#HipHopAdvent (just letting you know what happened between 1986 and 1987 so you’re all set for tomorrow)

Samplers initially had very limited sampling time, so most sample loops, if used at all, would until this time have been created either by mixing duplicates of the same record on two turntables, or by “pause tape” technique (hit pause at the end of recording the bar, rewind the source, restart and record, over and over until you have enough of a track to rap over), or by very creative cutting up of samples into shorter bits, and then replaying them sequentially (a technique pioneered by Marley Marl). Advances in digital memory, such as the 1986 “turbo” upgrade to the E-mu SP-12 sampler, increasing its sampling time from 1.2 seconds to 5 seconds, allowing for sampling of a full bar of music, would change all that. As you will hear tomorrow!

#HipHopAdvent 8: 1986

Cutmaster D.C. – Santa’s Beatbox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMIa7A0boKo

The drum computer is getting louder and the scratches more interesting, and I believe there’s some use of a synthesizer sampler (2:50 onward) — hiphop production is slowly coming into its own.

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#HipHopAdvent 7: 1985

Busy Boys – Funky Fresh Xmas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkxx83EOCe4

By the mid-80s the DJ finally was incorporated into recorded rap music, and this is the first year that Christmas hiphop tracks feature scratches (there’s also Audio Two’s A Christmas Rhyme of the same year). Hiphop was starting to expand outside New York, too; the Busy Boys’ DJ, for example, was from Hartford, Connecticut. This track has some Spanish lyrics, too, highlighting the Latinx element of early hiphop culture.

(The date, taken from discogs, is not entirely certain, as the release is undated - it may have been 1986. It was picked up by a different label from the original release for a collection album in 1987.)

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#HipHopAdvent 6: 1984

The Treacherous Three feat. Doug E. Fresh – Santa's Rap [CW for homophobia] https://youtu.be/8xpcrBioETw

Drum computers have now fully taken over, and hiphop has made it to the movies; this track is a scene from the movie Beat Street (prod: Harry Belafonte). The raps feature some politics, some puerile humour, some regretful homophobia, and there’s even some human beatboxing, all ingredients that would remain part of hiphop for some years to come.

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#HipHopAdvent 5: 1983

Billy Jackson & The Citizen Band - Have a Happy Christmas (T'was the Night Before Christmas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bd6jEuBuNQ

Hiphop was starting to become less disco, and more synth / electronica oriented; this is a nice transitional track. It features Rodney C from the Funky 4 + 1, who was also a member of Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation Cosmic Force.

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