City of Syrup
Exploring the evolution of Houston's chopped and screwed vibe from it's origin to the biggest hits coming out of the city today
Exploring the evolution of Houston's chopped and screwed vibe from it's origin to the biggest hits coming out of the city today
Houston has become one of the biggest cities in hip hop with breakout artists like Beyonce, Travis Scott, Megan Thee Stallion and Don Toliver leading the charts for almost 20 years now. Rewind back to the early 1990s, it was DJ Screw’s distinguished sound - slowed-down beats, pitched-down vocals that really made Houston stand out.
Listen to the hits coming out of Houston, then and now on YouTube Music and Spotify.
This unique brand of music was derived from his consumption of lean or sizzurp, cough syrup infused soda that created euphoric feelings. Houston hip hop, some argue, popularized the drug overdosing that has grown so much in hip hop everywhere. Was it this Houston hip hop movement that fueled the later-known City of Syrup or was hip hop just an outlet and a form of expression for people who were already struggling with addiction?
Diving into that a little bit deeper, we looked at arrest numbers for lean, marijuana, and cocaine and compared them to mentions in music from Houston’s biggest rappers over a 20 year span where the bar graph is mentions of the drug in music and the drug icon is number of arrests for that same drug:
*Texas Drug arrest records classify lean (codeine) as a derivative of opium and cocaine so arrest counts are the same
Interesting to see there is a correlation. More interesting to see that mentions actually follow arrests suggesting that hip hop artists speaking about drug abuse were expressing their everyday realities rather than glorifying consumption culture.
Bi-Coastal Battles
How the division between the East Coast and West Coast hip hop scenes in the 1990s went on to shape the music that we know and love
How the division between the East Coast and West Coast hip hop scenes in the 1990s went on to shape the music that we know and love today
No dispute in music has garnered the same amount of notoriety as the famous feud between 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. conspiracy theories aside, not only did the feud inevitably lead to both of their deaths, but also was the centerpiece for a larger divergence in hip hop culture. This divide led to each coast having a different soundscape that still exists today.
Listen to how the coasts stack up against each other
2Pac and Biggie started out as friends, freestyling together and visiting each other between New York and California. Tupac served as an early mentor to Biggie as he had already risen to stardom while Biggie’s career was still taking off. The relationship took a turn when Tupac got involved with a gang from Queens against Biggie’s advice. After getting shot in the lobby of Quad Studios in Times Square, a recording studio that Biggie was using, 2Pac lost all faith in Biggie. More than that, 2Pac made it his mission to destroy Biggie’s label - Bad Boy Records. (Source: Vice Article).
Taking a step back and looking at the larger hip hop environment during the 1990s, the tides were changing as West Coast artists were gaining popularity and the gangster rap vibe was taking over the game. Remember, in the late 1970’s Hip-hop’s founding father and the original crew, Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation had a vision for hip-hop as a force for social change. (Sources: Foundational Flows & Forbes Article). The East Coast mentality reflected that vision with the first breakout hit “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash in the ‘80s and had a socially conscious message. Following suit, East Coast hip-hop in the early days strived to provide an alternative to inner-city violence with artists like the De La Soul, a Tribe Called Quest, and eventually the Wu-Tang Clan looking to make people think and provide universal wisdom.
Click on the image to go to the dashboard! Data from RIAA.com
In stark contrast to the noble motives of the purist East Coast rap scene, Ice-T brought the voice of the gang scene in LA to rap with “6 ‘N The Mornin” in 1987. Inspired by Schoolly D’s P.S.K., Ice-T melded together this relaxed cadence with the harsh realities of the dangerous streets, gang violence, and crack wars of South Central LA. Gangsta rap’s new sound and mentality took hip hop to new heights. With Dr. Dre at the helm, Gangsta rap took the nation by storm with acts like N.W.A., Snoop Dogg, and of course 2Pac and Suge Knight’s Death Row Records going multi-platinum and running the rap game in the early 1990s. Hip-Hop began to flourish on the West Coast with Digital Underground, Cypress Hill, M.C. Hammer, and House of Pain providing depth to the region’s music scene and becoming some of Hip-Hop's best selling acts.
That all began to change in 1994 when both Illmatic by Nas and Ready to Die by The Notorious B.I.G. came out. Taking from their West Coast counterparts and building upon the legacy of the East Coast, these albums combined thematic concepts of gang rivalry, violence, urban poverty, and the troubled emotional state of a young man who has grown up in such an environment. Although initial sales of Illmatic were slow, both albums were critically acclaimed and the East Coast Renaissance period. This paved the way for rappers like Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, and DMX to take the stage and bring the crown back to the East Coast in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Click on the image to go to the dashboard! Data from RIAA.com
After the East Coast / West Coast rivalries had come to its final blows in 1997 with the tragic deaths of 2Pac and Biggie, East Coast rappers had dominated the charts and taken back the majority of sales as well. By the end of the decade, the East Coast had outsold the West Coast by 61M records with a much more diverse collection of rappers achieving commercial success. With the West Coast able to mark its own turf, other regional subgenres of Hip-Hop started taking root in new markets with major hubs taking root in Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Chicago, and New Orleans, each with its own distinct flavor that would shape the genre into what it is today.
Foundational Flows
How 3 Founders of Hip Hop Shaped Modern Music: A look at the number of times Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kurtis Blow have been sampled
How 3 Founders of Hip Hop Shaped Modern Music: A look at the number of times Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kurtis Blow have been sampled
So many techniques and styles have risen with hip hop over the past 40 years, with one being more controversial than most: sampling. Is it stealing? Is it a way to pay homage to legendary as well as niche artists from another era? Most conversations around sampling focus on the impact that the technique has on the producers and artists that are flipping old tracks and turning them into new ones. What about the hip hop legends that have been sampled?
Listen to the original tracks by the founding fathers of Hip-Hop followed by some of the best examples of artists sampling them.
If we go back to the birth of hip hop, we can see that sampling has always been a foundational technique in the production of the music. With Afrika Bambaataa sampling Kraftwerk on his breakthrough song “Planet Rock,” Grandmaster Flash sampling The Whole Darn Family on the popular “Superrappin’”, and Kurtis Blow famously sampling Chic’s “Good Times” on the first certified gold rap song “The Breaks,” it is evident that sampling was built into the genre from the very beginning. Starting as an underground movement meant to provide a voice for marginalized youth in the South Bronx, hip hop has taken many forms over the last 40 years from the early days of battle rap and gangsta rap all the way to trap, pop rap, and the emo/mumble rap that currently run the charts.
Through all of the phases, sub-genres, and crossovers, there is an immense respect for the grassroots origins that started it all. Almost 40 years later, the impact of Bambaataa, Flash, and Blow has been anything but forgotten. These three artists have been sampled a mind-boggling 2,200+ times (Whosampled.com) and have been incorporated in some of the biggest hits of the past few decades.
Click on the image to go to the dashboard! Data from WhoSampled.com
It is clear that these artists were most frequently sampled from 1987 to 1999, around 5-10 years after their breakthrough hits had been released. Although all three artists continued releasing music into the mid to late 2000s, their legacies were sealed with their releases in the early 1980s. Although they released a combined 1143 songs (Allmusic.com), the founders of hip hop find 76% of their samples coming from only 8 songs, all released at the beginning of their careers.
Planet Rock (1982) - Afrika Bambaataa: Sampled 392 times
AJ Scratch (1982) - Kurtis Blow: Sampled 334 times
The Message (1982) - Grandmaster Flash: Sampled 271 times
Christmas Rappin’ (1982) - Kurtis Blow: Sampled 186 times
Tough (1985) - Kurtis Blow: Sampled 165 times
The Breaks (1982) - Kurtis Blow: Sampled 120 times
Looking for the Perfect Beat (1983) - Afrika Bambaataa: Sampled 118 times
Do the Do (1982) - Kurtis Blow: Sampled 110 times
Even though only 53 songs of the 1143 have ever been sampled (approximately 4.6%), it is clear that only a few hits are needed to cement a legacy and Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kurtis Blow have all gone down as hip hop originators and legends in their own right. From being used by Black Star to Madonna to Calvin Harris and Kid Rock, these records not only founded hip hop, but have actively shaped the musical landscape of the last few decades.
Click on the image to go to the dashboard! Data from WhoSampled.com
It is clear to see that these early records have run the gamut and proved that from the beginning, hip hop had the momentum to be a global phenomenon. It only grew because as time progressed, rappers and artists built on the foundation that Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kurtis Blow laid.
By including the sonic flexibility, raw creativity, re-imagination of traditional musical structure, and often narrative lyricism, Bambaataa, Flash, and Blow paved the way for hip hop to provide an outlet for anyone who needed one. As time passed and the music spread, artists that came after them recognized this and used some of their sounds as hip hop sprawled into a diverse collection of sub-cultures and sub-genres, eventually transforming the way music sounded globally.