Hip-hop drumming: the rhyme may define, but the groove makes you move.

In this article, I investigate the use, creation, and manipulation of the drums in hip-hop. In most works on black popular music, whether referring to rock, jazz, blues, rap, or other genres, little attention is paid to the drummer beyond providing an overview. (1) I hope that this article can begin a dialogue about drumming to compare with that surrounding pianists, vocalists, guitarists, and other instrumentalists. I am not attempting here to uncover the social, diasporic, or cultural significance of the hip-hop genre; that has been and is being done by scholars whose interest and expertise lie in these areas (Gilroy 1991; Lipsitz 1994; Rose 1994); rather, I am concerned with analyzing the use of drums in this music and how that use exemplifies some of the musical attributes defining the hip-hop style in a broad sense. I have chosen musical examples that not only best illustrate my analysis but that also come from artists who are important to the hip-hop genre, such as James Brown and A Tribe Called Quest, whose 1991 album The Low End Theory is "hailed as a masterpiece of jazz/hip-hop fusion" (Werde 1999, 44). My goal is to provide a guideline for deciphering the drums within this music, whether they come from samples, a drum machine, a live drummer, or a combination.

The typical description of hip-hop states that the development of this genre was influenced by four distinct elements: (1) break dancing, (2) graffiti art, (3) emcees or tappers, and (4) DJs. Although each of these factors serves as a cultural marker, the lyrics stand out to many scholars and fans as the defining characteristic. Both Robin D. G. Kelley (1996, 186-194) and Tricia Rose (1994, 99-124) give evidence to show how lyrics are used to create real and imagined identities. (2) Greg Dimitriadis (1996, 180) states that "[t]he constant search for meaning through rap's vocal content alone has led to much cross-cultural misunderstanding." Furthermore, if what Ingrid Monson (1999, 52) tells us is true--that "[h]owever good various types of grooves may make us feel, ... they cannot be presumed to be innocent of power"--then we must examine how these grooves are established. Therefore, I will not argue the position of whether the lyrics should carry so much weight; rather, I will discuss the music that supports the lyrics, particularly the groove, as established by the drums. It is essential to examine not only how certain beats are manipulated but where they originated. Olly Wilson's "The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in African-American Music" (1992) serves as a point of departure to address this issue.

Wilson suggests that to define what constitutes black music, we need to devise means through which to uncover meaning in black music, a task that he notes, is "made difficult by the fact that the music of black Americans exists within a larger, multicultural social context, like that of all ethnic groups within the United States" (327). He develops a concept called the "heterogeneous sound ideal," which he defines as the "core of underlying conceptions that define African and African-American music," noting that "there exists a common approach to music making in which a kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound (timbre) is sought after in both vocal and instrumental music. The desirable musical sound texture is one that contains a combination of diverse timbres" (329). Wilson presents two ways in which this ideal is practiced that can in turn be related to hip-hop drumming.

Wilson's first point is that the heterogeneous sound ideal is "reflected in the nature of the 'sound' texture of musical ensembles, [meaning] the relationship of the resultant qualities of sound produced when several instruments perform simultaneously" (329). The basic drum set consists of three elements--a bell (hi-hat or ride cymbal), a high drum (snare), and a low drum (bass drum or kick drum)--each of which is generally discernible from the others. (3) Besides being audibly different from one another, each element serves both a singular and group function; that is, while each instrument is played independently, it is also contributing to the overall feel. This is not unlike the notion of coordinated independence in jazz drumming, which states that each limb should work independently to create a singular pattern. (4) Keil's (1995) notion of participatory discrepancies can help us understand how the various instruments of the drum set interact within their own set of participatory discrepancies beyond those that exist between the drummer and other members of the rhythm section. (5) That is, it is equally important to understand how the ride cymbal interacts ...