Jazz Rap

Recently I was just exploring various types of music on Youtube. I had heard the name “A Tribe Called Quest” on Kanye West’s track Last Call from College Dropout many years ago. So I decided to listen to some of their music. For those who don’t know, A Tribe Called Quest is an American hip hop group that was formed in 1985, composing MC/producer Q-Tip, MC Phife Dawg aka Phife Diddy (Malik Taylor) and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad [1]. Jarobi White, a fourth member, left the group after their first album in 1991. While searching I stumbled on the album Low End Theory and was amazed at what I heard: smooth rap coupled with jazz instrumentals. On browsing similar songs, I came across the name De La Soul. I had also heard this name in the lyrics of a notable rapper but didn’t know who they were. So I did a little research. De La Soul is an American hip hop trio formed in 1987 on Long Island, New York, comprising Posdnuos, Dave and Maseo [2]. Out of curiosity I checked out De La Soul’s album Bulhloone Mindstate and was also thrilled with how it fused rap with rich jazzy instrumentals. It was while researching De La Soul that I came across the subject of this post: Jazz rap.

Jazz rap is a fusion subgenre of hip hop music and jazz, developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s [3]. The lyrics are often based on political consciousness, Afrocentrism and general positivism. It turned out that the music I had been so thrilled about was Jazz rap and coincidentally both A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul are among the pioneers of the genre together with Digable Planets. Usually jazz rap users hip hop rhythms and then adds repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, piano, etc. over it. Since the 1990s, musical jazz references have become less obvious and lyrical references to jazz are less common, however jazz had been added to the palette of hip hop producers. Even up till today you can find that some hip hop musicians add elements of jazz to their music, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s album: To Pimp a Butterfly incorporates jazz, funk and spoken word. I have a feeling I’ll be listening to jazz rap for a while as both jazz and hip hop are two of my favourite genres. It’s amazing to find a subgenre fusing both together. Talk about enjoying the best of both worlds.

Sources

1. A Tribe Called Quest – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tribe_Called_Quest.

2. De La Soul – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_La_Soul

3. Jazz rap – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_rap

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *