Saturday, 5:45-8 pm, What's Next Stage
Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, Common
Sunday, 1-5 pm, Comcast Mainstage
In the beginning--say the late '70s--there was the core, the breakbeat, from which hiphop radiated. With each wave of artists, the genre introduced something entirely new. This was the golden era, when all that mattered was the element of surprise, and the best hiphop was by those who exceeded all expectations: Run-D.M.C. affixing hard-rock guitars to a pounding hiphop beat in "Rock Box"; Doug E. Fresh's "The Show" looping, of all things, the Inspector Gadget theme song; Marley Marl and Craig G using Tears for Fears in "Shout." Soon after, De La Soul made a bold move in 1988 with 3 Feet High and Rising, an album that contained samples from Sesame Street, Hall & Oates, and the Turtles--among others.
The rapper also evolved his personalities with new raps and ideas, and with 3 Feet High, the rapper went as far as anyone at that time could possibly imagine. But in 1992, Common Sense exploded out of Chicago with the opening lines of one of the greatest hiphop tracks of all time, "Soul by the Pound," rapping, "I'm as bad-bad as Leroy Brown-Brown/Yo, I'm a pro-pro but not a noun-noun/If you got beef-beef then you'll get ground-ground/Cut up in soul-soul by the pound-pound." He threw hiphop for a loop: He was from Chicago, a place known more for house than hiphop, and he used a scat-like flow, which was heated and terribly unstable--leaping into rapid stutters here, slowing down to a regular rap pace there, and suddenly breaking into the chorus of a then-popular Red Hot Chili Peppers song ("give it away, give it away, give it away now").
Even today, Common Sense (or Common, as he's popularly called) maintains an outward movement, as his latest and spacy CD, Electric Circus (2002), demonstrates. After scoring a commercial success in 2000 with Like Water for Chocolate, Common decided not to repeat the proven formula and turned unexpectedly to Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and Joni Mitchell for inspiration. Though progressive in every respect, Electric Circus is, ultimately, anachronistic--it represents the values of the older hiphop, a hiphop that moved forward centrifugally.
The present generation of DJs and rappers, because of the realities of the mainstream, rarely expand outward in search of new ideas. They tend to be archaeologists, rather than astronauts leading us into deep space. Instead of the outward, explosive movement of Def Jam (the ultimate label of the indefatigable golden age), we now have the inward, implosive movement of Def Jux (the ultimate label of the current exhausted post-hiphop period).
This centripetal movement is illustrated in Aesop Rock's marvelous debut, Float (2000), which navigates personal, internal spaces. Aesop Rock is not a social creature--nor does he try to force his way out of the urban Manhattan world that contains him. Instead, he explores the diminishing territory of the self, never rapping to us, but always to himself (he asks and answers his own questions as he raps).
Murs (a member of the Living Legends crew), who last year released a solo CD on Def Jux, .The End of the Beginning, has a much greater awareness of the world beyond his mind. He addresses an audience other than himself, but he doesn't transport us to unknown, distant places. Instead he uses what remains of his depleted energy to magnify his immediate world. Murs is shockingly honest: He tells us exactly how much sex he has had recently, or precisely when he will get the royalties for the CD you're listening to, or how he feels about his rap career and fans ("And, yes, I'm aware that most of my fans are white/but I'm loving all those who are scoping and open to what I write").
De La Soul and Common often describe their internal states and immediate realities, but always in spiritual, progressive, humanistic terms. We see their lives in the light of a propulsive force, rather than the decaying, Blade Runner glow of the repulsive Aesop Rock and Murs. Nevertheless, both types of rappers are conveyed through (negative or positive) space by the same means: the machine of the hiphop beat.
