the early rap performances (1974ā1978) were fueled by collective participation. Focusing on pre-1979 parties (or pre-Sugarhill Gangās āRapperās Delightā foundational years) and on call-and-response routines, it specifically looks at how influential performers established audience engagement as a template for emceeing. In Chap. 4, I subsequently argue that collective participation was not lost when rap music transitioned from live performances to recorded music. I contend that rapās seminal years exerted a significant influence over rap lyricism, particularly with regard to its focus on call-and-response strategies and its emphasis on collective participation. The performance philosophy of the early days, in which the individual and group are affirmed simultaneously, survived the transition through the emphasis on call-and-response-based practices and through rap lyricism, which prolonged the āliveā characteristic of pre-1979 performances through a prevailing conversational tone involving an interactive, interdependent, and spontaneous process for achieving a sense of unity in which listeners have an impression of inclusiveness.
In Chap. 5, focusing on popular rap songs from 1978 to 2010, I try to appraise this enduring emphasis of MCs on collective participation in technologically-mediated performances and to provide insight into the creative process of rap lyrics. To bolster my argument of rap lyrics as a āmediated-liveā conversation, I have explored a corpus of over 350 relevant songs from 1978 to 2010. This examination intends to demonstrate that building unity and harmony through lyrics has remained significant over those years and that, while crafting deeply evocative and memorable messages, MCs remained highly interactive although the music was no longer exclusively performed live.
As I previously mentioned, Chap. 6 revisits ideas developed in an article published in a French journal in American studies in 2015. I contend that the structuring role of the spirit of competition in the rap genre obliquely shaped the content of the rhymes of its MCs, making intertextuality a highly persuasive and multifunctional stylistic device in a musical sphere where elaborate and intricate language communicates better than simplicity. I also argue, as I did briefly with Nicky Minajās The Pinkprint, that the active engagement with the audience, prompted by intertextual references and similes, is an indirect expression of collective participation and call-and-response insofar as the dialogical character of rap lyrics activates the listenerās shared knowledge, thus transforming them into a collective performance.
Chapter 7 focuses essentially on live performances and addresses various ways rap lyrics cultivating collective participation on vinyl connect powerfully with live audiences. It also considers the stage dynamics of MCs and their use of call-and-response on stage, with the audience, with back-up MCs or with their DJs. Chapter 8 draws attention to the ways rap musicians have dealt with non-black fans singing their unaltered lyrics during live shows and how the controversies around the N-word have influenced their live performances and collective participation. Chapter 9, the closing chapter, includes a conversation with Master Gee from The Sugarhill Gang about audience engagement.
References
- Minaj, N. (2014). The pinkprint. New Orleans, LA: Cash Money Records.
- Piskor, E. (2013). Hip hop family tree book 1: 1970ā1981. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics.