73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally someone gets it right, November 30, 2004
This review is from: Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Music Culture) (Paperback)
I'm usually pretty skeptical of books written about hip-hop by authors with PhD's. Most of the time, they don't get it. They aren't hip hop heads, although they might own a few Cd's. Mike Dyson, Tricia Rose, et cetera.
I think this book gets it right.
But the title of this book is misleading. It's not a how-to book on making hip hop beats.
It's an ethnographic study on hip hop producers, most of which are underground/college radio hip hop makers.
So chances are most Amazon customers won't know the names of the producers, or even be able to recognize any of their songs.
But if you know names like Paul C, Diamond D, Showbiz, Pete Rock, Premier, Dilla, Marley Marl, Supreme, Soulman, Dj Muro - this book is really good.
There are a lot of insider issues that producers talk about between themselves, but never really get into the main hip hop discussion, and so it has no chance of getting into the mainstream.
Joe decided to look at producers and ask these questions. He interviewed folks like Dj Kool Akiem (of the Micranauts), Vitamin D, Domino of Hieroglyphics, and he asks questions like
- Why do you need to sample, why not just replay the sample?
- What's the big deal with reissues?
- Producers who didn't start out as Dj's
- Will you sample from a rap record?
If you're just a hip hop head, the quotes from producers are probably the most interesting part of the book. You really get to look into 1 school of thought on how to make beats.
If you're an academic, it's got plenty of footnotes, and lots of support for his ideas.
For me, I think the best part of the book was the literature review. He looks at a lot of the bigger books on the subject of hip hop and breaks them down as to why they don't make sense.
The only problem I really see with the book, is that it focuses on a certain type of producer. Sample based, means sampled from vinyl. You won't find a "keyboard" producer. You won't find producers that make g-rap type beats. (Mannie Fresh type of producer). It's very biased towards an underground, old east coast sound 89-93 era, aesthetic. Which is all the more interesting since he's based on the West Coast.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a refreshing look at hip hop production as aesthetic rather than ironic, November 22, 2007
This review is from: Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Music Culture) (Paperback)
As a producer and music fan, I was inspired by this book. It's an academic study, but unlike other such works, it's also a page-turner. The author does a great job of mixing data with anecdotal evidence that comes from his field work, and the result reads like a well-organized historical narrative.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of this book was that it denies all the nonsense that other writers have asserted about hip-hop's use of sampling as only an ironic way of referencing the past. This book instead puts forth the idea, which I agree with as a music producer, that sounds are chosen because they simply sound pleasing when combined with one another. In this respect, sampled-based hip-hop is really no different from many types of electronic music: Compositions are built up by putting sounds into the mix that work well with what is already there, and this process continues until you have some kind of groove or atmosphere established. All this patronizing stuff about hip-hop producers all being street philosophers from the school of hard knocks needs to stop. The truth is that they are composers like the rest of us, and they dig stuff that sounds good in their tracks. Thus, I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to read about the nature of sample-based hip-hop as a musical genre rather than as purely a method of recontextualizing the past to pay some mystical homage to those who came before. A refreshing, realistic book that gives proper respect and validity to a genre that is too often misunderstood and marginalized.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Depends on Your Purpose, July 20, 2008
This review is from: Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Music Culture) (Paperback)
Interesting exploration of underground hip-hop production. A limited diversity of interviewees hampers its usefulness - I was incredibly disturbed when one interviewee said, unchallenged, that the use of live instruments was "not real hip-hop." Otherwise, an interesting, albeit short-sighted journey.
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