Has Rap Influenced Your Drumming?

[& You Dont Stop]

The first generation to be influenced by rap is between 40 and 50 years old (I'm 40). Despite my being raised in a small Oklahoma town, I saw a lot of Mtv at a very impressionable age, and my eyes were opened wide to urban music. I'm a drummer because I have an affection for and am moved by rhythm. It is for those same reasons that I like rap music. Now, some 20 to 25 years later a can attribute certain aspects of my drumming to the influence of acts like the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, De La Soul, KRS One and Gangstarr to name a few.

I think the golden age of rap was '88 to '94. In my humble opinion, rap was brought to its knees when acts couldn't sample a note without the fear of career-ending litigation. That's a crying shame.

There are some current acts that are doing well to carry the torch from that golden era. Artists like Outkast, Kanye West, Mos Def, The Roots and Wiz Khalifa.

Thanks to a fellow DFOer I now know about this kick ass Minneapolis band, Heiruspecs.

 

[dxtr]

I went through a hard hiphop phase. I listened to Jurassic 5 mostly. But i also got into some old school guys like Sugar Hill Gang and Kurtis Blow.

Learning to authentically play some of these beats can add a new level to your playing and it helped me relax while playing and it really did help with my groove.

 

[fun2drum]

Yes. Not at first - I was a rock drummer (Rush, Kiss, Cheap Trick, Nugent, etc.) and didn't like rap in general with a few rather tame exceptions. Rapture by Blondie for instance. In my later years of college I worked as Program Director in the college radio station where I was introduced to it on the "Dr. K" show. That guy (Keith, I believe was his name) was a young genius of picking obscure rap songs and mixing them together into something that was greater than the sum of its parts. The rhythms I heard on his show really awakened my inner drummer. I believe rap music somehow taps into the ancient beats and communication chants that marked the beginning of drums in the first place.

Deep, Huh?

 

[& You Dont Stop]

Thanks to sampled beats used in rap music, I knew(as a twenty-something) who Clyde Stubblefield and Gregory Coleman were. Its quite possible that I first heard a John Bonham groove in the first Beastie Boys album.

 

[gryphon]

I started listening to a bit of hip hop a few years ago and must admit I like the feel of the music. That 16th triplet swingy funk feels so good!

jim

 

[fun2drum]

Thanks to sampled beats used in rap music, I knew(as a twenty-something) who Clyde Stubblefield and Gregory Coleman were. Its quite possible that I first heard a John Bonham groove in the first Beastie Boys album.

Yes Tone Loc was into using samples of some of the rock tunes I loved. I was hooked on that stuff.

 

[Sub_Meter]

Rap has made me a better drummer, period. Love the early wu tang clan.

 

[& You Dont Stop]

The first 20 seconds of this track sealed the deal for me in the early '90a. You take (what sounds like) a swinging jazz recording, embellish it a little with drum machine(bass hits), add some tasty DJ work (in this case DJ Premier)...you can't help but be moved to dance. I find turntablism fascinating.

 

[madchops82]

Very much so. Beastie Boys, Pharcyde, Run DMC, BDP, US3, Digital Underground, Kurtis Blow....so many cool beats. So much to learn. Very funky. I DO NOT like recent rap.

Being able to play those beats w/ a bell pattern is always fun to try and do. Go Go beats are also very hip hop like.


This song was track 2 or 3 on US3's first album. Their mix of jazz and hip hop is great for mid 90s rap.

 

[RedMist]

Most definitely influenced by HipHop beats. Beastie Boys, QTip, Methodman/Redman, Everlast, Mystikal, SnoopDog to name a few. I also like metal, so stuff like Bodycount is right up my alley.

 

[DanRH]

I love hip hop groove for the most part so I'd say yes.

 

[RedMist]

Thanks to sampled beats used in rap music, I knew(as a twenty-something) who Clyde Stubblefield and Gregory Coleman were. Its quite possible that I first heard a John Bonham groove in the first Beastie Boys album.

Yes Tone Loc was into using samples of some of the rock tunes I loved. I was hooked on that stuff.

LOL. Everyone recognises wild thing in the first few beats.

 

[EvEnStEvEn]

I'm 55, and I was most certainly "drumming influenced" by early rap music, even though many of my friends were completely baffled by enjoyment of it when it first began to emerge in my musical lexicon back in 1986 or thereabouts

Some old school faves were:

Big Daddy Kane
Kool Moe Dee
Heavy D & The Boyz
Digital Underground
LL Cool J
3rd Bass

I learned so much from programming and playing along with my drum machines, quantizing and manipulating swing note values, etc.
I still carry the lessons I learned from rap in my drumming vocabulary. I believe it made me a more swinging & grooving drummer.



Check this joint!!!

 

[fun2drum]

That's right - DIGITAL UNDERGROUND! If you don't feel like moving when that stuff plays you might just not be alive.

"If you wear corrective shoes and ya got big bunions, toenails smell and look like onions, Don't do what you like - Go see a foot doctor tonight"

I think that's brilliant.

 

[benjamin]

+1 on the Minneapolis hiphop scene. There are some real gems here. (The whole music scene is pretty good, we're pretty lucky with local radio too.) The dudes from Heiruspecs taught a jazz class at my high school a few years ago. That was super cool.

Speaking of sampling jazz artists etc, this tribute to Roy Ayers is fantastic.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2El2B60zkQM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[supershifter2]

only for several years. i had black diamond pearl wrap and then blue sparke and then black. no i have laquer painted drums. i thought about rapping my snare with thin transparent red sheet.

 

[Pickinator]

Sorry folks.
I'm not only not influenced by it, I absolutely detest the hip hop/rap culture with the foul-mouth lyrics and content. It represents everything that's wrong. -Zero tolerance for it-

I'm kinda shocked by the folks posting positive responses to the question?
Again, sort of sorry to be the party pooper.

 

[Billster]

Sorry folks.
I'm not only not influenced by it, I absolutely detest the hip hop/rap culture with the foul-mouth lyrics and content. It represents everything that's wrong. -Zero tolerance for it-

I'm kinda shocked by the folks posting positive responses to the question?
Again, sort of sorry to be the party pooper.

I'm with you, Pick. I hate rap, especially rap in C or C-rap, yeah CRAP...

 

[tommykat1]

No, just the opposite. My drumming influenced rap. Not me specifically, but the beats I was playing in the late 70s suddenly came into vogue in the early rap era. Blew me away. The first was "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith, as emulated by RunDMC. Joey Kramer's beat lives on and on and on. And there are others too...

 

[5 Style]

Not sure if the music influences my own playing... though perhaps a bit without even me realizing it, but I do like a lot of it. It's like pretty much every other genre in that it runs the gambit from the really creative/soulful/meaningful to the stuff that's pure cliche and utterly lacking in imagination. It seems that in recent years, at least to my ears the marketing of the music has gotten far ahead of the quality of the stuff that's most aggressively marketed, so unfortunately these days unless you listen beyond the radio, you're only going to hear the most phoned in version of the music. The golden years when the popular acts also were ones who had something to say seems to be well over at this point.

I dig the Beastie Boys, Jurassic 5, Digable Planets, Tribe Called Quest... stuff like that.

As for the comment that rap is a culture built on "foul mouthed lyrics" or some such thing, I'll just say that this is pretty ignorant, to say the least. There's not just a couple of acts who don't fit this description but whole sub genres of the music that aren't at all about these kind of lyrics that you're referring to. In fact, if you're talking about the greater culture of hip hop there's plenty of artists who create instrumental music that obviously doesn't have any lyrics at all. It seems pretty silly that one would even be into rock music if they expect the content to be so squeaky clean. It isn't... If you require truly G rated content in the popular music you listen to, then may I suggest... Lawrence Whelk.