WingsOfAnAngel
Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 3
Working right through the night and developing a potbelly is one of the drawbacks to being a hip-hop producer. Dusty rooms filled with vinyl stacked up to the ceiling will give your wife enough reason to divorce you. Spending the toilet paper money on a record from the pawnshop will force you to wash that ass in the shower. But building up a catalogue of beats has its advantages. Once a month, emcees are invited to step into your world to select tracks from your bulging hard drive. If you are lucky they will buy a beat for R100 so that you can buy some food, which they end up eating anyway.
In South Africa we have a handful of well known and respected beat makers. Up until five years ago, artists were sourcing their beats from only a few people, but now more and more are popping up like those mushrooms in the Denny ad. This probably has to do with the fact that PC’s are cheaper and beat making software is available for “free” on various warez sites. This gives those who cannot afford it the opportunity to make beats. However before you think I’m advocating piracy most of them end up buying the software eventually, especially when they find that the cracked versions mess up their systems.
Sampling and beat mining for that perfect break or horn is an activity only practiced by the most dedicated. Some do it just to be trendy. But the reason why nobody talks about it is because it’s such a competitive arena. If you are making beats you don’t exactly want to tell people where you bought your vinyl. You don’t want your competition - who might have more money than you - to go and buy the vinyl that’s left. You want that all for yourself so you can turn out some funky beats. Although highly unlikely, you also want to have the chance to ‘discover’ a break that has never used before. It’s an underworld. You can spot him at the flea market nonchalantly sifting through the crates of vinyl pretending not to be interested. But he walks away with the entire crate and puts it into his boot. Only when he gets into his car and turns on the ignition does he smile. Onlookers might be laughing behind his back for buying what they may think is worthless but he knows the real value. The true beat miner will buy anything, from rock, soul, funk, jazz, country, bluegrass, classical, children’s records, musicals and even an occasional boere orkes record. This method of searching for samples is tradition in hip hop.
In the 70’s, Hip Hop deejays would play breaks from records. DJ Kool Herc was the first to do this in 1973. Now a break is a piece of a record where, for example, the drummer is starting off the track or there is a piece where there is no singing. You can often see these breaks just by looking at the vinyl. Now the deejay wanted to prolong that ‘break’ so that the people could dance to that piece. They had two of the same records and they would manually loop it using 2 copies of the same record. Kids would dance to the break, hence the term b-boy (break boy) or break-dancing. (note: It can also mean Bronx Boy).
To give you some background let me quickly explain how important sampling is. Remember that the history of hip hop production is directly linked to the story of the hip hop deejay. Marley Marl, one of hip hop’s pioneer producers once said that there is almost no difference between a dj and a producer. While sampling was already being done by certain rock groups in 1969 (depending on what your definition of sampling is), and while certain early rap recordings utilised the cut ‘n paste method of reel to reel, it started to lift off with the introduction of electronic samplers in the 80’s. It’s only natural that one wanted to emulate this in the studio. But if you were to dig further than that then you could easily say that Kool Herc was partially responsible for giving awareness to the possibility of sampling. A new kind of music was created as they made the transition from playing records on the block parties to recording this in the studio. Anyway so once samplers and drum machines became more widely available this awareness (subliminally coming from Kool Herc) coupled with the introduction of these new electronic tools was sort of where the hip hop producer was born.
The turntable was an important tool of the producer and remains so today. Riffs, vocal pieces, drums, snares etc are withdrawn from the vinyl and sucked into the sampler. This is the process. This is tradition. While many producers are moving towards synths, keyboards and other funny stuff the true hip hop producer is sampling. But getting back to those who don’t sample at all, for instance, those producers who play their synths/keyboards and make up their own baselines, that’s okay too. Today even, when you see some hip hop groups performing with a live band behind them, you could say that it’s cutting edge, but at the same time you could argue that it’s the total opposite of what hip hop is all about. What makes hip hop so unique is that it borrows from here, there and everywhere.
Back in the day, kids in the ghetto’s didn’t have drumkits, so they emulated the sound with their mouths. This became the beatbox. The natural reaction then would be to emulate the drum in a machine. Layer the pattern with a sample or a few samples. Then add the scratch. Maybe it didn’t happen in that order but it’s the ability to make music out of a few resources (i.e. no drums, no guitar etc), taking a vinyl record and borrowing a baseline, or borrowing a riff, so that you can make music. Sampling made it easier and faster to do what the deejay’s were doing. See where I’m going here?
Sampling is on a downward trend and this is because rap music is part of an industry. Samples need to be cleared and most producers use this excuse to not sample. But hip hop shouldn’t be intimidated by the industry, and producers should sample more - before hip hop becomes a bland genre. Despite those who say that sampling is theft from their passive royalty income I say that sampling has many benefits. Sampling allows an artist who does not have resources to make music using samples. Sampling sparks an interest in older, often forgotten records. As always, the industry who saw an opportunity to cash in, responded by opening departments dedicated to clearing samples.
So what does this have to do with making beats the South African way? Well I wanted to give you a little taste of what hip hop production is all about first. In Part two of this article, I’ll get into the hows and why’s of our own Hip Hop music making evolution and feature some of our nation’s premier beat-makers and what they use to Make Their Own Noise!
In South Africa most producers were dependent on either a drum machine or a sampler alone. One of the first experimentations in the mid/late 80’s was pause tapes. This was mostly done out of desperation when one didn’t have equipment. I myself was a practitioner of pause tapes. Making beats using a pause tape was very simple in that you would use a double tape deck to loop your beats. You record the first few bars from a song, then pause it, then rewind the other tape, then record again. You’d do this for hours until you have a full 3 or 4 minutes of a looped beat. Initially I first thought it was my own discovery but when I found out that kids in New York to London were doing the same thing it made me appreciate the resourcefulness that arises from poverty.
The history of beat-making in this country becomes very blurred before 1988 and trying to pin point the exact origin may prove fruitless.
Back in the day we didn’t know how beats were made. In fact we were surprised that somebody in Cape Town could actually make a beat that you could rap to. Before anybody had access to productions most people were rapping over instrumentals that came from imported rap records. Although not related to beat-making, writing about this reminds me of when kids used to imagine where that sound was coming from when you heard Grandmaster D.S.T. on Rock It. Were they shaking a piece of metal?
Anyway I remember as a young mc in 1989 how I would buy a beat for R20. The beats were put onto a cassette and then I would take that to a studio. The guy in the studio would record the beat from the tape to his computer and then I’d record my vocals. It was very simple. The strange thing is, today you can buy really good beats on the South African market for R100. It’s not that the producers don’t know their worth. It’s just that their client base cannot afford to pay.
Many (not all) of our early producers did not sample from vinyl and this is not because of ignorance but because of not having the resources to do so. There was such a hunger to make music that they used drums, hi-hats and snares that came default with the software packages.
Let’s try to piece it all together without getting into the roots, but pretty close at least. One of the leading rap producers of those days (late 80’s early 90’s) was the Original Street Brothers. They operated from Steenberg, a suburb in Cape Town and started out with a Yamaha DD10 to produce tracks for a well known rap group called W.A.R. (Willing and Ready). They recalled how they used to beat box (making drum sounds with the mouth) and looping beats by re-recoding it on cassette. They then progressed to an Amiga 500 computer and produced beats on a tracker programme.
When I asked them what they were charging for beats they responded by saying, “We just produced for everyone that wanted to flow for free - I think all of Retreat/Steenberg and a bit of Grassy Park must have been in my room already. I kid U not - Even Zuraida Jardine sat on my bed once!”
One group of people who happened to walk through that room was a hip hop group that went by the name of Black Noise. In 1994 the Original Street Brothers used Octomed to record what was to be one of the most important hip hop recordings the Western Cape hip hop community has ever had. I’m talking about the “Do For Self Compilation” which, not surprisingly has been re-released through the recent Heal The Hood Volumes. They still produce today, but have obviously progressed to the PC by using software like Cakewalk, Fruity Loops, Cubase and Audio Logic.
During the early 90’s many people remember Prophets of the City, Marley (Black Noise), Shy and Caramel as forerunners of local hip hop production. At that time producers like Shy and Caramel were using Roland W30 workstations. Shy was often known for being way ahead of his time. I was a fan of Caramel, who for me was the ultimate beat maker of that time.
During the 90’s more producers started becoming known.
Marchant, who happens to be living in the UK now used to be part of a rap duo called Jam B. His partner in rhyme was none other than Fat MC from BVK. Marchant started out with a DR Rhythm drum machine and then moved onto a Roland S50 sampler and a 4 track recorder.
H-Bomb, originally from Zaire was a frequent patron at a Cape Town Saturday afternoon hip hop matinee at Angels in Greenpoint. I’m not sure where he is now but during that time he was quite active as a producer. He produced for a local rap group called Darker Shades Of Funk and an R&B singer called Jerusha. But he was more known for his remix on the first BVK album.
Heinrich, a member of rap group Native Sons and JL from the group Neophytes are others who were making beats. There were others too but to list every one here would be impossible.
Today there are too many producers to mention but let’s quickly go through the equipment/software lists of what some of the current hip hop acts in South Africa are using today:
*
Phat Family (Johannesburg)
MPC 2000 XL, Roland Keyboard, Proteus and sound modules like Mophats and Trident.
*
Nyambz (Johannesburg/Pretoria) – Also produces for Canadian/US acts
Acid Pro, Modplug Tracker, Taureg phrase sampler and Gold wave.
*
Cashless Society (Johannesburg)
16 Track digital Tascam Mixer, Alesis synthesizer module, Audix mics, Tascam effects racks, Sound Foundry Acid 2.0, Wavelab 3, Soundforge 4.5 and Cakewalk 9.
SA Hip Hop Producers Who Have The Right Stuff:
Draztik
Gemini
Bevan Moleveld
Nyambz
Leavin Scarz
Gini Grindith
Ready D
Pablo Roberts
Zubz
Spacevein
X-Amount
Dre (Gugs)
Tongogara
B-Wize
Captain
BMP
Kanife
Hamma
Iziqhwaga
Kataquomb
Shack Ark-e-Tekts
Battlekat
Omen
Although not comprehensive, this is just a small sample of the current producers out there. A few years ago it would've been possible to count them on one hand. To see the list grow the way it did is very encouraging. It means a lot to the growth of SA Hip Hop because it means that the sound will be more diversified. This also gives rise to competition which pushes producers to improve their skills. Back in the day you had one producer serving a multitude of groups. Today the beat is coming from the minds of many.
And this is true for any genre. But there is a trap, which we should avoid falling into. That trap is the comfort zone. Mastering the nuts and bolts and not moving beyond that and turning it into a factory process will make everything sound too standard. I would also like to see some producers reflect more traditional African music in their tracks. This shouldn't be viewed as a rule but balance is needed and the sound is often more Stateside than anything else. We can all appreciate that Hip Hop is a global culture and that there are no rules in this game but we cannot use one style as a template for what is considered the "real" sound. Producers in this country have an opportunity to exploit the mountains of African vinyl that is yet to be sampled.
With the vast amount of material that I've listened to I can say that many of our producers are on the right track. I've witnessed an enormous eagerness to learn. There is so much creativity and talent that is still coming our way and I am confident that the SA scene will only get better.
…we are in for some exciting times!
In South Africa we have a handful of well known and respected beat makers. Up until five years ago, artists were sourcing their beats from only a few people, but now more and more are popping up like those mushrooms in the Denny ad. This probably has to do with the fact that PC’s are cheaper and beat making software is available for “free” on various warez sites. This gives those who cannot afford it the opportunity to make beats. However before you think I’m advocating piracy most of them end up buying the software eventually, especially when they find that the cracked versions mess up their systems.
Sampling and beat mining for that perfect break or horn is an activity only practiced by the most dedicated. Some do it just to be trendy. But the reason why nobody talks about it is because it’s such a competitive arena. If you are making beats you don’t exactly want to tell people where you bought your vinyl. You don’t want your competition - who might have more money than you - to go and buy the vinyl that’s left. You want that all for yourself so you can turn out some funky beats. Although highly unlikely, you also want to have the chance to ‘discover’ a break that has never used before. It’s an underworld. You can spot him at the flea market nonchalantly sifting through the crates of vinyl pretending not to be interested. But he walks away with the entire crate and puts it into his boot. Only when he gets into his car and turns on the ignition does he smile. Onlookers might be laughing behind his back for buying what they may think is worthless but he knows the real value. The true beat miner will buy anything, from rock, soul, funk, jazz, country, bluegrass, classical, children’s records, musicals and even an occasional boere orkes record. This method of searching for samples is tradition in hip hop.
In the 70’s, Hip Hop deejays would play breaks from records. DJ Kool Herc was the first to do this in 1973. Now a break is a piece of a record where, for example, the drummer is starting off the track or there is a piece where there is no singing. You can often see these breaks just by looking at the vinyl. Now the deejay wanted to prolong that ‘break’ so that the people could dance to that piece. They had two of the same records and they would manually loop it using 2 copies of the same record. Kids would dance to the break, hence the term b-boy (break boy) or break-dancing. (note: It can also mean Bronx Boy).
To give you some background let me quickly explain how important sampling is. Remember that the history of hip hop production is directly linked to the story of the hip hop deejay. Marley Marl, one of hip hop’s pioneer producers once said that there is almost no difference between a dj and a producer. While sampling was already being done by certain rock groups in 1969 (depending on what your definition of sampling is), and while certain early rap recordings utilised the cut ‘n paste method of reel to reel, it started to lift off with the introduction of electronic samplers in the 80’s. It’s only natural that one wanted to emulate this in the studio. But if you were to dig further than that then you could easily say that Kool Herc was partially responsible for giving awareness to the possibility of sampling. A new kind of music was created as they made the transition from playing records on the block parties to recording this in the studio. Anyway so once samplers and drum machines became more widely available this awareness (subliminally coming from Kool Herc) coupled with the introduction of these new electronic tools was sort of where the hip hop producer was born.
The turntable was an important tool of the producer and remains so today. Riffs, vocal pieces, drums, snares etc are withdrawn from the vinyl and sucked into the sampler. This is the process. This is tradition. While many producers are moving towards synths, keyboards and other funny stuff the true hip hop producer is sampling. But getting back to those who don’t sample at all, for instance, those producers who play their synths/keyboards and make up their own baselines, that’s okay too. Today even, when you see some hip hop groups performing with a live band behind them, you could say that it’s cutting edge, but at the same time you could argue that it’s the total opposite of what hip hop is all about. What makes hip hop so unique is that it borrows from here, there and everywhere.
Back in the day, kids in the ghetto’s didn’t have drumkits, so they emulated the sound with their mouths. This became the beatbox. The natural reaction then would be to emulate the drum in a machine. Layer the pattern with a sample or a few samples. Then add the scratch. Maybe it didn’t happen in that order but it’s the ability to make music out of a few resources (i.e. no drums, no guitar etc), taking a vinyl record and borrowing a baseline, or borrowing a riff, so that you can make music. Sampling made it easier and faster to do what the deejay’s were doing. See where I’m going here?
Sampling is on a downward trend and this is because rap music is part of an industry. Samples need to be cleared and most producers use this excuse to not sample. But hip hop shouldn’t be intimidated by the industry, and producers should sample more - before hip hop becomes a bland genre. Despite those who say that sampling is theft from their passive royalty income I say that sampling has many benefits. Sampling allows an artist who does not have resources to make music using samples. Sampling sparks an interest in older, often forgotten records. As always, the industry who saw an opportunity to cash in, responded by opening departments dedicated to clearing samples.
So what does this have to do with making beats the South African way? Well I wanted to give you a little taste of what hip hop production is all about first. In Part two of this article, I’ll get into the hows and why’s of our own Hip Hop music making evolution and feature some of our nation’s premier beat-makers and what they use to Make Their Own Noise!
In South Africa most producers were dependent on either a drum machine or a sampler alone. One of the first experimentations in the mid/late 80’s was pause tapes. This was mostly done out of desperation when one didn’t have equipment. I myself was a practitioner of pause tapes. Making beats using a pause tape was very simple in that you would use a double tape deck to loop your beats. You record the first few bars from a song, then pause it, then rewind the other tape, then record again. You’d do this for hours until you have a full 3 or 4 minutes of a looped beat. Initially I first thought it was my own discovery but when I found out that kids in New York to London were doing the same thing it made me appreciate the resourcefulness that arises from poverty.
The history of beat-making in this country becomes very blurred before 1988 and trying to pin point the exact origin may prove fruitless.
Back in the day we didn’t know how beats were made. In fact we were surprised that somebody in Cape Town could actually make a beat that you could rap to. Before anybody had access to productions most people were rapping over instrumentals that came from imported rap records. Although not related to beat-making, writing about this reminds me of when kids used to imagine where that sound was coming from when you heard Grandmaster D.S.T. on Rock It. Were they shaking a piece of metal?
Anyway I remember as a young mc in 1989 how I would buy a beat for R20. The beats were put onto a cassette and then I would take that to a studio. The guy in the studio would record the beat from the tape to his computer and then I’d record my vocals. It was very simple. The strange thing is, today you can buy really good beats on the South African market for R100. It’s not that the producers don’t know their worth. It’s just that their client base cannot afford to pay.
Many (not all) of our early producers did not sample from vinyl and this is not because of ignorance but because of not having the resources to do so. There was such a hunger to make music that they used drums, hi-hats and snares that came default with the software packages.
Let’s try to piece it all together without getting into the roots, but pretty close at least. One of the leading rap producers of those days (late 80’s early 90’s) was the Original Street Brothers. They operated from Steenberg, a suburb in Cape Town and started out with a Yamaha DD10 to produce tracks for a well known rap group called W.A.R. (Willing and Ready). They recalled how they used to beat box (making drum sounds with the mouth) and looping beats by re-recoding it on cassette. They then progressed to an Amiga 500 computer and produced beats on a tracker programme.
When I asked them what they were charging for beats they responded by saying, “We just produced for everyone that wanted to flow for free - I think all of Retreat/Steenberg and a bit of Grassy Park must have been in my room already. I kid U not - Even Zuraida Jardine sat on my bed once!”
One group of people who happened to walk through that room was a hip hop group that went by the name of Black Noise. In 1994 the Original Street Brothers used Octomed to record what was to be one of the most important hip hop recordings the Western Cape hip hop community has ever had. I’m talking about the “Do For Self Compilation” which, not surprisingly has been re-released through the recent Heal The Hood Volumes. They still produce today, but have obviously progressed to the PC by using software like Cakewalk, Fruity Loops, Cubase and Audio Logic.
During the early 90’s many people remember Prophets of the City, Marley (Black Noise), Shy and Caramel as forerunners of local hip hop production. At that time producers like Shy and Caramel were using Roland W30 workstations. Shy was often known for being way ahead of his time. I was a fan of Caramel, who for me was the ultimate beat maker of that time.
During the 90’s more producers started becoming known.
Marchant, who happens to be living in the UK now used to be part of a rap duo called Jam B. His partner in rhyme was none other than Fat MC from BVK. Marchant started out with a DR Rhythm drum machine and then moved onto a Roland S50 sampler and a 4 track recorder.
H-Bomb, originally from Zaire was a frequent patron at a Cape Town Saturday afternoon hip hop matinee at Angels in Greenpoint. I’m not sure where he is now but during that time he was quite active as a producer. He produced for a local rap group called Darker Shades Of Funk and an R&B singer called Jerusha. But he was more known for his remix on the first BVK album.
Heinrich, a member of rap group Native Sons and JL from the group Neophytes are others who were making beats. There were others too but to list every one here would be impossible.
Today there are too many producers to mention but let’s quickly go through the equipment/software lists of what some of the current hip hop acts in South Africa are using today:
*
Phat Family (Johannesburg)
MPC 2000 XL, Roland Keyboard, Proteus and sound modules like Mophats and Trident.
*
Nyambz (Johannesburg/Pretoria) – Also produces for Canadian/US acts
Acid Pro, Modplug Tracker, Taureg phrase sampler and Gold wave.
*
Cashless Society (Johannesburg)
16 Track digital Tascam Mixer, Alesis synthesizer module, Audix mics, Tascam effects racks, Sound Foundry Acid 2.0, Wavelab 3, Soundforge 4.5 and Cakewalk 9.
SA Hip Hop Producers Who Have The Right Stuff:
Draztik
Gemini
Bevan Moleveld
Nyambz
Leavin Scarz
Gini Grindith
Ready D
Pablo Roberts
Zubz
Spacevein
X-Amount
Dre (Gugs)
Tongogara
B-Wize
Captain
BMP
Kanife
Hamma
Iziqhwaga
Kataquomb
Shack Ark-e-Tekts
Battlekat
Omen
Although not comprehensive, this is just a small sample of the current producers out there. A few years ago it would've been possible to count them on one hand. To see the list grow the way it did is very encouraging. It means a lot to the growth of SA Hip Hop because it means that the sound will be more diversified. This also gives rise to competition which pushes producers to improve their skills. Back in the day you had one producer serving a multitude of groups. Today the beat is coming from the minds of many.
And this is true for any genre. But there is a trap, which we should avoid falling into. That trap is the comfort zone. Mastering the nuts and bolts and not moving beyond that and turning it into a factory process will make everything sound too standard. I would also like to see some producers reflect more traditional African music in their tracks. This shouldn't be viewed as a rule but balance is needed and the sound is often more Stateside than anything else. We can all appreciate that Hip Hop is a global culture and that there are no rules in this game but we cannot use one style as a template for what is considered the "real" sound. Producers in this country have an opportunity to exploit the mountains of African vinyl that is yet to be sampled.
With the vast amount of material that I've listened to I can say that many of our producers are on the right track. I've witnessed an enormous eagerness to learn. There is so much creativity and talent that is still coming our way and I am confident that the SA scene will only get better.
…we are in for some exciting times!
