DAVEY D'S FRIDAY NIGHT VIBE (FNV): Why Is Lauryn Hill On The Best Hip Hop Album List?
By Davey D.

I wanna address an issue that has come up a few times regarding my choosing Lauryn Hill for a recent issue on the best hip-hop albums. Some wanted to say that "Mis Education..." is not hip-hop album but an R&B album. Here are a few things to ponder on that subject. First let's look at this from a historical perspective in terms of how we should define hip-hop music. Remember I was looking at the Best All-Time "Hip-Hop” albums not the Best Rap albums.

Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa 8 years ago where he spoke about this topic. Remember it was he along with the Universal Zulu Nation who popularized the term hip-hop after Lovebug Starski coined the phrase as well as defined the 5 elements.

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Interview excerpt with Bambaataa about What is Hip-Hop Music?

DAVEY D: A lot of people don't realize your reputation. Back in the days you use to shock everybody because you had so many records and so many beats from different sources of music. You definitely earned that title. When we talk about hip-hop how would you define it? Is it just one type of music? Is it a way that you present it? Or is it a conglomeration of a lot of different things?

A.BAMBAATAA: People have to understand what you mean when you talk about hip-hop. Hip-hop means the whole culture of the movement. When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the hip-hop culture. That means the emceeing is part of the hip-hop culture; The DJing is part of the hip-hop culture. The dressing, the languages are all part of the hip-hop culture. So is the break dancing, the b-boys and b-girls. How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of hip-hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip-hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white. It's from whatever music that gives that grunt, that funk, that groove, that beat. That's all part of hip-hop.

DAVEY D: So is music on the west coast considered hip-hop? I ask that 'cause you have a lot of people who keep insisting that artists like Too Short or E-40 are not real hip-hop. Is that a false definition?

A.BAMBAATAA: Yes, that's a false definition. Too Short, E-40 and all the brothers and sisters that are making hip-hop and coming from the funk side part of it, are all hip-hop. The electro-funk, which is that 'Planet Rock' sound which is led to the Miami Bass sound, is also hip-hop. The Go-Go sound that you hear from Washington DC is also hip-hop. The New Jack Swing that Teddy Riley and all them started is R&B and hip-hop mixed together. So hip-hop has progressed into different sounds and different avenues. Also people have got to recognize from hip-hop music came the birth of House music and Freestyle dance music that is listened to by a lot of Puerto Ricans.

DAVEY D: Now can you repeat that again. I keep telling people all the time that Latin Freestyle and Hi Energy music is part of hip-hop. I keep telling people that a lot of the early freestyle producers were original hip-hoppers. I keep telling them how the Puerto Ricans took the fast up-tempo break beats from songs like 'Apache' and developed freestyle.

A.BAMBAATAA: Actually freestyle really comes from 'Planet Rock'. If you listen to all the freestyle records you'll hear that they are based on 'Planet Rock'. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock. So freestyle came from Electro Funk, which as you know came from hip-hop

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Now keep in mind, over the years I have heard Bam criticize commercial hip-hop stations and even college deejays who say they do ' hip-hop ' shows for being limited on their music selection. He is fond of saying "If you gonna call your self hip-hop then play hip-hop music which includes the vast array of styles" That would include Lauryn, Wyclef, Shinehead, Trouble Funk, Michael Franti and Spearhead etc., etc., etc.

Now lets build off this for a second cause the obvious question is where do you draw the line? I had this email exchange with a reader named Gas from the 3H Crew who took exception to the Lauryn Hill placement. He personally thought 'The Score' was better. But during our email exchange he noted the importance of artists being artists without categories which I wanna build upon.

I shared with him the history of music categorization and how certain terms like 'Rap' and 'Alternative' are a music industry inventions designed to make it easier for retailers and record companies to budget and set up marketing campaigns for particular artists. I recall when artists like Michael Franti and his first group Disposable Heroes and Arrested Development initially came out, many record stores had a problem in deciding where to place them.

They could not decide whether or not to take Franti who was once part of the Beat Nigs and had deep roots in what was once called 'Industrial Music' and place him in the rock section or the hip-hop section? The same problem arose with Arrested Development and later Lauryn Hill. The concern for retailers was that potential buyers who saw such artists as something other then hip-hop would look for them under a particular category, not see them and assume that the store had sold out and they would lose record sales.

This also got compounded by labels who could not decide where to put their marketing budget or how to do their marketing campaign. Do they let the rock division work the Michael Franti record or the Black music division? Do they place adds for the album in The Source or in Rolling Stone? Many publications were leery of dealing with these artists. Would a rap magazine suddenly come under fire from their audience for putting Arrested Development on he cover?

These sorts of dilemmas resulted in the term 'Alternative' being applied to groups who did not fit into the neat little industry marketing categories. I liken this to colonialists invading a country and creating artificial borders that later get honored by the very people who get colonized. This leads me to my next point which Gas brought up about artists simply being allowed to be
artists.


As hip-hop grows we are finding that certain envelops are going to be pushed to the point that it will result in us continuously raising questions. The most recent cases involve Outkast's "Love Below/Speaker Boxx" album and Cee-Lo's solo project. These hip-hop artists stretched themselves artistically and began singing and flipping their music. Are they suddenly not hip-hop because an artist like Andre 3000 does a song like "Caroline," "Hey Ya" or "She Dances on My Lap"?

Is Big Boi no longer hip-hop when he does songs like 'The Way Ya Move' with singer Sleepy Brown? Heck for that matter when Organized Noise released their album under the name Society of Soul' a few years back was it no longer hip-hop because they pushed the envelope in terms of vocal expression? Was "The Score" by the Fugees a hip-hop album based on the fact that it had more songs with someone rapping then singing? Was Wyclef 'Carnival' album a hip-hop album or 'Alternative' as it was often categorized? Or was Carnival a reggae or World Beat record which are other ways I saw it positioned?


Heck what about Bambaataa who like the other aforementioned artists has pushed the artistic envelope time and time again? Under the name Time Zone was he rock or hip-hop? On the new 'Dark Matters' album is he funk, hip-hop or something else? If you can believe this I've been to record stores where Bam has been placed in the alternative, dance or rock sections because his appeal has grown beyond the traditional urban hip-hop audience.

The rule of thumb for me is as follows we should look at how we know particular artists and see how they grow. It will be obvious when they cross over to something else. I.e. When Queen Latifah released the Dana Owens album which has her singing classic jazz standards that is obviously not a hip-hop album. She herself noted that she was crossing into another genre of music. However, let's say DJ Premier flipped the beats and gave us some gritty hip-hop shit and Latifah gave her own hip-hop interpretation of those same jazz standards I would argue its hip-hop.

With regards to Lauryn Hill a.k.a. L. Boogie, we essentially had a hip-hop artist who came through and did a hip-hop album where she showcased various vocalization skills including rap and singing much like OutKast with 'Love Below'. That's the opposite of an R&B group like the Temptations who happened to rap in their classic song 'Ball of Confusion'. I recall doing an interview with Kool Herc a few years back where he addressed that issue and was very clear about that.. The same applies to other R&B acts like Lou Rawls, Isaac Hayes and Millie Jackson who all at one point did what was later coined as 'Love Raps' which is essentially spoken word.

In the music industry, a rock artist who suddenly starts rapping is usually always seen as a rock artist. That would include groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock unless he gets arrested. Folks may recall when Kid Rock was recently arrested for assault and battery, many in the press suddenly referred to him as a rap artist. Same thing happened during the Woodstock fiasco where out of control fans burned up the place and raped 6 women. Some newspapers blamed it on hip-hop if you can believe it as they referred to groups like Limb Bizkit as Rap acts.. but lets not digress.

I will admit, at the end of the day a lot of this is subjective and there is no one fast and hard rule. Today people are all over the place in terms of how they make music. For example, you have groups like Linkin Park who will, first off, tell you that their debut album 'Hybrid Theory' was a mixture of Rap and Rock, but decidedly hip-hop when they invited rap artists to join them on the remix album. The envelop was pushed even more when they recently teamed up with Jay-Z to do 'Collision Course' in what many call a 'Mash Up' album (Rock and Rap mixed together).

Of course we can't forget Mary J Blige -- the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul who for the most part is a straight up R&B singer who unlike L. Boogie never raps. However, she has made her bread and butter rapping over hip-hop beats via P-Diddy. I guess one could question is she also hip-hop?

For me I check to see if an artist is bringing hip-hop aesthetics, flava and mindset to whatever they touch.. That's why a rock record like Billy Squire's Big beat becomes a hip-hop record when put in the hands of the hip-hop producer like Dr. Dre or Premier but remains a rock record in the hands of another. Hence like many when 'Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill dropped I saw and felt L. Boogie the hip-hop artist rocking the mic via singing and rap. I realize, that there are others who could not get passed her singing and dismissed her project as an R&B thang and never looked back.

But what the hell, I recall the days when I would go to New York in the late 1980s to the New Music Seminar and listen to some very intelligent, prominent individuals who would vehemently argue that artists like Too Short or the Geto Boys were not hip-hop, but nowadays some of those same people swear by the Scarface and loved the latest Geto Boy offering. Go Figure.. All in all, as I said I will admit there is no clear definitive answer to this and I suppose we can debate this all day... But this is my list so Lauryn Hill stays at number 7 on the Greatest Hip-hop Albums of All-Time.

Hit me with your thoughts at mrdaveyd@aol.com

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To hell with the categories. What's that quote by Miles?....