ESSAYS Change Your Opinion of Rap Music
First Published in Clash Magazine in 2011
If you don’t like rap, then let me try to convince you.
Rappers remind me of my father, a classic old-school Hungarian hustler. As he himself told me, a
Hungarian is one who “gets behind you in the revolving door but comes out in front.” So, when rappers
like Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick started to flirt with a kind of capitalist revenge fantasy (proto-bling),
I instantly identified with them as funky versions of my father. Think of me as the son of a rapper and
you get the idea. (I almost called my forthcoming rap album ‘Capitalist Revenge Fantasy’ but then
Kanye kind of OWNS the ‘Fantasy’ theme in rap album titles.)
I came up first with music wannabe virtuosos (I played in a Sting tribute band!) and later I flirted with
the condescending, defensive posture of jazz musicians, and finally, I cut my professional teeth in the
decidedly droopy-drawers, lazy, bearded milieu of indie rock in Canada. So strangely, rappers seemed
like the only ones I could relate to.
Unapologetic in wanting success on their own terms, these guys were the first to start their own labels
as a rite of passage, who respect the marketplace enough to care about crowd reaction, and
therefore, their sales.
Rap is a meritocracy: the best ones are the most successful ones. Many don’t share this view, but
they’re like people who live in Brooklyn: no-one REALLY wants to live in Brooklyn, they’d all rather live
in Manhattan, but they have conspired to believe they wanted it that way. Alternative rappers can only
DREAM of being on top but pretend that it’s a nightmare.
This means that I, by definition as a non-NBA rapper, am a failure as a rapper. Guilty as charged. I
only said I was a musical genius, never the best rapper. (In fact, I might have been the worst MC at
some point).
Rappers know the secret: that strategic business sense and artistic integrity can, and should, co-exist.
Be thankful for what I call the Bukowski element of rap lyrics - usually pop stars and folksingers leave
out the fun, messy, offensive parts of what runs through a poet’s brain.
Rap that was openly political was the right tone for the times. Every era deserves the rap it gets. Rap
is now in its adolescence, and the pre-occupations of the teenager are the focus now: status, fashion
sense, sex, elusive ‘swag’, seeming like a badass... It’s a lot less “political” than it used to be, but it’s
also much less violent. But the materialism you hate in rap music is STILL the best social commentary
we have. Wouldn’t it be pathetic to hear a rapper pretend he hadn’t risen to a new tax bracket?
Rap music is now ABOUT the effects of rap’s global domination: it answers the question, ‘what
happens when these guys get into mansions and have no boundaries anymore?’ It’s basically an
exciting movie plot.
So, if you don’t like rap, you don’t like the times we live in. That, or you are mildly racist. Your choice.
© 2011 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales
ESSAYS
Did Chamber Music Invent The Banger?
A Short History of Chamber Music
First Published in i-D Magazine in 2014
We take it for granted that we have our own taste in music. Our relationship to our favorite
songs is intimate. As U2 discovered when they invited themselves into our iTunes Libraries,
we're sensitive about it because it's our (possibly idealized) identity.
But music began as a soundtrack to public events - it happened in churches, public squares
and royal courts. Listeners didn't really think about whether they liked it or not, it was just
there. It was Chamber Music that brought it into our rooms, into our private domain. In other
words without chamber music, there would be no "big room" at Fabric, and no bangers to
play in it.
Chamber music arose to fill a need: the burgeoning middle classes of the 18th and 19th
centuries were intent on aping the aristocracy. They wanted to squint and imagine that they
had their own cohort of musicians ready to play them in and out of their gilded chambers.
They bought sheet music in droves, pianos were like album streams that took skill to hear.
Singing styles mirrored the change in musical space, as David Byrne details in that otherwise
cheesy book. It turns out opera singing sounds like opera singing because those fat ladies
had to project to the back of the hall.
When chamber music came along, singers could deliver more intimate performances,
accompanied by just a piano, and the result was the German "Lied", or art-song. Schubert
pretty much OWNED this new genre: a simplified 2-part structure and addictive tunes. The
piano parts aimed for "word-painting", creating effects for raindrops, or horses running or
whatever. These were putative pop songs.
Much later, when recording happened, the smart musicians took advantage, so you had
Frank Sinatra pimping through the almost imperceptible crack in his voice on just the right
word.
So the story of chamber music is the story of music becoming more accessible, intimate and
democratic. Today my 14-year old nephew makes better beats than I did when I was 25,
because the space where music happens is so private - his laptop, his headphones, his
instantaneously-realized ideas - that we're approaching the musical singularity promised to
us by chamber music.
On my album "Chambers" I tried to bring back some of the colour of that 19th century music,
filtered through a 21st century attitude (and attention-span). I thought of my string quartet
(Kaiser Quartett) as a sampler. Chamber Music foretold the music of today - it WAS pop
music. Couldn't it be again?
© 2014 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales
ESSAYS
On Musical Tropes
First Published in The Guardian in 2014
2014 had very few across-the-board musical blockbusters.
Most people I know quietly curated their own playlists.
But if one listens to the few massive hits of the year, one can hear the final nail being
driven into the coffin of the traditional "chord progression". If 2013 was a hopeful
place for fans of harmony - we were "happy" and "got lucky", as the real instruments
of disco and 50's soul made a (brief) comeback - then 2014 "shook it off", and it
seemed all that we "fancied" was the rattle of drums and the whine of a playground
taunt.
When I began my studies, music was taught to me as the interplay between rhythm,
melody and harmony. Harmony was the secret weapon of composers to turbocharge melodies with emotional context. A well-placed surprising chord tickles the
ear and we begin to crave the surprise with each repeat listen.
Remember the goose bumps you got when listening to "Something" by the Beatles when the guitar answers George's "you know I believe her now" with some harmonic
sleight-of-hand? Or think of the Pet Shop Boys "Suburbia" and how the last "a"
syllable of the chorus gives way to a darker verse… that's the sophisticated
substitution of minor for major. These emotional bait-and-switches sound positively
quaint and old-fashioned today.
The twists and turns of clever harmony have been replaced by sound. A composer
like Haydn saw musical colors, or "timbres", as interchangeable. Composers in the
Romantic Era slowly expanded the concept of orchestration, so that a melody written
for, say, French horn took special advantage of the instrument and its associations in
the listener's ear.
Today, distinct synthesizer sounds have become their own musical gestures. So the
three descending notes of Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" don't amount to much on a piano or
a bass guitar - but the notes are irrelevant when compared to the instantly
recognizable acid analog squelch that defines this song. Most people could
recognize "Fancy" from a single iteration of one note. The sound is the hook, the
medium the message.
And when Charli XCX sings the chorus, the phrase "you already know" literally
borrows its shape from boastful "nyah-nyah-nyah" chanting you will remember from
your scarred childhood. She is, after all, in the fast lane and is lording it over us.
The OTHER song of the year, Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off", borrows its snappy feelgood drumbeat from "Happy" and/or "Hey Ya", but dispenses with the harmonic
formalities. The chorus is slightly more sophisticated than Iggy's, a descending
country infused phrase repeated thrice before she implores us to "shake it off". Her
voice, like Charli's, is a model of energetic defiance, and it is really, really, loud in the
mix.
The almost comical baritone sax bass line is an afterthought here. One could just as
easily sing this chorus a cappella while clapping and stomping and not miss any
harmonic details, because there are no details, no "chords" as we traditionally define
them. This is a sound installation based on a sassy yet self-deprecating attitude and
crisp percussion. Music based on such broad strokes, minimalism and the
"playground technique" sounds great out of a laptop speaker.
I think music is always pushing forward toward the essential - the history of music is
largely a process of reduction, and it is a beautiful process to observe. Listeners are
increasingly savvy, so the same old gestures become obsolete, and a composer can
telegraph a lot of musical intention with very little actually music.
Sound has been replacing traditional harmony ever since Debussy searched for
special effects on the piano that no one had heard before. First, amplified guitars,
synthesizers… then drum machines, samples… along with auto-tune, these are the
innovations that have forced music to evolve - and in 2014, our pop anthems proved
that the secret is in the sound.
© 2014 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales
ESSAYS
Classical Composers & The Pop Stars Who Channel Their Movers
First Published in The Guardian in 2015
I grew up with my grandfather teaching me the great European tradition of
composers. But when I wasn't at the piano I was watching Lionel Richie dance on the
ceiling, and I told myself there had to be a way to combine these 2 worlds. All music
is connected, and I've reflected on what the equivalencies might be between my
favorite composers and my pop heroes. Composers were our first musical celebrities,
and the 19th century brought us the idea of a "musical genius", a role which I happen
to play onstage. If these Master Composers were to have been pop icons or MCs, we
might find that not much has changed since a demonic Liszt broke piano strings back
in the 1850s.
THE SEXUAL VIRTUOSO
Liszt - Jimi Hendrix. The first undeniable piano virtuoso, Liszt invented the singleartist piano concert (in London no less), even moving the piano to its current
standard side-facing, audience-welcoming position. He was tall as a proud phallus,
wore a long mane of blond hair, and made unwavering eye contact with the ladies in
his audience. They swooned accordingly. He gyrated, he exaggerated. Liszt
sexualized music, broke piano strings on a regular basis, and by openly courting a
demonic image, he paved the way for Jimi Hendrix' guitar-burning. Heavy metal
certainly wouldn't exist without virtuosi like Liszt and his violin-playing counterpart
Paganini. It's a cliché by now, but they truly were the first rock stars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyzzAV9GhHQ
THE MAN-CHILD
Mozart - Michael Jackson. Mozart - the prototype for the child prodigy who missed
out on growing up, whose abusive stage-Dad put him to grueling work performing for
kings and queens across Europe. Music just poured out Mozart at an extremely high
rate and quality. His improvising at the keyboard was the musical moonwalk of its
day. For his part, fellow man-child Michael Jackson turbo-charged the idea of a pop
star and created the term "megastar". The hyperactive, goofy Amadeus was the first
composer to scare the hell out of all other composers. By living out their childhood
through their art, Mozart and Jacko showed us what seemed previously impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8e0fBlvEMQ
THE SUFFERING GENIUS
Chopin - Morrissey. And here we have the sensitive Romantic victim, whose misery
is front and center in their mythology. Chopin embodied a kind of sickly, androgynous
glamour that presaged Oscar Wilde and his pop-descendant Morrissey. Morrissey's
sexual alienation is a kind of sacrificial, neurotic handicap, and for better or worse we
find emotional cripples irresistible. It all began with Beethoven, whose deafness
enhanced his image as the Van Gogh of music. Possessing a tragic flaw that allows
him to be transcendent. Sensitivity sells. And we could even argue that Drake, in his
sad rapper-ly way, suffers with the worst of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hyAOYMUVDs
THE ECCENTRIC OUTSIDER
Erik Satie - Brian Eno. Erik Satie was far ahead of his time, anticipating ambient
music, situationism and pop art all several decades before they hit. His foppish
tweed-dandy style marked him as a beloved character in the cabaret scene of early
20th century Paris. But he was such an oddball, the musical establishment just
couldn't respect his ideas (music as "furniture" was one of them). Thankfully, his
French peers Debussy and Ravel were fans. His "Gymnopedies" are little hypnotic,
minimalist pop gems that some (rightly) say influenced my piano work. But his true
heir is Brian Eno, who carries this egghead tradition forward, inventing oblique
strategies and writing music for airports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Yoz9Nh21k
THE DELUSIONAL GOD
Richard Wagner - Kanye West. Some musicians have a kind of disease of ambition
(I myself am recovering from a long affliction). Richard Wagner went further than
most to live out his fantasies - it went beyond his music and success. He was a
serial adulterer, anti-semite and judgmental pontificator. And a genius. Wagner
represents for the "never-enoughs" that we see reflected in today's excess and hiphop revenge fantasies. It wasn't enough for Wagner to write great music and have his
operas produced in a theatre devoted only to his work…. he tried to live as a god, as
Kanye West as similarly admitted to doing. As the Grammys incident proved, Kanye
has a knack for inserting himself into the conversation, and makes it all about him.
Thank Richard Wagner for a lifetime of Kanye making headlines for extramusical
achievements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fktwPGCR7Yw © 2015 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales.
ESSAYS
SIX MUSICALLY ADVENTUROUS MOMENTS IN RAP MUSIC
First Published in Juice in 2015
Nas "Heaven"
One of a handful of rap songs in what musicians call 6/8 - or triple time. Most rap
songs are in 4/4 - but here the time signature is more like a fast waltz - it has a lilt to
it. I've always wondered why there aren't more adventures in uncommon time
signatures for rap. As Nas demonstrates here, it can push the MC to find new
syncopations and accents. I keep an iTunes playlist with a dozen or so songs in triple
time and it's always interesting to observe a non-musician react to something being
not-quite-right when they hear a rap in 6/8.
Nicki Minaj feat. Lil Herb "Chiraq"
Sometimes rappers will use a triple-time flow over a 4/4 beat. Lil Herb's hook on this
song is borrowed from his own track "Kill Shit", which features this musically distinct
flow. Many rappers have experimented with triplets since Das Efx, but they use
triplets in the obvious way, groups of three notes that skate over the music - think of
Migos’ recent hit "Versace, Versace”, which started a triplet trend last year. But Lil'
Herb does it differently. He divides his triplets into groups of two - a surprisingly
sophisticated way of carving out rhythm from straight-ahead beats. As far as I know,
he is the only rapper to have made this flow his main one, and it gives the music
professor in me goose bumps to hear his verse on this song.
Rick Ross - "Tears of Joy"
This emotional classic from Rick Ross shows his softer more introspective side.
Musically it is also quite a rule-breaker - the verse is structured in groups of 5 bars.
Almost all rap songs respect some variation on groups of 4 bars - that's why you hear
rappers talk about dropping a "hot 16", meaning 16 bars. Ross cleverly uses the
"extra" bar to repeat, or to slightly vary the previous line.
Joe Budden "Pump it Up"
Here is another example of an oddly-structured rap verse. Here Joe Budden spits 4
bars of rap before an extra bar containing the song’s hook "Pump, pump, pump it
up". In classical music we would call this a ritornello, a little tag on the phrase that resets the music. A ritornello creates a feeling of tension that resolves into the next rap
verse. By repeating it many times, we become strangely accustomed to the uneven
number of bars.
Gucci Mane "Lemonade"
Some of my favorite moments in rap songs come when the beat drops out. This
started happening more and more in the 2000s, and now thanks to artists like
Gucci or Drake, there are often entire verses or hooks with no beats. "Lemonade"
features a beat-less chorus, and all of the rhythm is provided by my favorite
instrument, the piano. The chords provide a Billy Joel-ish feeling that is very close to
my heart. But most of all, when the beat drops in again, and Gucci starts rapping, it's
a huge moment.
YG "2015 flow"
If a rapper can make you nod your head and press rewind without any kick, claps or
snares, then this rapper must be dope. YG 's new single from this year takes the
beat-less trend to a new extreme - the entire song has no drums whatsoever. I just
love how rap continues to re-invent and challenge itself, grappling with the most
existential musical questions such as "what exactly is a beat?"
© 2015 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales
ESSAYS
Talks Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise
First Published in The Talkhouse in 2015
Who is Big Sean? Is he a “heel” or is he a "face”? Maybe the gifted Detroit rapper’s
new album reveals what makes this guy tick.
I could never get a handle on Big Sean’s rap character. Rappers are like pro
wrestlers:
They need to telegraph whether they’re a “heel” or a “face.” Is Big Sean a “lyricist” or
a “swag rapper” or a “pimp”? I already knew of his status as the probable inventor
and perfecter of “hashtag rap” (in which the “like” or “as” of similes are dropped, e.g.,
“It’s going down/Basement”). That’s a huge accomplishment, but nonetheless he
always struck me as a less charismatic Fabolous, another obviously talented artist
whom I also couldn’t figure out.
Clicking on Dark Sky Paradise, I was already intrigued by the word “dark” in the title.
(Compare this with his last two boilerplate rap album titles, 2011’s Finally Famous
and 2013’s Hall of Fame.) Sean’s mentor and label boss Kanye Kardashian’s best
album is arguably My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, so here we have paradise
instead of fantasy. Maybe I was finally going to learn about what made this guy tick.
The beats
We are clearly in the post-Kanye, post-Drake beat aesthetic: album opener “Dark Sky
(Skyscraper)” starts with a THX-worthy thunderclap sound effect, and a beatless 90
seconds of dense, syncopated rapping. The backdrop is all cold-filtered minor chords
and dramatic tubular bells. On the bonus track “Platinum and Wood” there is an
actual tempo change, up a few dozen BPM for the second verse. That’s a rarity. I
really appreciate that the biggest rappers are now engaging in an arms race of
musical open-mindedness. It’s the reason I ended up playing piano on a Drake
album. Listening to Dark Sky Paradise, I hear bits of electronica, lo-fi, indie rock and
hardly any sappy r&b or, God forbid, rock-rap. Impeccable taste.
Now that rappers are interested in making “dark” and emotional albums, they’ve
fallen in love with endlessly held chords, usually icy, ’80s-tinged synthesizer pads. It
creates a pleasantly claustrophobic feel. On “Deep,” the handclaps are almost an
afterthought — Big Sean and Lil’ Wayne find the pitch and the musical space for their
raps inside the chords rather than the percussion. Luckily, there are so many
sections without drums, so these ubiquitous pads don’t smother the ear too badly.
The beatless trend in hip-hop continues, and it works to Big Sean’s advantage here
(“One Man Change the World” literally has no beat at all, ditto for the recent KanyeMcCartney singles).
This depth is welcome to my ears, but it owes so much to Kanye and Drake that it’s
hard to trust. The drum patterns follow the recent trend favoring quick, stuttering
alternations of triplets with fast sixteenth notes. Half-time switches to double-time just
like that. It’s rhythmically quite challenging. So between the schizophrenic hi-hats and
the ever-changing musical moods, there’s no way to get bored, but maybe all of that
serves to distract from the more existential question: what is Big Sean’s own
aesthetic?
The raps
The dosage of boasting vs. introspection, catchiness vs. lyricism, punchlines vs.
storytelling is eerily perfect. He changes flows and subject matter at precisely the
moment you wish he would. He never gets annoying, which is the hugest compliment
of all.
He’s flexible. On most songs, he modulates his voice: up an octave here, down a fifth
there, then back down to his relaxed drawl to bring in a half-sung hook. Two minutes
go by on this album and you’re likely to have heard three or four different flows in
multiple variations.
Some rappers like to give the impression of virtually freestyling. I would put Jay-Z,
the Game and Rick Ross in this category: the kind of rappers who claim not to write
down their rhymes. They tend to favor a single flow for entire verses, finding a sweet
spot and sticking with it. Big Sean hints at an architectural intention that I first noticed
with more dexterous, compositional rappers like Busta Rhymes and Eminem. I’m
quite positive that Sean writes his rhymes down, possibly using different colored
pens for different sections. He’s mastered and internalized so many of rap’s latest
tropes: machine gun flows, TI-style shit-talking, rapping in triplets à la Migos (my
personal favorite “Paradise,” in which he gives the word “moneybag” the “Versace”
treatment). He even does a decent Drake chorus croon (on “I Know,” I had to check
if it was Drizzy himself).
And like all rappers, he often mentions sex, cars, weed, clothes and money — but he
never seems that excited about any of them. He only seems to engage emotionally
when trying to motivate himself to keep working. Maybe he’s rapping in the mirror?
Rapping may be self-help for Big Sean. Somehow his swag sounds half-hearted,
even though it is expertly delivered.
© 2015 Jason Beck pka Chilly Gonzales