BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Happy hip-hop 50th.
SHELDON PEARCE, BYLINE: Middle age for rap. It didn't seem like we would get here for a while, but we made it. We made it.
LUSE: (Laughter) The AARP card comes this year, you know.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Hey, hey. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. On August 11, 1973, hip-hop was born at a house party in the Bronx. Since then, it's been remade in the image of cities all around the world. To celebrate, I'm taking us on a road trip through the regions that have shaped and transformed what hip-hop is today. And no one knows the regionalism of hip-hop quite like Sheldon Pearce from NPR Music.
PEARCE: Each little community that has assimilated rap into its culture has then gone on to turn that thing inside out and give it its own personal flavor.
LUSE: We'll come back to Sheldon later on. But for me, the first time I really understood regionalism was when I first stepped onto the campus of Howard University.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Hanging out on the yard, I couldn't get over just how different everyone styled themselves depending on where they were from. There were the Cali girls in their silk presses despite the humidity...
(CHEERING)
LUSE: ...The PG County girls in their poetic justice braids...
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) You know. You know.
LUSE: ...Kids from Atlanta and Detroit - Gucci down to the socks...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Grab the camera. Grab the camera.
LUSE: ...And New York boys in crisp denim, fresh white tees and sneakers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Damn.
PENDARVIS HARSHAW, BYLINE: The gangsters in D.C. were wearing, like, sweaters tied around their waist, like, you know what I'm saying?
LUSE: (Laughter).
HARSHAW: You know, and I was like, dang, like, I wish I could do that in the town because it gets cold when the fog comes in. But the gangsters don't do that in the Bay Area.
LUSE: That's Pendarvis Harshaw. He's a friend of mine from my Howard days and a native of Oakland, Calif.
HARSHAW: And I'm dressing like I'm still in the town. We go to a party, and I had, like, some glasses with the lenses poked out. And I remember people, like, looking at me like, who is this weird dude?
LUSE: These days, Pen is a culture reporter and host of the podcast Rightnowish out of KQED. And he's here because this regionalism meant more than just fashion. It also showed up in the rap we listened to. And Pen has spent years reporting on one scene in particular that exploded out of the Bay Area in the mid-2000s - hyphy. Whether or not you know the term hyphy, you probably know the songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLOW THE WHISTLE")
TOO SHORT: (Rapping) They don't need ID. Blow the whistle. Blow the whistle.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VANS")
THE PACK: (Rapping) Got my Vans on, but they look like sneakers. Got my Vans on, but they look like sneakers.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIZZLE DANCE")
MAC DRE: (Rapping) Thizz dance. Thizz dance. Can you do the thizzle dance?
LUSE: Today we're looking at how local scenes made up hip-hop's mainstream. And in the case of hyphy, what gets lost when the regional style becomes part of the global melting pot?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN'T KILL HYPHY")
MISTAH F A B: Hyphy, hyphy. Hyphy. Hyphy.
LUSE: Pendarvis Harshaw, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
HARSHAW: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
LUSE: It's absolutely my pleasure. We went to Howard University together. I don't even think either one of us had aspirations necessarily of working in radio at that time.
HARSHAW: Nope.
LUSE: No (laughter).
HARSHAW: Nope.
LUSE: Nope. Now here we are. You and I were at Howard at the same time when hyphy music went from being, like, a local subculture to being, like, a global phenomenon. It was, like, new to me at the time, but I remember everybody going up for "Tell Me When To Go."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TELL ME WHEN TO GO")
E-40: (Rapping) Tell me when to go. Tell me when to go. Go dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
LUSE: That is a classic hyphy track from E-40, who is also from the Bay. But before we get too far, how do you explain the word hyphy and the hyphy movement to people who have never heard of it before?
HARSHAW: Hyperactive energy, rebellious to a fault. Hyphy, as a word, comes from, just, like - I remember it as a kid, walking down the street in East Oakland. And we would walk in the middle of the street because we knew at times, dogs would get loose and be like, oh, yeah, you walking through Funktown? Watch out. They got hella hyphy pitbulls out there, so walk in the middle of the street. And hyphy was - it was a negative thing. It was about, like, badass youngsters who just didn't listen or really just hyperactive energy and usually in a negative way. And so when it gets commercialized, it gets this, like, layer of, like, goofiness and fun and free-spirited, which is all there for sure. The hyphy movement was more or less a product, something that was commercialized. It takes the dancing, the slang, the culture, the fashion and packages it and makes it digestible for people not from the region.
LUSE: So I wonder, like - you were young. Like, it seemed like prime age when hyphy was everywhere. What is the most hyphy memory that you have?
HARSHAW: (Laughter) That's a crazy question. The most hyphy memory that I have...
LUSE: Yes.
HARSHAW: ...Has to be going to a house party, and there's a woman grinding on me. And I'm against the wall, and she essentially pushes me through a wall...
LUSE: What?
HARSHAW: ...In the house party. Yeah, like, the drywall. The hyphyest (ph) part of it all is that I'm hella small. I'm 5'5'', right? But, like, she's, like, backing that thing up to the point she, like, pushes me through the wall. Like, there's a hole in the wall. And so it's a house party at one of my friend's house, and I don't want to ruin the party. So I pulled my bigger friend in front of that hole to cover it up. And he sees what happens, and he grabs the same girl and starts dancing with her and makes the hole bigger. And so, yeah.
LUSE: (Laughter).
HARSHAW: That was hella hyphy.
LUSE: You had a real Kool-Aid Man moment there.
(LAUGHTER)
HARSHAW: Kool-Aid Man for sure - for sure. That's fun. It's energetic. It's a little, you know, destructive.
LUSE: The energy, the music, the vibrancy - talk to me about the whole hyphy scene. Like, take me back. Like, what was that scene...
HARSHAW: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Like at that time for people who weren't there?
HARSHAW: Yeah, that house party - right? - it's fun. It's goofy and all that stuff, but that's dangerous. Like, we in the middle of the dubs. It's called the murder dubs - is the name of the neighborhood, right? And, like, living on that edge has always been a thing of it. And so even the sideshow culture - the fact that it's illegal adds some type of exhilaration to it all.
LUSE: Wait, so some people might not know what sideshows are. Could you explain them...
HARSHAW: Oh.
LUSE: ...Quickly so we can get an idea of it?
HARSHAW: Sideshows are car shows. And I'm not talking about just your regular, like, drive-slow-and-show-off-your-car car show. You could have the ugliest car with the most powerful engine, where you rev it up, come into an intersection, swing a couple donuts or figure-eights or even just burn out and get out of there and kind of show off in front of folks. But a sideshow usually has an audience gathered around.
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: And that audience could come usually at the let-out of a club. People would, you know, race down the strip to an intersection in East Oakland and kind of commandeer it, really take it over, and turn up before - you know, until the cops come, pretty much.
LUSE: You know, people - when people talk about the creation of hip-hop in New York, they talk about how noisy the city is. Being on the train constantly kind of creates this backdrop, this thumping, this endless noise, so that the music kind of naturally had to be influenced by it. It kind of had to match it and be so bombastic because New York is so intense. But then, like, on the other coast, when I think about, like, LA hip-hop and G-Funk, it makes so much sense to me coming from the Detroit area because we drive everywhere. And the idea of being in a car - you want a smooth ride, and you want something smooth to listen to. I don't know. I wonder, like, how was the location so crucial to the sound of hyphy?
HARSHAW: Very much so. The way the streets are made in Northern California - they're so wide, they invite you to swing your car in them, you know? Like, you couldn't have sideshow culture in Philadelphia, where the streets are narrow, you know? And so I talked to one of the statesmen of hip-hop in Northern California, Keak Da Sneak, and he said that - that, like, yes, that's what separates it - is that we make music specifically for the cars - heavy basslines, things that you can ride around waking your neighbors up to.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUPER HYPHY")
KEAK DA SNEAK: (Rapping) I don't think, they don't, that's my word - what it do. I don't think they know, that's my word - fasheezy (ph). I don't think, they don't, that's my word...
LUSE: You know, hyphy was born a very local scene. Hip-hop scholar S. Craig Watkins describes the era leading up to 2006 as a time when, quote, "many young Californians have been pushed to the brink." You were a young Californian at that time. What were you and your friends and your peers on the brink of? Like, what was going on at that time that made life tough?
HARSHAW: Yeah. OK, so elements - lack of media attention for the region. You have to imagine Northern California hadn't really gotten national acclaim since Pac died - right? - or, like, "I Got Five On It." And so there's, like, a 10-year gap before E-40 comes back with "Tell Me When To Go," and Too Short...
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: ...Drops "Blow The Whistle."
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: And so that lack of media attention - people were hungry. And this is - this place is saturated with artists - a lot of independent artists, a lot of entrepreneurs, people who feel like they're worthy to be on the level of any other artists that's coming out of New York, Atlanta or LA, right?
Secondly, you have - the Black population in Oakland increased every decade from the 1950s until the year 2000, and then it stopped. And then Black folks were being pushed out to the suburbs. So you have this depletion of the Black community and folks being more widespread...
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: ...And folks being, like, yo, like, I'm losing what home is.
LUSE: Changes in demographics also very frequently bring changes in policing approaches, too. I imagine that that affected things as well.
HARSHAW: Yeah, there was a crackdown on sideshows. When I was a teenager, like, they announced that you could get your car towed for just parking two blocks within the sideshow area.
LUSE: Whoa.
HARSHAW: I was like, dang, what if it's just happening in my neighborhood, man?
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: What do you mean?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SIDESHOW (REMIX)")
MISTAH F A B: (Rapping) The sideshow, they want to shut us down, but we a'swang (ph) something on every corner in the town. Police mad, the streets is wild - 3 o'clock in the morning, and the beats is loud. Man, it don't stop...
HARSHAW: And throughout that year, Oakland experienced 148 homicides.
LUSE: My gosh.
HARSHAW: And so if I didn't know somebody, then I knew somebody who knew somebody who was getting killed and buried.
LUSE: Mmm hmm. Like, talk to me about some of the music or songs or music lyrics, music videos, from that time that kind of showed that aspect - like, the things that sort of had - as Craig Watkins put it - had people feeling as if they were living on the brink.
HARSHAW: The piece that I'm working on really centers around this video - I'm laughing - this video of Stomper, the A's mascot. He's a big, gray elephant, and he's at an E-40 record release party in '06. And he's dancing out in the parking lot - just, like, goofy dancing. It's a big, goofy, gray elephant, right?
LUSE: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey. Yeah.
HARSHAW: I filmed this back in '06. And I'm like, there's a lot to unpack here because he's dancing, and there's people dancing around him who have 5X white tees on that are airbrushed that say R.I.P. across the chest. And I'm like, you don't think that kid isn't mourning? You know, he's out there dancing and having fun and smiling, but he has R.I.P. with his friend's name across his chest. And I'm listening, and I'm like, wait, he's dancing to E-40's "So Happy To Be Here..."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HAPPY TO BE HERE")
E-40: Hard times...
D D ARTIS: (Singing) I'm just happy to be here...
E-40: The struggle...
HARSHAW: ...which is a track off of "My Ghetto Report Card." And the album itself is fun, up-tempo, high energy. But this one cut is E-40 sitting down and being, like, man, so many people not here. Like, I'm just happy to be here, you know?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HAPPY TO BE HERE")
E-40: (Singing) I'm just happy to be here right now...
D D ARTIS: (Singing) I'm just happy to be here...
E-40: (Singing) ...Lot of my folks been locked up or laid down...
D D ARTIS: (Singing) I'm just happy to be here...
HARSHAW: And seeing this elephant dance all goofy to it while that song is playing in the background - it's like, that's it right there. That's the problem. People think that the hyphy movement is all fun and goofy, but really, like, this is people expressing the trauma that they've been through and the fact that they're still here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Hey.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Hey.
LUSE: That E-40 song - I mean, that's a song about survivor's remorse, you know?
HARSHAW: Yeah.
LUSE: Like, survivor's guilt.
HARSHAW: I think it wasn't survivor's remorse. It was just straight survival mode. How do I get away from this, you know? And looking back at that time now, I look at photos, and I have the same button-up and Steve Madden shoes on at a funeral that I do at a club event. And I'm just like...
LUSE: Wow.
HARSHAW: ...There was no separation between the mourning and the partying, you know? We talking about sideshows. I remember seeing people in Buicks. On their dashboard, they would have R.I.P. pamphlets from the service - you know, the handbill. And they'd have that in the front of their car as they're swinging donuts and partying. A part of the survival was mourning and celebrating all in one. And in reflection now - now looking back at it, I see how unique it was to the Bay Area. And I see how it's not too far-fetched - like, going back to New Orleans, like, that's what second lines are about, right?
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: You're celebrating...
LUSE: Right.
HARSHAW: ...And you're honoring the deceased, you know? And so it's not unheard of. I just think that our culture is looked at - it's like, oh, yeah, hyphy movement. That was fun and goofy. I'm like, no, there's more to it. It's more than just shaking your dreads.
LUSE: You know, it also kind of reminds me of how, like, other subcultures find ways to express grief through ways that aren't necessarily traditional but still make total sense. Like, I think about how much of a club hit Janet Jackson's "Together Again" was in the '90s as, like, a response to her losses - her friends - from the AIDS crisis. Like, it became an anthem for that crisis.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TOGETHER AGAIN")
JANET JACKSON: (Singing) Dancing in moonlight, I know you are free 'cause I can see your star shining down on me.
LUSE: And people were coming together on dance floors and being with each other trying to almost, like, move through the grief together.
HARSHAW: I love that song.
LUSE: So good.
HARSHAW: Love - that's probably top three Janet songs in my book.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Coming up - what happens when regional music made in response to local grief goes global? Plus, how the internet changed regionalism and rap and what that means for its future.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: To be a little personal, recently - a couple of months ago, a friend of mine passed away. And actually, today - tonight - I'm going to be going to the memorial service. I haven't experienced this type of grief before - having somebody so young and so close to me pass away. And it's been so different to actually move through the ceremony of it, whether that is having a memorial service or whether that is sharing space with friends and dancing and crying together. I think, for so many of us, the past three years - almost four years, 3 1/2 years - have been a period that has lacked a lot of those communal grieving moments.
HARSHAW: Yeah.
LUSE: And I've really realized in the past couple of months how necessary they are to honor the person, but also to, like, feel like a human being again.
HARSHAW: My condolences on...
LUSE: Thank you.
HARSHAW: ...The passing of your friend. I'm learning it now, myself. These are the elements of processing the grief and the trauma. These are the healthy ways to do it - the dancing, in particular. When people think of hyphy dancing, they're like, oh, yeah, go dumb. Go stupid. Shake your dreads. And I'm like, there's this thing called turf dancing. Turf dancing is, like, boogaloo, pop-lock, strutting, telling stories, almost pantomime on beat. And most often those stories are about people who've passed. And so there's this one really popular video called Turf Dancing In The Rain, where there's a group of kids on a corner in East Oakland honoring their fallen friend while turf dancing out publicly.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOC.CE AND TUMBLEWEED'S "IN THEM STREETS")
HARSHAW: And it's a beautiful video. It's a great way to honor somebody's story. And physically, they're getting that energy out of their body, you know? Like, all that stress is built up. Your body holds that stress. So in order to get that stress out of you, get out there. Sweat. Do moves. Be appreciated. There's nothing like you doing a dance move and people clapping for you and how that can help rebuild you after an experience that has downed you. Yeah, it's really important. We knew it, but we didn't verbalize it back then, you know?
LUSE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, grief is kind of seen as being this, like, straightforward process where you're supposed to go through, and you follow these steps - like the Kubler-Ross method or something like that. You go through, and you follow these steps, and you come out fine on the other end of it. But it doesn't always look like that. It doesn't always look like a progression, right? And also, like, you don't come out fine on the other end (laughter). You come out different.
HARSHAW: You come out new. Yeah, for sure.
LUSE: You talked about how important it was that the hyphy movement's rise coincided with the rising popularity of YouTube. And suddenly, people in other parts of the country were exposed to these dances and artists and slang and sideshows. How did the role of budding social media platforms like YouTube change the hyphy scene and its reputation?
HARSHAW: I think it both benefited and was the detriment of the hyphy movement. I think back to the ghost riding the whip. Critty Bo, a guy from West Oakland - he's credited for creating it - ghost riding the whip, and it was something that was, like, real, real local. It was something that folks in Oakland did, and it spread throughout the Bay.
And then when it gets on YouTube, you start seeing kids out in the suburbs do it, and you start seeing these goofy videos of people messing up doing it because their car's on a hill, and they don't know how to properly do it. And so (laughter) I'm laughing, but, like, that is the spread of culture, and it is culture being diluted, as well, where - the reason why Critty Bo was ghost riding the whip is 'cause he was essentially mourning, and that was his way of doing it. And then when the kid from the suburbs is doing it, he's doing it because he saw it on eBaum's World or YouTube.
It's not just the hyphy movement that has experienced this. I think, again, hip-hop has experienced this where hip-hop started in the Bronx, and it was this thing. It was done for this reason. And it has definitely been diluted over the 50 years. And it's changed, and it's grown, and there's been some benefits to that spread. I love artists - like, one of my favorite artists right now is from Europe, like, Little Simz. It's, like, dope, you know what I'm saying? Like...
LUSE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HARSHAW: ...And I love the spread of hip-hop, and I could see how it's been detrimental, as well. And that is largely on the shoulders of social media.
LUSE: The thing is, I think - with that, I think a lot of people who are not from that area - I mean, I saw it as, like, a fun dance. You know what I'm saying? I saw it as, like, a fun dance, fun music, fun party scene but kind of having a flat read.
HARSHAW: Flat read is a great term to use. That's really good 'cause it - I'm - that's what I'm saying. There's more dimensions to it.
LUSE: One last question. Do you still go down?
HARSHAW: Do I still go down?
LUSE: Do you? Yeah (laughter).
HARSHAW: When my body allows me to.
(LAUGHTER)
HARSHAW: Doesn't happen as often as it used to.
LUSE: Fair enough. Fair enough (laughter). Well, Pendarvis - it was so great to see you, Pen. This was so wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
HARSHAW: Thank you.
LUSE: That was Pendarvis Harshaw, a culture reporter for KQED. His essay on hyphy and grief will be out in September. Coming up, we zoom out and look at how regionalism has made hip-hop what it is today.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Hyphy is just one of many local scenes that make up hip hop. My next guest, Sheldon Pearce, is an editor for NPR Music. And he says the internet has totally warped the distinction between the local and the global. I sat down with him to chat about how that happened and what that means for the future of rap.
Sheldon, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
PEARCE: Thank you so much for having me.
LUSE: How did regionality shape hip-hop from the very beginning of its history?
PEARCE: It really starts, even from the beginning, in New York City. The kids are pretty much, like, fighting across boroughs for their representation. It's funny because rap, at its core, and hip-hop culture in general is like a sort of competitive art. You think about breakdancing. You think about DJ battles. And that sense of, like, identifying with who you are and who's around you, where up the block you hang out and who you're hanging out with was sort of core to the way that these kids were, like, thinking about the music that they were making and ingesting.
LUSE: What's a song that you most feel represents your regional scene, that you, like, first became attached to?
PEARCE: I'm a DMV boy.
LUSE: Hey.
PEARCE: I grew up in and around the DMV.
LUSE: Beat your feet.
PEARCE: My parents are from Norfolk, Va. They spent most of their life there. My mom and my aunt grew up there. So from Virginia Beach, it was always, "Get Ur Freak On."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GET UR FREAK ON")
MISSY ELLIOTT: (Rapping) Go, get your freak on. Go, get your freak on.
PEARCE: That was - sort of represented the weirdness that was coming out of Virginia Beach with Timbaland and Missy and the Neptunes.
LUSE: That Chesapeake Bay, Norfolk...
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Virginia Beach area turned out to have been very fertile ground for, like, all of hip-hop.
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: I'd love to hear from you about that specific regional flavor. Like, how did you see the regional flavor of Virginia Beach and that area inform its rap music?
PEARCE: In Virginia Beach specifically, you see how a really tight-knit community of friends can, in their own right, just change the entire landscape of a music industry. It's like Timbaland and Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, who were in the group The Neptunes, and, of course, Missy Elliott - all of these people are friends in the late '80s, early '90s, just moving around this scene. They know each other. They're all trying to make it happen. It's only in sort of, like, rotating around one another that they are able to make it happen. Timbaland and Pharrell and Timbaland's friend Magoo were actually in a group together in high school. They called the group Surrounded by Idiots, which let you know what they were thinking about the Chesapeake Bay area at the time.
LUSE: (Laughter).
PEARCE: But it also sort of tells you about their mindset. Like, they are sort of eager, because of the place that they come from, to see the borders beyond. They're like, this place is sort of ordinary. Everybody else around us is ordinary. But we come from here, too, and we are not ordinary. So let's represent that. And it's like, you can hear it in the music that they were making even then.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Vocalizing).
PEARCE: Through the late '90s, early 2000s, they really start to push rap in just the weirdest directions. They start to warp the dimensions of rap into pop, into R&B. Timbaland had already been working with Aaliyah, of course, at that time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE NEED A RESOLUTION (FEAT. TIMBALAND)")
AALIYAH: (Singing) You'll let me, you'll let me know.
TIMBALAND: (Rapping) Girl, holla. You give me bits and pieces...
PEARCE: And it's like, soon enough their stuff starts shaping the dimensions of sound to the point where you get, like, a Neptunes credit on a Britney Spears record.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M A SLAVE 4 U")
BRITNEY SPEARS: (Singing) I'm a slave for you.
PEARCE: And then all of a sudden, it's like the floodgates open from there. Things have become so blurred that rap is pop. And they had a huge hand in pushing that door open for the rappers who would follow.
LUSE: Absolutely. Obviously, things have changed a lot since 50 years ago, you know, when hip-hop was birthed in New York City.
PEARCE: Correct.
LUSE: This strong regionalism in rap - like, when did that regionalism start to change, and how did you see that reflected in the music?
PEARCE: Yeah, regionalism - I always tell people it never really goes away, but the internet sort of shifts its locus a little bit and also shifts the way that just people interact with one another across scenes. In the blog era, everybody can basically upload their songs onto the internet and be heard from wherever they are. So you start to see a bit of a disconnect from regionalism to the internet there. The streaming era takes it to another place where it's, like, all music is now filtered through this one funnel - mainly, like, the playlist economy. And so you start to see a bit of - more of a flattening of sounds from that. And you get, like, artists who are post-landscape, like a Travis Scott or, like, a Lizzo - artists who are specifically from places that you would think of as rap hotbeds.
LUSE: Right.
PEARCE: And they make rap music, but it doesn't necessarily sound like the music of that region.
LUSE: It has, like, a lack of regionality, really.
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: Like, their music sounds smooth, very slick.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BUTTERFLY EFFECT")
TRAVIS SCOTT: (Rapping) Turn the lights on when I hit up Green Lantern.
LUSE: But it doesn't have that sort of signature tell...
PEARCE: Right.
LUSE: ...That a regional sound has.
PEARCE: But I also say that a lot of the artists on the internet are specifically of regions, and it's just that their region had such a previously defined sound that what they're doing seems at odds with what came before. You think of Odd Future, of course, which was a big Tumblr movement.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OLDIE")
ODD FUTURE: (Rapping) The big-eared bandit is tossing all his manners in a bag and wrapping them in Saran wrap bandages. Tossing them in...
PEARCE: That collective was made up of kids who lived in Los Angeles.
LUSE: Right.
PEARCE: People also like to think about SoundCloud, especially the SoundCloud movement of the late '10s, being disconnected from any grassroots base. But really, all of that stuff is in the image of Raider Klan, Denzel Curry.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ULTIMATE")
DENZEL CURRY: (Rapping) Your enemies, my enemies, we wet them up like a canteen.
PEARCE: ...Rappers from South Florida, like, the heavy, bass-boosted sound. And a lot of the rappers who ended up becoming core to that movement are from Florida. So it's like it's - a lot of that stayed local. Even as these scenes become harder to trace, you can still see the work at play.
LUSE: What you're talking about right now sounds like a lot of young people bumping up against each other, borrowing from each other...
PEARCE: Yeah. Yeah.
LUSE: ...And kind of bringing that back to their own sort of local internet spheres...
PEARCE: (Laughter) Right.
LUSE: ...As well as, like, local real-life spheres. But then I also think about big artists. I think about Drake (laughter).
PEARCE: Yeah. Yeah.
LUSE: Drake is somebody who - I mean, how many different versions of Drake can there be?
PEARCE: Yeah. (Laughter) Yeah.
LUSE: I mean, I think even a couple of weeks ago, there was a really viral moment of him where I really wanted to pull him aside and just be like, has anyone reminded you recently that you're not Caribbean? But, you know...
PEARCE: (Right).
LUSE: You think about how Drake has, I guess you could say, borrowed from grime aesthetics or Southern hip-hop aesthetics.
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: And, like, I'm not going to lie, Drake's, like, forays into reggaeton have actually been pretty good.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MIA")
DRAKE: (Singing in Spanish).
BAD BUNNY: Yeah. Yeah.
LUSE: Nobody please at me on that. But, I mean, what about someone who's at that level who - you know, like, Drake's from Toronto, but he's tapping into all these regional sounds. What does that mean?
PEARCE: I think Drake is an interesting case, where he understands rap regionalism and he also understands rap as mass market commodity. And a lot of times, he is trying to use the former to greater influence his hold over the genre in the latter. He loves to sort of dip his toe into various sounds, into various accents, in a lot of ways, to keep his own music relevant. But in another, more generous sense, there is a part of him that loves taking an artist from a specific scene who is doing something really interesting and lifting them up and saying, hey, this person is doing something cool. I think about him taking an artist like BlocBoy JB and the producer Tay Keith, who are both from Memphis, and sort of giving them national platforms.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK ALIVE")
BLOCBOY JB: (Rapping) Pull up with that Draco. Play with Drake and I'm going to shoot. My weapon...
PEARCE: But it's through Drake that you can sort of get a sense of how quickly the regional can become the global.
LUSE: To that thought, are there also ways that the internet has bolstered regional rap communities?
PEARCE: Yeah, definitely. I think specifically about the drill movement of 2012. Drill is sort of this distinctly Chicago product borne of the local high schools, artists like Chief Keef.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE SOSA")
CHIEF KEEF: (Rapping) You boys ain't making no noise. Y'all know I'm a grown boy. Your clique full of broke boys.
PEARCE: Katie Got Bandz.
LUSE: Katie Got Bandz. I miss my girl. Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RIDIN ROUND AND WE DRILLIN")
KATIE GOT BANDZ: (Rapping) Money mob team Katie who I'm rocking with. Katie. You drilling what?
PEARCE: At the time, people felt it was nihilistic. But really, it was realistic to what was being experienced in those projects. It was definitely stark, a lot of dark sounds, a lot of creeping synths - heavy underlying bass vibrating and underscoring dark lyrics about the violence in that city. It hadn't really left that region until a dude named DGainz, who was a rapper himself but also a videographer, was shooting most of the videos of these kids just hanging around on their blocks or shirtless in rooms together. His page all of a sudden becomes its own, like, pin drop for Chicago rap on the internet. But over the course of the 2010s, we see it sort of migrate to New York. A group of kids in Brooklyn start to pick up this thing. Pop Smoke, "Welcome To The Party."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WELCOME TO THE PARTY")
POP SMOKE: (Rapping) Baby, welcome to the party. I hit the boy up and then I go skate in a 'Rari.
PEARCE: Or Ice Spice, "Princess Diana."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRINCESS DIANA")
ICE SPICE: (Rapping) Trying to be low, he going to hit up my 'Gram. If he's smart, he's going to act like a fan.
PEARCE: You can hear the evolution from Chicago drill. But these artists, of course, have just such a distinctly New York style and swagger. And they're talking the lingo that is on the blocks in New York. It's so specifically of that place.
LUSE: I wonder, what does having a scene actually mean? Like, what does it give us, whether it's a scene online or in person? Like, why are scenes important?
PEARCE: Well, first of all, it lets us know that this music that we enjoy is not, like, a byproduct of corporate enterprise. Like, real people on the ground are making this stuff. It is, like, born of their, like, real experiences. We get a sense of how where you're from, how who you're hanging out with influences the kind of things that you create. In the broadest sense, what is really beautiful about art? The specificity that can come out of it. And it's only from community through this camaraderie that you end up getting these little pockets of sound that feel like they are of a specific place and represent a specific people and resonate with, like, people in a town who maybe haven't felt like the thing at the national level resonates with them.
LUSE: A lot of this regionality, whether it's, like, regional beefs, regional collaborations (laughter) - they've really kept hip-hop alive for the last 50 years.
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: You wrote in your piece about the next 50 years of rap...
PEARCE: Yeah.
LUSE: ...And that you're seeing the groundwork laid for a rap dystopia. What does that mean? And please describe - what does that look like for you?
PEARCE: I'm looking around at this moment, and I'm seeing, like, sort of the worst-case scenario of what could happen to rap. I mean, rap has always been a semi-commercial enterprise, but I never want it to become a corporate enterprise where it is just a thing that is mass marketed and used for ad dollars. I'm never worried about regionalism itself, but I do think there is a threat of a flattening of regionalism, losing the specificness of where they're from in the wash of the Internet in trying to sort of beat the algorithms and rise to the surface.
There is, like, a problem that you do see with a lot of younger artists where they will start out with a very distinctive style, but in trying to reach as many listeners as possible, they change and change and change and change until it's, like, the thing that they have is completely separate from the thing that they were. You see it a little bit with Lil Uzi Vert in their most recent music. Their stuff has always been sort of representative of the Philly spitters of the past, especially if you listen to, like, "Eternal Atake" and a song like POP."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "POP")
LIL UZI VERT: (Rapping) ...Like they Kenny. If you want money, back Crawford like Cindy. And if you want more, then you better get near me. I flex on my haters, pull up...
PEARCE: That is representative specifically of Philly rap, but if you listen to the "Pink Tape," it's sort of cosplaying the sounds of, like, turn-of-the-millennium rock and nu metal. And it's - sounds devoid of the stuff that made Uzi interesting in the first place.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AMPED")
LIL UZI VERT: (Rapping) ...Lil' phones. Rap life ain't that bad. Got three lil', four lil' homes...
PEARCE: In the transition to becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, sometimes, you can lose that flavor. And I'm worried that as we continue to be a web-focused music culture, that will happen to more and more artists.
LUSE: That is a really interesting opinion. I hadn't thought about that that way. You know, we've been talking about the rap dystopia. I wonder, to you, what would be a rap utopia?
PEARCE: Yeah, for me, rap has, at its core, been a genre that is supposed to speak to and for the marginalized and speak truth to power whenever it can. I don't think it's always been as progressive as it claims. This thing is catered specifically to Black straight men and a few white straight men.
LUSE: Yes.
PEARCE: And it's time to...
LUSE: And pretty aggressively. Yes.
PEARCE: ...Break those walls down. They - we had a good run. As a Black man, I can say we had a good run at the top of rap.
(LAUGHTER)
PEARCE: It was nice. It's time to widen the range of perspectives. That means becoming more inclusive, more intersectional, means being welcoming to more voices. And I think when you do that, you end up getting just a broader spectrum of creativity. And who knows what kind of music will be produced once we stop thinking from such a limited perspective?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Sheldon, thank you so much for coming on today. This was so great.
PEARCE: Thank you so much for having me. That was a great time.
LUSE: Thanks again to Sheldon Pearce. You can catch all of NPR's reporting on hip-hop's 50th at npr.org. The series is called All Rap Is Local.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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