SwampDiggers

MAD LOV

Crem. — 2024-06-19T07:27:10Z

En gros et en capitales. Comme pour le crier à la terre entière. Toi et moi. Tard la nuit. A bracetto, démarche saccadée rhum arrangé, la dernière clope du paquet et un sourire aux lèvres.

C'est l'album d'un amoureux. Tout simplement. Dès la première écoute on le sait. C'est immédiat. Comme un coup de foudre. Chaque chanson y fait mention, à sa façon et à un degré différent. Piste après piste, Loveni nous parle d'amour. Mais pas n'importe lequel. Celui qui reste comme au début, celui des grandes promesses, des passions adolescentes. Quand tout est si facile, avec l'eau fraîche et rien d'autre. C'est ce qui se dégage de ce MAD LOV, un bonheur qui irradie et l'insouciance qui va avec. Album semblerait-il des plus personnels… En effet, Il apparaît que le bon gamin qui jadis naviguait en eaux troubles, l'esprit embrumé, ait trouvé son port d'attache. Partir pour mieux faire le point sur sa vie, écarter certaines relations, ne garder que les vraies. Fini Paris, ses soirées, ses produits. Bonjour Bruxelles. Bonjour Nancy (la fille, pas la ville).

On est persuadé de l'importance de ces changements à l'écoute de ce troisième album. Son auteur semble apaisé grâce à eux, et un peu revenu de ses errances nocturnes. Évidemment la nuit, les charmes de l'inconnu, une Colt 45 bien fraîche à la main… Ça aurait toujours son attrait. Mais à quoi bon rider si c'est pas pour avoir sa brunette côté passager ? Smooth playa in love c'est le thème du disque. Difficile d'aller contre nature, Loveni rimera toujours avec Late night rider certes… Mais désormais ces moments sont partagés et entrecoupés d'instants plus intimes, de déclarations et d'aveux yeux dans les yeux. C'est nous, et les autres on s'en fout.

Un changement géographique qui, on le sens, a aussi permis de travailler en étroite collaboration avec Daiko, qui signe l'intégralité musicale de l'album. Et c'est sûrement dans sa cohérence que se trouve la plus belle réussite de MAD LOV. Dans les thèmes abordés, comme précédemment évoqué, et surtout dans le son. Les prods, sans pour autant se ressembler, s'harmonisent parfaitement, s'accordent toutes entre elles au fur et à mesure de l'écoute. Là est tout le talent de Daiko, et qui fait que ce projet est un vrai album et non pas une simple compilation de chansons. Il est important de souligner que ce travail est tout autant celui de Loveni que celui du jeune producteur.

Et après ? Après ça reste du Loveni… Pas le rappeur le plus technique, et c'est tant mieux. C'est pas ce qu'on demande. On veut juste que ça coule comme de la liqueur, que ça nous donne envie d'enchaîner avec du Houston, période Swishahouse, et qu'il y ait deux/trois références qui fassent esquisser un sourire aux vieux de la vieille... Laid back mon jeune.

Menimal (Wish Death)

Jocelyn Anglemort & _W___ — 2022-01-13T08:25:38Z

Petit mix croisé de 2 rappeurs issus de Stockton, sans prétention, entre tradition et modernité

Comme disait Zola (Emile), au début on entendait le croassement de deux corbeaux, qui tournoyaient d'un vol continu autour du clocher. Puis par la suite, on se souvenait de Saint Augustin et qu'aboyer, solliciter au mal, tout cela est dans les moyens du diable, mais il ne peut mordre que qui veut être mordu.

Tout ça nous donna l'envie d'une sélection de chansons tout à la fois sinistres et tristes, rauques et bruyantes. La bande son de l'année 2021 et sans doute de celles qui suivront.

Et en passant, un pensée pour les regrettés Drakeo et Bris.

Liste des pistes

Young Slo-Be - Southeast Demons
Young Slo-Be - Stay On Point
EBK Young Joc - Gettin Weird
Young Slo-Be - Slime Ball
EBK Young Joc & Drakeo the Ruler - Silly Rabbit
Young Slo-Be - Nightingale's Finest
Young Slo-Be - If It Go Bad
EBK Young Joc - Here We Go Again
Young Slo-Be - Fantastik
Young Slo-Be - Streets Kallin
EBK Young Joc - Many Men
Young Slo-Be - No Names
Bris, EBK YoungJoc & Mac J - BIG BLOODY
Young Slo-Be - 21 Thoughts
Young Slo-Be - The Association
Young Los & EBK Young Joc - Easy Score
EBK Young Joc & Bris - Dumb and Dumber
Young Slo-Be,Bris, EBK Young Joc & EBK Juvie - This Ain't Nun New
EBK Young Joc - Real Mafia
Young Slo-Be - 2100 Money Team
Young Slo-Be - Asshole
EBK Young Joc - Mark Me Tardy
EBK Young Joc & Mac J - Timmy Turner
EBK Young Joc - Free My Thugs

The Education of Sonny Carson

DrNoze & Tibo BRTZ — 2020-04-06T07:52:22Z

Bon nombre de fans de rap connaissent par coeur des répliques de ce film, souvent sans l'avoir vu (du moins de ce côté-ci de l'Atlantique). Pourtant cette pièce de l'histoire du rap et de la culture noire américaine mérite toujours le détour.

« What are you doing on our turf, punk ?
I got a message for Smokey. »

C'est par ces mots que démarre Ironman, le premier album solo de Ghostface Killah sorti en 1996. Les quelques phrases de dialogues qui serviront d'introduction à Iron Maiden deviendront cultes pour toute une génération d'auditeurs de rap et nombreux seront les rappeurs et producteurs qui sampleront le film après lui.

La scène est tirée d'un film de 1974, The Education of Sonny Carson. Le jeune Sonny du titre y fait connaissance avec les membres du gang qu'il rejoindra par la suite, les Lords. Dans la mouvance des films de Blaxploitation qui sortaient régulièrement dans les années 1970, le film de Michael Campus (The Mack), tiré du livre autobiographique de Robert « Sonny » Carson, s'en démarque par son ton sérieux, documenté et réaliste. Il raconte l'histoire d'un jeune garçon dans les ghettos de New York à la fin des années 1960. Un parcours romanesque qui va de la rue aux gangs en passant par la case prison et qui se termine en rédemption.

Comme les autres productions de la Blaxpoitation il s'agit d'un film de série B, réalisé avec un petit budget et destiné au circuit des cinémas de quartier et des doubles programmes. Malgré quelques problèmes de rythme et des longueurs, il parvient à dresser un portrait sensible de la jeunesse des ghettos de cette époque, avec une dimension documentaire. Le film s'attarde notamment à représenter avec insistance l'impact, physique et psychologique, que l'experience carcérale peut avoir sur une vie. Et avec une force qui n'était pas si courante dans le cinéma populaire d'exploitation à cette époque. On y décrit également sans fard la vie au sein des gangs et les ravages de la toxicomanie.

Mais, si les rappeurs s'y sont intéressés de près, c'est qu'il s'agit également d'un film où la musique a toute sa place. La soul, comme le veulent le genre et l'époque, y fait bien sûr office de bande son. Mais la musicalité est cachée partout dans le film, jusque dans les nombreux moments de silence ou les longs dialogues rythmés. Ces tirades gorgées de slang bien senties et déclamées avec l'accent de l'époque nous font comprendre tout de suite l'intérêt qu'ont pu y trouver des musiciens.

Le film nous fait aussi entendre beaucoup de musique diégétique, avec des scènes proches du reportage comme cet interminable prêche enfiévré, ou ces scènes de gospels et de percussions jouées dans la rue. On trouve même une longue scène de carnaval où l'on voit d'ailleurs les gangs participer activement à la vie culturelle locale. Sur le générique de fin, la production tient d'ailleurs à remercier plusieurs gangs célèbres de l'époque pour leur aide et leur participation (les Jolly Stompers, Tomahawks, Black Spades et Pure Hell). Certains de leurs membres apparaissent également dans le film (voir cet article de 1973 du New York Times).

« Hey man… I'm going be the captain… »

L'année 1974, la date de sortie de The Education of Sonny Carson au cinéma est également celle que les livres d'Histoire retiennent comme date de naissance du hip-hop avec les premières block parties. On comprend d'autant mieux comment le film est devenu culte et pourquoi des rappeurs s'en sont nourris des années plus tard.

Après cette introduction légendaire, Ghostface reprend d'autres passages du film au cours de l'album, comme l'intro de 260 qui sample le discours des Hawks en train de se chauffer pour aller en guerre, ou encore celle de All That I Got Is You, qui cite une scène en prison dans l'enfance de Sonny où ce dernier annonce à son collègue de cellule qu'il a trois mois à tirer.

« - What dey gives you, blood ?
– Three months man.
– Whatchu doin in here anyway ? You oughta be home with your momma. How old are you boy ?
– Thirteen.
– Thirteen ? Damn, the bastards must be runnin outta niggaz to arrest »

Si les extraits les plus célèbres tirés de ce film sont ceux de l'album de Ghosface Killah, nombreux sont les rappeurs des années suivantes à en avoir extrait des dialogues, comme Prodigy (Be Cool Skit), Common (The Bitch in Yoo) et Roc Marciano (l'intro de The Pimpire Strikes Back). Aujourd'hui encore les hommages venus des rappeurs ne manquent pas, 2 Chainz (Dresser « Lil Boy » avec Young Thug) ou Meek Mill (Wanna Know) ont repris des extraits de dialogues, ou encore avec des samples musicaux de la bande originale comme 21 Savage (Bank Account). La liste est non exhaustive.

D'ailleurs la musique originale du film, de Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, a aussi été énormément samplée. Tibo nous en a réuni un certain nombre dans un mix d'anthologie.

– Voir le film complet sur Youtube

Mwlina Imiri Abubadika

Pour finir, revenons au véritable Sonny Carson. Après son expérience racontée dans le film il s'engage dans la guerre de Corée, où il sert dans la 82e division aéroportée. Puis il change son nom pour Mwlina Imiri Abubadika et devient par la suite un activiste « black nationalist » engagé dans divers combats comme la lutte contre la drogue ou les brutalités policières. Mais il s'affichera aussi dans des luttes plus douteuses comme le boycott de certaines épiceries tenues par des Coréens, ou les tensions raciales de 1991 entre noirs et juifs dans le quartier de Crown Heights. Dernier lien avec le rap, son fils Lumumba Carson officie sous le pseudonyme de Professor X (the Overseer) au sein du X Clan.

Sonny Carson (AKA Mwlina Imiri Abubadika)

Purrp is the new black

KallMeTheDoctor & rimrimrim & Tibo BRTZ — 2019-02-13T09:13:24Z

Que ce soit pour ses coups de sang numériques ou ses instrumentales venues d'ailleurs, SpaceGhostPurrp ne cesse de faire parler de lui depuis des années. Qu'on le veuille ou non, il reste le fondateur de toute cette génération internet. Rendons lui l'hommage qu'il mérite.

Fondateur du Raider Klan (Rvidxr Klvn) et ambassadeur de la phonk, Markese Money Rolle (de son vrai nom) a joué un rôle essentiel dans le développement de cette scène et l'influence qu'elle a eu sur le « Soundcloud » rap actuel.

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Son amour véritable pour la Three 6 Mafia, avec qui il a collaboré (DJ Paul, Juicy J, Gangsta Boo), a participé à ramener ceux-ci à la mode chez les 90s babies, comme les $uicideboy$. Mais les influences de SGP ne se limitent pas à celles de Memphis. En effet, en plus de l'aspect lo-fi de sa musique, Purrp incorpore avec soin et génie des samples de RnB des années 1990, dont il est fan, provenant des TLC (RIP Lisa Lopes), Code 3 voire Mary J Blige. Également grand fan de DJ Screw, il utilise aussi beaucoup les filtres et autres ralentissements pour créer des ambiances hypnotiques qui flirtent avec le psychédélisme.

Ce qui le rend si particulier est qu'il n'a pas de recette infaillible à suivre mais plutôt une créativité qui le rend imprévisible. C'est pourquoi sa musique peut parfois osciller entre le génial et l'inaudible. Nombreux sont ceux ont tenté de l'imiter mais la plupart se sont malheureusement cassé les dents. On pense par exemple à Cat Soup et son album Astral Phonk pourtant loin d'être mauvais.

Si Soulja Boy et Lil B furent certainement les premiers à optimiser l'utilisation des réseaux sociaux (MySpace à l'époque), SpaceGhostPurrp a, lui, inspiré à sa manière toute une génération ainsi qu'un style vestimentaire (Black Scale), et créé tout un mouvement auquel Black Kray, Kane Grocerys, Xavier Wulf, Denzel Curry, Bones, $uicideboy$, etc appartiennent.

Malgré ses frasques sur les réseaux sociaux, son talent est aujourd'hui largement reconnu. Des "petits" compositeurs tels que Misogi aux rappeurs mainstream comme Gangsta Boo, Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa, Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, Pharrell Williams, Playboi Carti, Tyler the creator et même A$AP Rocky et ce, en dépit de leur beef de longue date.

Télécharger le mix 2 (bonus)

– À relire, ce portrait réalisé par Dirt Noze pour FoxyLounge en 2012

Liste de lecture :

Intro Rare
Mystikal Maze
Robb Bank$ - All The Way Live [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp & Nuri]
Juicy J - 20 Zig Zags [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
Black Money World
1 [unreleased]
Denzel Curry (ft. Amber London & Xavier Wulf) - Ridin n Da Back [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
Wiz Khalifa (ft. Juicy J) - TAP [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
A$AP Rocky (ft. SpaceGhostPurrp & A$AP Nast) - Purple Swag : Chapter 2 [prod. A$AP Ty Beats]
Freddie Gibbs (ft. SpaceGhostPurrp & Krazie Bone) - Kush Cloud [prod. SMKA]
Purrp 4 Sale
Vamp City
Pheel Tha Phonk 1990
Juicy J (ft. SpaceGhostPurrp & Speaks) - Deez B****** Rollin' [prod. Crazy Mike & Juicy J]
A$AP Rocky - Pretty Flacko [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
Raider Klan (ft. Nell, Rell, Young Simmie & SpaceGhostPurrp) - It's Nothing [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
Grind On Me
A$AP Rocky (ft. Chace Infinite & SpaceGhostPurrp) - Keep It G [prod. SpaceGhostPurrp]
The Sound Of SpaceGhostPurrp's Sleep
For The Love Of Money
The Black God

Illustration : rimrimrim
Mix : Tibo BRTZ
Sélection : KallMeTheDoctor

Le meilleur boys band du monde

Evidji & KallMeTheDoctor & Tibo BRTZ & Tis — 2018-06-18T12:04:03Z

BROCKHAMPTON, l'auto-proclamé meilleur boys band du monde, a littéralement saturé l'année 2017 avec sa trilogie "SATURATION". D'où vient ce collectif et comment s'est-il formé ? Difficile de résumer simplement l'identité d'un groupe débordant d'énergie et de personnalités. Retour sur l'ascension éclair de cette petite communauté partie des rues de Corpus Christi, Texas pour en arriver aux lueurs révélatrices de Los Angeles, Californie et s'engouffrer dans les longs couloirs de Sony Music.

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Tout a réellement commencé à San Marcos, Texas où Kevin The Abstract a formé un premier groupe (AliveSinceForever aussi appelé ASF) avec, entre autres, ses amis de lycée Ameer Vann et Dom McLennon en 2012. Un seul projet (un EP, THE ASF EP) a vu le jour de ce premier émoi puis ASF s'est rapidement séparé en 2014. Une séparation qui, avec le recul, ressemble davantage à une évolution en ce qui deviendra officiellement BROCKHAMPTON en 2015.

BROCKHAMPTON est constitué du trio de base d'AliveSinceForever, avec toujours Kevin The Abstract qui se dégage en leader naturel, puis une ribambelle de nouveaux membres recrutés par l'intermédiaire du forum du site KanyeToThe. Rappeurs, chanteurs, producteurs, graphistes, webmaster, monteurs vidéo ou autres managers forment cette nouvelle entité dénombrant environ quinze jeunes gens. Dans un premier temps, cette e-communauté réalise et monte ses premiers morceaux en tant que groupe via ce même forum, mails et autre chat privé ; toutefois les membres comprennent rapidement que s'ils souhaitent réellement bâtir quelque chose ensemble, cela impose un investissement supérieur de leur part.

Inspiré par la scène du film "The Social Network" où Mark Zuckerberg installe son QG dans une maison à Palo Alto avec ses associés, BROCKHAMPTON prend la décision d'emménager tous ensemble dans une maison, un acte fondateur. Ils résident tous ensemble à San Marcos, Texas. Ceci va leur servir à se comprendre et à appréhender la manière de créer de chacun. Une année de transition capitale dans la mutation du groupe qui décide ensuite de déménager à Los Angeles, Californie en suivant une intuition de son leader.

"Apple had to get out the garage at some point" : le collectif cite souvent les structures d'Apple ou de Facebook comme références et inspirations. Ils veulent également changer le monde et faire des choses qui n'ont jamais été faites. Leur épopée se lance officiellement en mars 2016 avec la sortie de leur première mixtape ALL-AMERICAN TRASH. Les premiers jets sont tracés bien que ce projet soit loin d'exposer le potentiel entier du collectif. C'est alors qu'une fan base apparaît spontanément, également « récupérée » du premier album solo de Kevin The Abstract MTV1987 sorti en 2014, et suit les exploits de BROCKHAMPTON dans l'underground de la toile.

Puis vient l'ère SATURATION… La sortie du premier volet en juin 2017 s'accompagne d'une première vague d'euphorie face à cet univers frais, décomplexé et expérimental. Les influences rap (Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Outkast) et pop (Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears) volontairement assumées séduisent d'abord timidement puis le mélange prend de manière fulgurante par la suite avec les livraisons de SATURATION II et SATURATION III (respectivement en août et décembre de la même année). Le feu est mis aux poudres et la fan base initiale se transforme en die-hard fans puis enfin le grand public récupère le train en marche. Au fur et à mesure des morceaux, chaque individualité se dessine davantage tout en gardant une solide cohérence entre les différents membres. On ne peut pas éviter de faire le parallèle avec Odd Future, un autre collectif qui, quand il a explosé aux yeux du monde, de par ses fortes personnalités, a littéralement causé un séisme sur la planète rap. Ce qui est clair, c'est que le groupe de Tyler The Creator a joué un rôle, plus ou moins direct, dans la formation de BROCKHAMPTON, en termes d'identité et en montrant le chemin. Néanmoins, la différence importante à relever entre ces deux entités est que l'une comprenait des personnalités (trop) indépendantes, qui n'ont véritablement jamais fonctionné ensemble pour finalement se séparer rapidement ; quand l'autre plonge son attrait majeur dans l'alchimie entre tous ses membres.

À force d'exposition et de reconnaissance sur la place publique, les sollicitations ont commencé à pleuvoir autour du collectif texan. C'est ainsi que le 30 mars dernier, par le biais de son compte Instagram Kevin The Abstract annonce que BROCKHAMPTON vient de s'engager avec RCA Records (filiale de Sony Music, comptant A$AP Rocky ou encore Justin Timberlake dans ses rangs) pour leur prochain album PUPPY, qui devrait voir le jour pour l'été 2018. En réalité, le deal pourrait être bien plus juteux, on évoque notamment un contrat de $15M pour un nombre de six albums répartis sur trois ans. Le leader du groupe explique également que pour devenir le meilleur boys band au monde, BROCKHAMPTON a besoin d'une structure les accompagnant dans un partenariat. Il tente également de rassurer les fans sceptiques par rapport à cette nouvelle, en affirmant que cela n'affecterait en rien leur manière de travailler et de produire de la musique.

Avec cette signature, BROCKHAMPTON passe dans la cour des grands et ne peut plus se cacher. De nombreux yeux sont dorénavant braqués vers eux et leur prochain projet. Celui-ci devait initialement être titré TEAM EFFORT mais ce brouillon a été repoussé indéfiniment pour le moment, pour faire de PUPPY leur 4e album officiel et debut album sur RCA Records.

Lorsqu'il a décidé de fonder BROCKHAMPTON en 2015, Kevin The Abstract souhaitait uniquement se faire des amis parce qu'il n'en avait aucun. En 2018, il en compte au moins quinze en plus d'une centaine de milliers de fans prêts à s'époumoner à chaque concert ; ils étaient d'ailleurs présents à l'édition de cette année du festival Coachella, en Californie. On peut le dire, un phénomène a vu le jour et il ne semble pas prêt d'arrêter de nous stupéfier.

PS : Suite à des accusations d'abus sexuels, un communiqué est publié début mai 2018 indiquant qu'Ameer Vann quitte le groupe.

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Liste des pistes :

Gold
Boogie
Fake
Team
Swamp
Tokyo
Milk
Alaska
Sister nation
Gummy
Johnny
Junky
Summer

Article & sélection : Evidji
Artwork : Tibo BRTZ
Coordination : KallMeTheDoctor
Mix : Tis

The Undersiders, les barons de la drogue qui ont influencé le hip-hop

Mugen le druide — 2018-05-29T10:44:20Z

Un podcast qui vous raconte le destin de 8 caïds de la drogue qui ont posé leur marque sur la culture de la rue et le monde du rap.

The Undersiders est un podcast unique en son genre. Il nous présente sous forme audio, l'histoire de 8 des plus grands dealers américains et de l'influence qu'ils ont eu sur la culture hip-hop. Ces légendes urbaines, ont participé à la naissance de monuments comme Cash Money, Rap-A-Lot ou encore Death Row. Tous ont eu des liens étroits avec des artistes comme Jay-Z, Birdman, 50 Cent ou Dr Dre. Pendant une vingtaine de minutes, l'auditeur est plongé dans la vie de Big Meech, Terrence Williams, ou encore Rick Ross (le vrai) avec une démarche quasiment documentaire. C'est un podcast qu'on recommande à n'importe quel curieux tant il est riche en enseignements. Pour en découvrir un peu plus, rien de plus simple que de poser des questions directement à un des fondateurs de Engle François Cusset.

Raconte-nous un peu la genèse de ce projet ? D'où vient l'idée ?
J'ai toujours été un grand passionné de documentaires et de musique, rap en premier lieu. J'ai également une passion (plus professionnelle) liée aux nouvelles technologies, aux contenus et leurs usages. Le timing me paraissait bon pour proposer une nouvelle offre de contenus, c'est pour cela que j'ai monté Engle avec quelques associés. Comme premier projet, j'ai décidé de partir sur un sujet que je maîtrisais et qui ne me paraissait pas encore traité : une histoire du rap US, mais sous le prisme de dealers charismatiques. Tout en imaginant le fond et la forme du projet, on a réfléchi à comment le produire et le diffuser pour qu'un maximum de personnes le découvre et l'écoute. D'autres séries audio sont en cours de production, notamment sur le sport, des faits de société et la musique bien sûr. Vous pouvez vous inscrire à notre newsletter sur le site, histoire de ne rien louper.

C'est toi qui as écrit les textes ?
Oui, j'ai écrit l'intégralité des 8 histoires à partir d'un schéma narratif que j'avais imaginé. Ensuite nous avons du adapter le texte en équipe afin d'optimiser la narration des comédiens. C'est un travail obligatoire pour faire en sorte que l'histoire soit fluide et prenante pour l'auditeur, surtout sur des épisodes de 20 minutes en moyenne. Enfin, nous avons fait traduire le texte par une traductrice puisque The Undersiders est également disponible en anglais pour l'international.

Pourquoi avoir choisi un doubleur et comment as-tu réussi à avoir un doubleur aussi connu ?
Pour nous, le format podcast était le plus adapté pour ce genre d'histoires. Faire un documentaire en vidéo aurait demandé plus d'argent, mais surtout beaucoup de temps, et nous voulions aller vite. Je ne dis pas que demain nous n'allons pas faire de la vidéo, mais il y a aussi une opportunité à prendre sur l'audio avec l'explosion des usages sur le podcast. À partir de ce choix, je ne voulais pas faire un talk classique. Pas adapté et peut-être trop "facile" à faire. Avec mes associés chez Engle, on a pris le parti de prendre un vrai comédien avec une super voix (Jérémie Covillaut), mais aussi une aisance et un sens du jeu dans la narration. Derrière, tout est affaire de contacts pour accéder à un éventail de comédiens et de voix. Encore une fois, c'est grâce à mes associés de chez Engle que nous avons pu réaliser la chose.

Comment as-tu sélectionné les mecs qui apparaissent dans les différents épisodes ?
J'avais une liste d'une quinzaine de protagonistes à la base. J'ai préféré partir sur les 8 plus "populaires" et ayant un lien avec des artistes connus pour installer le concept. L'autre objectif était aussi de toucher différentes époques ainsi que différentes villes des États-Unis pour avoir le spectre le plus large possible.
Disons aussi que j'en ai gardé sous le coude pour une saison 2, tout est possible :)

Tu as mis combien de temps environ pour rassembler toutes les infos ? Ça a du être un taf de ouf ?
Je connaissais les histoires, j'avais des bouquins, des DVDs sur le sujet depuis des piges. Enregistrement et écriture inclus, cela nous a pris 4 mois. Le plus long était de vérifier certaines infos lues ici et là. Avec la magie d'Internet, tu retrouves des coupures de presse de 1988 parlant de l'arrestation d'untel ou d'une fusillade dans telle rue. Le boulot est assez gros, mais en étant organisé c'est super jouable, surtout si c'est un sujet qui te plaît. Donc on parle même plus de boulot, tu comptes pas tes heures et tu te retrouves à écouter des archives audio à 2h30 du mat sur un site Internet perdu.

C'était important pour toi de relater ce que les mecs sont devenus après leurs "carrières" dans le crime ? Pourquoi ?
Aussi important que d'expliquer le début de leur histoire et leur background. Comprendre par quelle démarche ces personnages ont décidé un jour de passer du côté de la criminalité et à des échelles gigantesques. À travers les films, les séries, les chansons, ce genre de lifestyle est généralement glorifié par le storytelling et le marketing. Montrer l'impact, les risques et les conséquences de carrières criminelles faisait aussi partie du schéma narratif de départ. Et comme on le dit dans le générique, nous ne jugeons pas, ni ne glorifions le choix de vie des personnages.

Dernière question très importante : que devient Gordon Gwapo ?
Ahah, il est à la retraite dans les Hamptons. Peut être un come-back un de ces jours ;)

– Le Podcast en Français : https://fanlink.to/theundersiders Le Podcast en Anglais : https://fanlink.to/theundersiders_eng
– Twitter @francoiscusset / @anotherengle

The Underground King

KallMeTheDoctor & rimrimrim & Tibo BRTZ — 2018-04-16T07:29:31Z

Replié dans son repère à Austin, Texas, Eric Dingus ne cesse de gravir les échelons à vitesse grand V. S'étant illustré par de nombreux albums et des instrumentales glissées à Gangsta Boo, Bones, Xavier Wulf, Bladee et consorts, il s'est finalement vu offrir par OVO Sound une place parmi les musiciens les plus illustres. Une promotion tout à fait méritée.

Malgré sa discrétion, il a réussi à attirer l'attention des plus grands, notamment celle de Bones qui l'a signé sur son label Team SESH. Mais c'est surtout sa rencontre avec Oliver El-Khatib, co-fondateur d'OVO Sound et directeur artistique de Drake et d'October's Very Own qui bouleversera sa carrière et qui le verra signer pour OVO Sound afin d'accéder un jour au trône qui lui revient de droit.

Voici un mix retraçant le parcours du beatmaker surdoué.

Téléchargez le mix

Liste des pistes :

Jimmy Johnson - Just Another Day
Nick Nikon - Put It On Me
Drake - Now & Forever
Xavier Wulf - Yume
Soon After
1224 Love Song
Chris Travis - Reflections (intro)
Gangsta Boo - Silent Night (feat. Amber London)
Pharaoh - Cadillac
Dowrong - What They Came For
Bones - Tempo
All On Me
1995
Summercide (part 2)
Prada Mane - Soar Loser (feat. Bladee)
Respect The Tek, Beware The Rest
Jimmy Johnson - Sun Goes Down
Back In The Days
Trying Love

Sélection : KallMeTheDoctor, Young Flex, O'Track
Artwork : rimrimrim
Mix : Tibo BRTZ

Interview de Brice Miclet, auteur de "Sample ! Aux origines du son hip-hop"

Tis — 2018-02-27T08:44:53Z

A l'occasion de la sortie de son premier livre "Sample ! Aux origines du son hip-hop" sorti chez Le Mot et le reste, nous avons rencontré Brice Miclet pour parler de l'utilisation du sample dans le hip-hop. Une interview fleuve autour de l'échantillonnage, parsemée d'anecdotes et de références et éditée pour plus de clarté.

Brice Miclet - Photo : © Alan Scaviner

Bonjour Brice. De la musique concrète aux expérimentations dub de Lee Scratch Perry, de nombreux courants musicaux ont utilisé l'échantillonnage à différentes époques... Est-ce que tu peux nous présenter comment t'es venu cette idée de réaliser un livre autour du sample, et plus particulièrement focalisé sur son utilisation dans la musique rap ?
Déjà, c'est un attrait personnel pour le rap, pour le hip-hop américain. Je me serai bien intéressé à tout le sampling depuis ses débuts, j'ai même hésité à revenir à la notion de thèmes dans la musique. Mais il fallait vraiment cibler sur le hip-hop sinon j'allais perdre les gens. Il n'y avait quasiment rien d'écrit sur le sampling, y compris technologiquement, quelques études universitaires mais pas grand chose d'autre... Il y avait un creux. Au vu de ma passion pour le hip-hop et pour les autres styles de musique, c'était finalement assez logique de s'intéresser au sampling, vraiment axé hip-hop. Parler du rap américain c'est parce que c'est le berceau et mon goût personnel est plus orienté vers le rap US. Les innovations technologiques et techniques liées au sampling ont été faites dans le rap américain principalement. Globalement, c'est un choix assez arrêté.

Tu listes dans ton livre un grand nombre de samples, allant des débuts du hip-hop jusqu'à 2017. Comment s'est réalisé cette sélection de samples, quels ont été tes critères de choix ?
Tout d'abord, il y avait une volonté de représenter toutes les époques, de faire un panorama au niveau chronologique. C'est important de montrer qu'il n'y a pas que le "vieux hip-hop", le "golden era", qui ont samplé, mais également de montrer qu'aujourd'hui le sample n'est pas mort.
Plein de choses sont entrées en jeu, notamment le fait de ne mettre qu'un sample par artiste sampleur a été assez important. C'est un deal avec la maison d'éditions qui fait ça dans toutes leurs anthologies. Au début, je me suis dit que ça allait être compliqué et je me suis retrouvé obligé d'enlever des trucs trop bien, des Nas, plusieurs Dr Dre... Finalement c'était un mal pour un bien car je me suis retrouvé à parler de choses dont je n'aurai sûrement pas parlé, des choses comme Jedi Mind Tricks, Pacewon & Mr. Green… Il fallait aussi trouver un équilibre dans les artistes samplés. Il fallait parler de la soul et du funk, de la musique noire américaine des années 60/70 qui a été la base de la musique samplée. Il fallait aussi montrer le sample comme un truc qui touche vraiment à tout, trouver des samples qui venaient d'un peu partout, de tous les continents, de pays différents, de scènes différentes, d'époques différentes. C'est une suite d'équilibres à trouver et c'était le plus long à faire durant la préparation du bouquin. En terme de réalisation, le livre m'a pris un an et demi dont environ un an et trois mois à me documenter sur le sujet, à faire des listes, des tableaux de samples par année, à retirer des samples, à en ajouter, etc. Et ensuite dans le dernier rush, écriture à fond durant trois mois.

Comment définirais-tu un "bon sample" ? Quelles en seraient ses caractéristiques d'après toi ?
C'est compliqué comme question ! En fait, je n'ai pas vraiment de réponses car il y a plein de manières différentes de sampler. Je ne vois pas vraiment le sample comme un truc à part, comme une sous-discipline. Un bon sample c'est ce qui donne un bon morceau tout simplement. Après il y a des samples que je trouve pourris : des samples ultra grillés, avec juste la boucle de deux mesures à la Puff Daddy. C'est moins intéressant. J'aime plus les trucs à la Stones Throw que je trouve plus intéressant techniquement. Un bon sample c'est juste un bon morceau de hip-hop avec un sample dedans. Un mauvais sample, c'est juste un truc trop facile qui devient trop proche de la reprise.

Oliver Nelson - Opening (Ironside)

Madvillain - All caps

Dans l'introduction de ton livre, tu parles de la SP-1200 comme machine ayant joué un rôle central dans le sampling : peux-tu nous en dire plus ?
Pour plusieurs raisons : tout d'abord elle est devenue abordable à un moment pour les gens. Un sampleur restait cher et pouvait coûter plusieurs milliers de dollars à une époque. Pas beaucoup de gens possédaient le SP-1200 en 87/88. Mais quand même, c'est ce qui a permis de sampler facilement. Le son hip-hop a changé tout de suite, de façon rapide. Il faudrait poser la question à des beatmakers qui seraient plus à même de répondre techniquement, mais il y a vraiment un grain de la SP-1200 qui a ensuite été reproduit dans d'autres sampleurs. Voila pourquoi cette machine a joué un rôle clé. Elle a également un temps d'échantillonnage plus long que la SP-12 sortie avant. Cela a aussi permis de faire d'autres choses. Il y a des petites techniques qui sont expliquées dans le livre qui ont été utilisées par les producteurs pour apprivoiser un sample, notamment en enregistrant un sample accéléré puis en le dépitchant dans le sampleur. Cela a façonné le son hip-hop et la manière de sampler.

De DJ Premier à Metro Boomin, le sampling semble être devenu un procédé de création musicale relativement banal dans la musique aujourd'hui. Dans ton livre, tu évoques cependant différentes techniques et évolutions en fonction notamment des époques (merry go round, chopping, etc.)... Comment t'es-tu documenté sur ces différentes techniques ? As-tu eu l'occasion d'en discuter avec des producteurs ? Qu'est-ce qui selon toi explique cette évolution des techniques utilisées ?
D'abord, je lis beaucoup de livres sur la musique. C'est aussi pour cela que j'avais envie d'écrire ce livre. Pour moi tu ne peux pas écrire un livre sur la musique sans lire les autres livres sur la musique, c'est inconcevable. Il y a eu, entre autres, les bouquins d'Amir Said, The Art Of Sampling et surtout The BeatTips Manual qui sont un peu des bibles là-dessus, très techniques. La réflexion est vraiment axée sur le processus créatif du beatmaking même s'il ne raconte pas vraiment d'histoires. Après, Internet et toutes les interviews vidéos de producteurs qu'il peut y avoir sur les sites de hip-hop américains, les vidéos de Red Bull Music Academy que je trouve vraiment mortelles... Quand on s'intéresse à la technique de production hip-hop, même de musique électronique, c'est vraiment indispensable, qualitatif. L'interview de Marley Marl qui invente le sampling moderne, est une mine d'informations, bourrée d'anecdotes. Des livres, des interviews d'artistes et puis j'ai également discuté avec quelques producteurs : Coldcut, The Olympicks, Sully Sefil qui a produit pour NTM entre autres...
Après, c'est la technologie qui change la manière de sampler et le fait de sampler mène aussi à de nouvelles technologies. Les entreprises ont commencé à prendre conscience à ce qui se faisait dans le hip-hop et à adapter leurs produits à la musique qui était produite à cette époque-là. Le hip-hop est vraiment une musique qui est inscrite dans la technologie, c'est une musique électronique majoritairement. Donc oui, c'est la technologie qui explique cette évolution.

Charles Aznavour, Cortex... Quelques artistes français samplés figurent dans ton livre... Comment expliquerais-tu outre-atlantique un tel attrait pour la musique française ?
Il y a Thomas Bangalter samplé par Slum Village aussi ! En fait, c'est un truc qu'on se dit en France : Gainsbourg par De La Soul, Aznavour par Dr. Dre, on a été vachement samplés… mais en fait on n'a pas été plus samplé que les autres. C'est juste que c'est un livre destiné au public français, j'avais envie de montrer qu'il y avait des choses sympas dans la musique française qui avaient été samplées. J'aurai ainsi pu parler de Mike Brant samplé par Dr. Dre pour Eminem. C'était plus pour mettre un ancrage français. Dans le livre, je voulais que les gens, même s'ils ne connaissent pas le hip-hop ou le sampling, puissent découvrir de belles histoires. Avoir des samples français, c'était un bon moyen de raconter l'histoire des Cortex, Aznavour, François de Roubaix...

Thomas Bangalter - Extra Dry

Slum Village - Raise it up

Dans la revue Volume !, Maxence Deon évoque l'échantillonnage dans le rap comme un choix esthétique, caractéristique de la sonorité des artistes. Certains producteurs (je pense notamment à Daringer de l'écurie Griselda Records) se sont justement fait un nom récemment en travaillant leurs productions autour de boucles lentes et répétitives sans découpage marqué du sample, avec un ajout d'éléments rythmiques très faibles. Est-ce que le choix des samples utilisés définit encore selon toi l'identité du producteur ? Quels sont selon toi les producteurs actuels qui disposent aujourd'hui d'une identité forte ?
Je ne crois pas... Je pense qu'aujourd'hui les mecs samplent de tout. Dans les producteurs aujourd'hui, des No ID, des Sounwave, ils samplent tout. Nineteen85 pour DVSN et certaines choses pour Drake... No ID c'est vraiment un des gars aujourd'hui qui est très fort là-dedans. Il a fait plein de prods. intéressantes sur le dernier album de Jay-Z. Metro Boomin fait un peu de samples, même si on n'a pas l'impression. Ils sont quasiment inaudibles, ils sont passé dans la MAO, tu as l'impression qu'ils n'ont plus du tout ce côté crado, mais il y a encore des samples. Il y a Brian Kidd aussi. Le sample n'est pas mort du tout.

On retrouve sur le dernier album de Maxo Kream des samples de Tame Impala ou encore du classique Nautilus de Bob James. Quel est l'intérêt d'après toi d'utiliser un sample tiré d'un morceau connu ou déjà extrêmement samplé (et donc facilement identifiable par l'utilisateur final) ?
Quand tu lis des interviews de producteurs, ils te disent que si les boucles ont été tant samplées, c'est quelles sont mortelles, qu'elles ont un groove particulier, dur à reproduire, alors elles sont réutilisées. Je ne connais pas la proportion d'hommages, de "je vais me faire un beat avec The Big Beat de Billy Squier parce que c'est un truc qui se fait", c'est difficile à dire. Ce qui est sûr c'est que ces boucles-là ont un intérêt fort aujourd'hui. En MAO, si tu veux reproduire le sample de Get up offa that thing de James Brown, je pense que tu vas galérer. Ou reprendre la snare de N. T. de Kool & The Gang avec sa reverb très particulière, ce n'est pas évident non plus. C'est tout simplement parce que cela reste de bonnes batteries, de bonnes bases. Après entre producteurs, il y a aussi une sorte de tradition qui doit exister, c'est certain. The Jam de Graham Central Station a été utilisé par énormément d'artistes parce que c'est un bon breakbeat. Cela oriente aussi la manière de composer. Quand tu pars d'un certain breakbeat, tu as envie de faire du rap d'une certaine manière pour arriver à un certain résultat.
Concernant les boucles, quand Kanye West sample Strange Fruit de Nina Simone, il y a un hommage et une référence évidente. Quand c'est Jay-Z qui sample Nina Simone sur The story of O.J.. Tu ne samples pas n'importe quelle chanson de Nina Simone mais des chansons avec une dimension politique et sociale importante, donc ce n'est pas hasardeux. Kanye West, c'est le mec qui fait des samples grillés, mais qui arrive à en faire des trucs de ouf. Un sample grillé n'est pas forcément un mauvais sample. Pour les gens qui aiment bien le sample, c'est parfois mieux d'aller chercher des trucs inconnus. Mais Blood on the leaves de Kanye West est l'exemple parfait du truc ultra-grillé mais qui reste très bon.

Avec des sites comme Whosampled, il devient désormais très facile de retrouver un sample utilisé. Ces initiatives ont parfois été critiquées par certains producteurs qui souhaitaient conserver l'anonymat de leurs samples originaux. D'après toi, est-ce que révéler les secrets de fabrication d'un morceau ne nuit pas à la magie du sampling ?
En fait, je pense que pour le producteur oui, peut-être. Certains producteurs assument complètement, vont révéler et créditer leurs samples. Je pense que c'est au cas par cas. Je pense qu'un sample n'a pas vocation à être planqué, il va permettre de découvrir d'autres musiques. Il y a un côté cool à sampler des trucs inconnus. Le sample de Shook Ones, pt. II de Mobb Deep est l'exemple parfait du sample qui est resté planqué. Il y a un côté un peu magique à chercher d'où sort le sample. Maintenant qu'il est sorti, c'est un peu moins ludique... A titre personnel, j'aime bien avoir les comparaisons des deux, le morceau qui sample et l'original. Je suppose que beaucoup de puristes du sample doivent cependant s'arracher les cheveux à retrouver des samples.

Herbie Hancock - Jessica

Mobb Deep - Shook Ones, pt. II

Avec Internet et son offre pléthorique de contenus audio mis à disposition au plus grand nombre, il n'a jamais été aussi facile qu'aujourd'hui de découvrir de la musique. Comment perçois-tu l'évolution du "digging" ?
Je ne sais pas si le digging évolue énormément ces dernières années... Il évolue sur Internet, avec la manière dont on trouve maintenant. Je suis allé en Afrique du Sud il n'y a pas longtemps et j'ai rencontré un mec qui dealait des vinyls de bubblegum, qui les vendait à des mecs à Lyon par Skype. Platine d'un côté, les mecs écoutaient de l'autre côté et disaient "vas-y celui-ci on l'achète, tu nous l'envoies". C'est incroyable, les mecs peuvent écouter à l'autre bout du monde, cela ouvre à des possibilités de fou. J'ai vu un reportage sur le seul disquaire de Nairobi qui se fait assaillir d'occidentaux, qui a galéré pendant des années et qui aujourd'hui arrive à vivre de son truc. Arte a fait un bon docu sur des diggers au Liban. Dans le monde arabe, ça diggue à mort, la world music... Après je pense que l'on reprend aussi des albums de soul. Le son hip-hop évolue : il y a 15 ans, on n'aurait peut-être rien trouvé et on va trouver quelque chose aujourd'hui, intéressant à sampler pour le son actuel. Encore une fois, ça dépend du producteur, c'est au cas par cas, producteur à producteur.

La Three 6 Mafia a été un des premiers groupes de rap à sampler une boucle provenant d'un morceau de rap avec le titre Gotta Touch 'Em (pt.2) en 1995... et cette vague semble grossir aujourd'hui avec de plus en plus d'utilisation dans le rap de samples provenant de morceaux rap antérieurs (JPEGMafia qui reprend ODB, Ski Mask The Slump God qui sample Missy Elliott, Southside qui resample sa production de Perkys calling pour Mood de Lil Uzi Vert...). Est-ce que le serpent ne se mord pas la queue ?
On en a discuté dans une autre interview avec Puzupuzu qui est un producteur de house qui sample énormément. C'est pas exclusif à notre époque. Tu regardes tous les mecs qui ont samplé Rebel without a pause de Public Enemy, tu as beaucoup de mecs qui ont samplé South Bronx des Boogie Down Productions... C'était peut-être plus furtif, vachement plus axé sur la rythmique. Aujourd'hui c'est vrai que l'on retrouve vraiment des doubles niveaux de sampling et ce qui est rigolo c'est que tu ne sais pas qui sample qui au final. Le mec qui sample un titre de hip-hop qui contient déjà du sample : est-ce qu'il sample l'original ou est-ce qu'il sample au final l'artiste samplé au départ ?

Rodney O & Joe Cooley - Everlasting bass

Three 6 Mafia - Gotta touch 'em (pt. 2)

Tu évoques d'ailleurs dans ton livre Erykah Badu qui sample Xxplosive de Dr. Dre qui est déjà un replay du Bumpy's Lament de Soul Mann & The Brothers...
Effectivement c'est ça, je considère que c'est l'artiste original qui est toujours samplé. Après, si tu mets trois niveaux de samples, tout dépend de comment c'est fait. Si tu samples un scratch de DJ Premier qui samplait déjà du Les McCann (dans Ten crack commandments ndlr), tu samples DJ Premier, pas vraiment Les McCann, c'est trop dénaturé. Mais dans la plupart des cas, dans le principe premier, tu samples quand même l'original avant tout. Mais oui le serpent se mord la queue, probablement depuis plus longtemps, depuis le début des années 90, notamment avec les rythmiques ou scratchs de voix.

Joseph Glenn Schloss dans Making Beats : The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop soutenait que l'utilisation de disques vinyles est un gage d'authenticité pour les beatmakers... Hors, depuis quelques années, sampler du vinyl, voir sampler des oeuvres déposées indépendamment du format, semble ne plus être la norme dans le rap, notamment dans la trap, pour des raisons multiples (productions réalisées en studio sans recours au sample ; si ce n'est à des kits pré-crées, procès aux coûts pharaoniques diminuant l'attrait d'échantillonner, complexités de sortir un album du fait des difficultés liées au clearing, etc.)... le sample est-il condamné d'après toi ?
Non, pas du tout. Si c'était un problème de droits, un problème de MAO, le sample serait déjà mort... Le hip-hop est quand même vachement tourné vers les autres musiques depuis ses débuts et l'est toujours. Il y a toujours une volonté de faire le cross-over en permanence, de vouloir être accepté comme un musique comme les autres, d'être l'égal des autres. Ce côté "c'est nous les rock stars" de Kanye, il y a toujours un truc un rapport avec les autres musiques... Même si à un moment on ne fait des instrus qu'à partir de sons générés, il y a toujours un côté "je regarde les autres musiques", ne serait-ce que pour se comparer, se positionner musicalement, artistiquement, culturellement, etc. Le sample rentre là-dedans. Les Kendrick, les très grands noms font ça : ils recyclent la pop culture. C'est une musique vraiment inscrite comme ça. Non le sample n'est pas mort, il se fera sûrement de manière différente plus tard. Pour moi, il n'est pas condamné, on peut en reparler dans 10 ans. Mais je ne pense pas que dans 10 ans, les producteurs se diront "on ne le fait plus". Il y aura toujours des gars pour revenir au sample, c'est trop inscrit dans l'ADN pour que ce soit condamné. C'est devenu un truc vraiment inconscient de l'industrie hip-hop, de regarder les autres cultures musicales, etc. En tout cas, c'est mon avis personnel.

Certains samples dorénavant ne proviennent plus de supports musicaux (physiques ou digitaux) mais de fragments tirés de vidéos provenant des réseaux sociaux (Kanye West qui sample une vidéo Instagram d'une fillette de 4 ans), d'extraits de concerts ou encore de banque de sons composées pour être samplées (Frank Dukes et sa KindswayMusic Library). En complément des différentes approches de samples citées, est-ce que l'on assiste à une nouvelle évolution du sampling ?
Ca me fait penser au début de Formation de Beyoncé, le sample vient d'une vidéo youtube, d'un mec qui parle dans les rues de la Nouvelle Orléans, c'est un truc planqué de chez planqué...
Je ne sais pas si on assiste à une nouvelle évolution... Tu prenais l'exemple des autres supports, c'est vrai que cela a explosé aujourd'hui. Sur DNA de Kendrick Lamar, il y a un extrait d'un journal de Fox News qui raconte que le hip-hop est plus nocif aux États-Unis que le racisme pour les jeunes afro-américains. En fait, je pense que c'est parce qu'on a beaucoup plus accès à ces supports-là aujourd'hui. Le hip-hop a toujours eu envie de tout sampler, assez tôt de sampler des extraits de films, etc. Aujourd'hui, on a accès à tellement de documents audio à portée de tout le monde qui deviennent viraux, des références, etc. Le sampling hip-hop a embrassé ça très vite. Je pense aussi que les banques de son qui sont à disposition des producteurs sont surtout plus variées et ça se ressent dans les samples. Mais il faut qu'un son fasse office de base, qu'il soit assez fourni pour être samplé. Je ne suis pas sûr que les vidéos Instagram fournissent ce genre d'éléments vraiment basiques, utilisables pour une prod. Je pense que ce sont plus des hommages ou références, je ne pense pas que ce soit une question d'éviter de payer des droits. La question des droits d'auteur est vraiment complexe. Aujourd'hui, les mecs vont payer. Dès qu'ils sortent un album, ils vont "clearer" les samples utilisés. C'est devenu moins cher de sampler aujourd'hui qu'avant. Si ils samplent des trucs Instagram, c'est parce qu'ils ont trouvé des trucs vraiment intéressants au niveau du son, une référence au niveau personnel. La question des droits je n'y crois pas trop personnellement.

Si tu dois nous citer un sample qui t'a marqué... Pourquoi ?
Je sors souvent le même mais c'est un des samples que je préfère. C'est un sample assez simple, c'est Mind playing tricks on me, le tube des Geto Boys. Ils samplent Hung up on my baby d'Isaac Hayes de 1974. Sur le couplet, tu as deux samples de guitares électriques qui sont samplées pour faire un amas de mélodies, j'en parle dans le bouquin. Sur le refrain, les rappeurs ne rappent pas, t'as juste une mélodie de guitare, super efficace, samplée aussi d'Isaac Hayes. Cette guitare est couplée avec le breakbeat tiré de The Jam de Graham Central Station dont on parlait avant. Et les deux matchent parfaitement. C'est le sample basique mais je trouve vraiment que cela représente ce côté simple, ultra efficace et tellement bon que les rappeurs ne rappent même plus sur le refrain. Et puis le morceau est mortel. C'est vraiment un sample que je kiffe particulièrement.

Isaac Hayes - Hung up on my baby

Geto Boys - Mind playing tricks on me

Pour finir, en tant qu'écrivain sur le sampling, si demain quelqu'un reprend des extraits de ton livre sans autorisation, tu réagis comment ? :)
[sourires] Je ne suis pas content. Ce n'est pas pareil, je ne suis pas dans un processus créatif, je ne suis pas véritablement un écrivain mais plus dans une démarche journalistique. Après si c'est un barjo, un artiste qui sample mon bouquin, qui en reprend des extraits pour les découper, les remettre dans le désordre, en faire un truc bizarre, ce serait rigolo, pour le côté détournement. Si c'est vraiment voler mon truc pour en faire rien de plus, ce sera juste de la fainéantise, je n'en vois pas l'intérêt. Le hip-hop sample pour faire quelque chose de plus, ils "volent" mais dans un processus artistique. Si on prend mes extraits de bouquin pour en faire le même bouquin, cela n'a aucun intérêt !

"Sample ! Aux origines du son hip-hop" de Brice Miclet est disponible sur le site des éditions Le Mot et le Reste et dans toutes les bonnes librairies.

The Man Who Forgot He Was a Rap Legend

Tis — 2018-01-30T09:46:58Z

T La Rock was one of the pioneers of hip-hop, an old-school legend sampled by Public Enemy and Nas. But after a brutal attack put him in a nursing home, he had to fight to recover his identity, starting with the fact that he'd ever been a rapper at all.

This story is a collaboration between GQ and Epic Magazine.

He was nervous. He hadn't been onstage since the accident. Here he was, 34 years old, a veteran performer, but he felt like an anxious teenager, picking up a microphone for the first time. Would he find the words ? He felt somewhat reassured when he summoned the rhythm in his head. He'd approached the mic a thousand times before, first on street corners and in clubs in New York and later on stages around the world. But he surely never anticipated performing in this venue—the rec room and sometimes synagogue of the Haym Salomon Home for Nursing and Rehabilitation near Coney Island, Brooklyn.

Above the makeshift stage hung a long sheet of butcher paper, heralding the HAYM SALOMON TALENT SHOW in bubble letters. After a resident named Betty finished reading poems from her grandchildren, it was his turn to take the stage. He cut an odd figure up there : a six-foot-three former rap legend in a tracksuit, sweating from nerves in front of a room full of frail senior citizens. He may have seemed like a strange booking choice for Haym Salomon—but in fact, he felt right at home. Because he was home. “Please welcome,” the announcer said, “our very own musical maestro, the one and only T La Rock !”

The crowd waited. Some were asleep in their wheelchairs. A few no longer knew their own names. But those who were alert and awake were in quite a festive mood. They tapped their feet as the music started, waving at their fellow resident.

T had been living at Haym Salomon for some time, recovering from a traumatic head injury. Two years earlier, on April 1, 1994, he had been attacked on the street near his house in the Bronx. By the time he got to the hospital, he had slipped into a coma.

The doctors later said T had transient global amnesia, and when he was moved to Haym Salomon—it was one of the few facilities in the five boroughs that could accommodate his kind of injury—he thought at first that he had wound up in some kind of purgatory hotel. His rehabilitation, the doctors warned, would be a long road.

The other residents were mostly elderly Jews, Yiddish speakers whose families had emigrated from the Pale of Settlement. T was from the Bronx, and he had been a direct witness to the birth of hip-hop ; ten years earlier, his single “It's Yours” was the very first hip-hop recording released by Def Jam, hashed out with Rick Rubin in his dorm at N.Y.U. That song became a hit, inspired a whole new sound in rap music, and placed T at the lead of a seismic cultural force. Many of T's fellow patients knew he was a rapper or singer or something (“That nice boy from the third ﬂoor ? They said he was a superstar.” “Yeah, right”), but this was his first chance to show them.

It was, as they say, a warm room. T looked around and saw that everyone was there : Bernie and Leon, rolling back and forth in their chairs ; Norma and Sophie and Betty down in front ; and on the sidelines, Marshall and Sheila, clapping for him. He'd had to painstakingly re-memorize his rap, a medley of hits from his glory days. At the edge of the stage, a student volunteer started beatboxing, and when T found his way into the rhythm, his confidence swelled. He felt that familiar feeling, the declarative pose of street corners in the Bronx, the self-assurance of a youthful yearning for a place in the world, and as the beat rolled to the edge of the verse it was by instinct that T La Rock reached for the microphone.

I'd heard about T La Rock and his strange fish-out-of-water story from a friend who'd stumbled across an article about him published in The New York Times in 1996, when the rapper still lived in the nursing home. That brief mention made me want to find out more about what his life was like at Haym Salomon. I tracked T down and talked to him at length, along with his family and the former staff of the nursing home, to understand how he had re-discovered himself. There was some irony in T's predicament, since so much of his music was about identity : proclamatory, sometimes prideful, singing a song of oneself. And yet, T could barely summon a self to sing about.

The head injury he'd suffered, an acute subdural hematoma, often leads to severe and lasting memory loss. When he was first brought to the hospital, his doctors had been unsure if he would survive, even as they tried to save him. At one point, T's family was told to call a priest.

The swelling in T's brain affected his hippocampus, the seat of long-term memory, which was why when he finally did open his eyes one day, shocking the critical-care nurse on duty, he was profoundly disoriented, and his mother, Sylvia, who had stood vigil for weeks, leaned over the bed to gently remind him of his name. “You're Terrence Keaton,” she said. “You're 32 years old. And I'm your mother.” Members of his family also stood by his hospital bed, but he wasn't sure who they were. When he saw one of his brothers, T pointed at him and asked, “Who's this ?”

“It's me—Tone,” his brother Anthony said. He was the youngest of the six Keaton kids.

“Where's June ?” T asked.

His mother stayed quiet. She exchanged looks with Tone.

“June ?” T said again, referring to Daniel Jr., his eldest brother. But June had been dead for years, shot on the street in the Bronx.

At one point, the doctors thought T would be permanently disabled, and they tried to put him in a mental hospital. But Sylvia, a sixth-grade teacher, was a determined woman, and she made sure that T was not warehoused in the bowels of Bellevue but went to a place where he could recover. Haym Salomon was on the opposite end of the city from the Bronx, but every day she took the train there—an hour each way—to sit by T's side. For a couple of weeks, he didn't leave his room. When T was eventually taken out to see therapy specialists on other floors, T found a drab building full of pale, creased faces.

“What kind of place is this ?” T asked Sylvia.

“You're in a nursing home,” she said.

“How long will I be here ?” T asked. But Sylvia had no answer.

Marshall, one of the orderlies at the nursing home, first saw T a few weeks into his stay and noted how the resident made for a dramatic sight wandering the halls : unusually tall and more than 250 pounds—a patient like he'd never seen at Haym Salomon, a kosher facility with a rabbi on staff. There were five ﬂoors full of Ashkenazi twilight in that building, with a few Italians sprinkled here and there. The staff wondered how this young guy from the Bronx ended up with them. “The one thing we knew,” Marshall said, “is that he wasn't Jewish.”

It was all a confusing blur for T and hard on his family, especially for Tone, who found it troubling that on each visit he had to tell T about their lives together all over again. His family tried to remind him of all the lost moments—walking to the RKO theater to watch Fist of Fury or sneaking Dad's car out in the middle of the night—but it was a conversation on repeat. The same story, looped. Whenever they saw T, he would take it from the top, back to the distant past, where T's last memory lived. “T doesn't know what year it is,” Tone told his mother. “He thinks it's the 1970s, and we're all still kids.”

The Bronx of the 1960s and early '70s was a multi-ethnic patchwork of communities, a mostly functioning borough like all the others. There were ﬂowers in all the beds on the block. T's parents owned their own two-story home, and all of T's siblings—Anthony, June, Kevin, Nero, and his sister Ellen—had their own rooms. T had a room that faced the street, and he'd lean out the window when his friends came by with their car systems or boom boxes, all dialed up to full volume.

T had his own massive boom box, and every morning he'd walk over to his best friend Craig's house, like a ritual, and direct his Panasonic toward Craig's windows. “Craig, wake up,” his mother would say, pulling her son out of bed. “Clarence is calling.” He was not yet T La Rock then, just T, or sometimes Terry, but his full (and rarely uttered) name was Clarence Ronnie Keaton. T and Craig would sit on the stoop with their boom boxes, 50-watt behemoths that weighed 25 pounds and burned the eight D batteries so hot in the summer that T would have to take them out and run an extension cord through his window.

The boom boxes drove Papa Keaton crazy, but what could he do ? The Keatons were a musical family, and all the kids could play instruments or sing. They were also a tight-knit family. Sylvia didn't think raising six kids was hard, because “every single one of them knew how to act.” Mostly, they wanted to please their mother. Discipline was rarely necessary ; one silent treatment from Sylvia was enough corrective. In the morning, she'd stand at the bottom of the stairs and call all those kids' names in a little singsong recitation, and they'd run down the steps to line up in order, bumping into one another like the Keystone Kops. At the end of the day, she'd open the front door, sing the same song, and wherever they were—riding bikes or playing skelly at the P.S. 104 schoolyard—word got to the Keatons, who all found their way home.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

In 1975, when T started ninth grade at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, he was both a good student and the class clown. Kids wanted to sit next to him, and teachers liked to call on him. Music was everywhere then : At Adlai Stevenson, T played drums and saxophone ; around the Bronx, T was a quick study in the breakdancing circles that sprang up on so many street corners ; at home, T and his siblings took a tape recorder and microphone and set up their own makeshift recording studio.

T's house was close to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where a young DJ named Kool Herc lived. Kool Herc had become a sensation after a wild party he threw in his building's rec room, and it was on his dual turntables that a musical miracle had occurred. He had noticed how much everyone loved the instrumental break. So, he thought, why not extend the break ? He took two copies of “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, put them each on a platter, and overlapped the instrumentals. The crowd loved it. Soon all the DJs in the Bronx were mixing beats, and since they were so busy ﬂipping vinyl, they couldn't talk to the audience anymore, leaving the mic open for friends to get up and start calling out names in rhyme. Thus was born the MC.

T was right there, at ground zero, taking it all in at 14 years old. One of the first breakbeats he heard was Kool Herc reworking James Brown's “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose.” He'd see Afrika Bambaataa at parties at the Bronx River Houses. He knew Grand Wizard Theodore, the first guy to scratch a record. It was a novel art form—the DJs were mesmerizing to watch, all dexterity and intuition. DJs felt proprietary about their style ; Kool Herc used to soak off the labels so no one could see what records they spun. He saw himself as a shepherd, leading the dancers on the ﬂoor like an ecstatic ﬂock.

T would borrow choreography from kung fu movies like Five Deadly Venoms. He was the best dancer on the block ; he could do it all, even standing on his toes en pointe, like Nijinsky. When he wasn't dancing, he watched as MCs became local luminaries on the party circuit. At one party, T told Craig : “I want to get up on that mic.”

He started practicing his rhymes in and out of school. He wrote down lyrics or freestyled over his own “pause tapes,” which were handmade beats he and June made on a double cassette player by recording, pausing, rewinding, and recording again. T's brothers would join in, along with other boys from the block who liked to gather on the second floor of the Keaton house. Every single one of them was scared of Papa Keaton, but they loved and respected Sylvia, who was welcoming, except when she'd have to knock on the kitchen ceiling when things got too loud upstairs.

The first time he got onstage was at Joyce Kilmer Park off the Bronx's Grand Concourse, where Kool Herc and other early DJs and rappers would play to as many as a thousand people. T had several crews during high school, and they saved up money for decent gear : McIntosh amps, Technics 210 turntables, and the indispensable “echo chamber” (just like Kool Herc's). There were parties all over the Bronx then, in parks or community centers or right on the street, where DJs would wheel out their speakers, open up a lamppost, and pull power right from the streetlights.
The Le Garsmeur American Photos

One afternoon, T and his friends threw their own jam in a tiny park they called The Circle. Sometimes they made ﬂyers for their parties, but this one gathered momentum by word of mouth. They put down a makeshift stage and made a roped-off VIP area right on the sidewalk. The fire escapes of surrounding buildings filled up—six, eight ﬂoors of people listening to T's crew. It was a warm summer day, and as afternoon turned to dusk, their amps made the streetlight dim and ﬂicker. T's DJ worked the crowd with his turntables, kicking up the rhythm while sweaty hands crept up skirts and down pants and the bass hit so hard it made your bell-bottoms ﬂutter.

T had only been on stage a few minutes when he looked out and saw a familiar face. It was Tina, an old friend—and fling—from school. Tina could hardly recognize him. She'd only known him as Terry. The guy on stage was someone else, a charismatic kid pacing the makeshift stage with a firm grip on the microphone. T couldn't keep his eyes off Tina, and in the middle of a verse, he handed the microphone to someone else, went under the rope, and walked into the parting crowd straight to Tina. “Remember me ?” he said, putting his arm around her with everyone watching.

“Terrence ?”

“This is me now,” he said, pointing at his sweatshirt, which said DJ MC T LA ROCK. T took Tina back to the stage and lifted the rope for her, and the evening unfolded into a sweet reunion, all blushes and glances and hand-holding as the party kept going into the night. When they found a moment to be alone and Tina looked up at T, he felt a surge of delight at being seen as he was now, a new person. The kiss that followed was the kind only youthful romance can offer. Tina couldn't believe that this was the same boy she had sat next to in science class.

At home, Sylvia brought T books to help him expand his lyrical repertoire : Twain and Shakespeare ; books about history and inventors. This was somewhat unlike the rhyming inﬂuences among his brothers, who listened to Gil Scott-Heron or the Original Last Poets. Papa Keaton watched boxing, so T of course liked Muhammad Ali's playfully combative couplets, but the bigger inﬂuence for him, oddly, was the Hollywood-musical star Danny Kaye.

Ever since he was a little kid, T had watched Danny Kaye movies on TV. He liked Kaye's vaudevillian timing and wordplay and took inspiration from movies like The Court Jester when practicing his own rhymes in the mirror. It was such an obsession that Papa Keaton had to buy T his own television because no one else in the house wanted to see A Song Is Born every time it came on. On Sunday afternoons, while his brothers and everyone else in the neighborhood would be out in the parks, T was the one kid who would look at his watch and say that he had to go home to watch Danny Kaye. Then young T would sit cross-legged in front of his black-and-white Zenith, captivated by the musical stylings of a Jewish song-and-dance man bred in the Catskills.

T's first roommates in Haym Salomon didn't talk much. Leon had been paralyzed by a stroke, and Gary was the stoic type, a former soldier. But T didn't mind ; he spoke slowly himself, though he'd worked with a speech therapist. It felt strange to make sounds that didn't always match what he heard in his head. At least he wasn't delusional, like Gary, who was shell-shocked and would sometimes yell that “the enemy is firing !” and demand that everyone within earshot “return fire !”

Right after the attack, T couldn't move without assistance ; his mother thought it was like seeing him as a baby again, learning to walk. In physical therapy, T spent hours walking on treadmills, working with a balance beam, and using weights to strengthen his legs. That therapy paid off, and by the time he moved to Haym Salomon, he could get out of his wheelchair and into the halls.

T soon became friends with Sheila, the 26-year-old switchboard operator who sat at the front desk. There wasn't much reason for T to be at the front desk, but he started spending a lot of time there, leaning over Sheila's counter with a big smile on his face, pausing every so often to greet visitors.

The Haym Salomon Home for Nursing and Rehabilitation today. Maciek Jasik

Some of those visitors thought this young guy was on staff, and some residents did, too, especially when T started assisting them. He became Leon's daily navigator, pushing his wheelchair through the peach-colored halls. Though occasionally unsure on his own feet, T was soon accompanying semi-ambulatory residents around the home. He called himself the Minister of Transportation. Marshall thought it was funny to see T in his mesh jerseys and black Nikes, towering over lost ladies in their gray gowns—some of whom were truly half his size—as they clutched his arm.

T liked helping the residents, even when they were confused or wanted to circle the halls at a snail's pace. If he found 87-year-old Feyga shuffling her tiny feet down the halls, which he did a half dozen times a day, he'd take her hand and guide her back to her room, nodding as if he understood when she'd digress in Yiddish or Russian. Spasibo, she'd say, which was the one word T knew. “You're welcome,” T would answer.

As T's former life ﬂickered in and out of focus, his thoughts turned to the many residents with Alzheimer's or dementia. He'd think about it at night, lying in the dark, surrounded by the stuffed animals his sister had arranged on his bed. When Gary's foxhole was under attack, keeping everybody up, T would wonder which was worse : being haunted by the terrors of the past or not knowing the past at all.

Sylvia brought in a boom box so T could listen to records, including his own music. When T first heard those songs again, it felt like a discovery. “You know what ?” he thought. “This is pretty good !” But then he had the strange sensation of hearing himself but not knowing the song. It sounded like someone else was using his voice. His mother also brought dozens of photos, which she taped to the wall : There was T in junior high, and Tone, all skinny and baby-faced, and Nero at 18, smiling in his graduation cap. And there was June, who T now knew was dead, although he didn't yet remember what happened. There were pictures of old girlfriends, many of them, and hip-hop colleagues from the Boogie Down Bronx.

Propped on a towel dispenser was T's first LP, Lyrical King. The cover showed him at the height of his career, with his hands on his hips, giving a smoldering stare from beneath a red Kangol. T would sit and look at this picture, almost meditating on it, trying to recognize the confident young man whose enormous necklace bore his name in glinting golden serif.

The visual prompts worked, though not all at once. Sometimes T felt like he was staring at blank spaces. Other times, complete moments re-materialized : entire conversations he'd had, friendships he'd made. Often he'd be struck by just a thought or mood or sense of experience—a phantom visitor from his former life.

Even after other bits of his past returned, though, his memories of the attack remained hazy. Mostly he knew what other people had told him. T left his mother's house to head for the studio. Or to pick up a friend or go to his brother's house or visit a girl—no one is quite certain, although T thinks he was carrying a mixing board. He was on Featherbed Lane, no more than three blocks from home, when he saw a friend getting into it with somebody on the street. The violent-crime rate in the Bronx was near its all-time high—the 40th Precinct reported 39 murders the previous year—but T never got into fights. That night, he thinks, he was just trying to help. Maybe the argument was about a girl. Then he saw that the other guy had friends coming up behind him. Maybe it was two people, maybe three. But one of them had something big and heavy in his hand.

No one knew how long he'd been out when his brother Kevin found him, covered in blood on a stoop. T's face was swollen. He was slurring his words, until he lost consciousness. T always called his mother when he got wherever he was going, but when Tone picked up her phone, it was the hospital instead. The police had little information. His mother wasn't sure they even took a report. T's brothers asked around themselves. There are no mysteries in the neighborhood, they said. But no one ever came forward.

It all seemed so far away from where he was now, sitting on an adjustable bed with his mother and stacks of faded snapshots. Outside, you could see the tower of the Parachute Jump at Coney Island's boardwalk rising above the trees. Every so often, Gary would yell at ghosts. “Stop !” he'd say. “Don't shoot.”

June and T knew they were in trouble. It wasn't yet midnight, but that was past curfew in the Keaton household. “You just got to climb up there,” June said, pointing at a window. T gave June a cocked glance. “Don't worry,” he said. “He won't hear us.” June was only a year and a half older than T, but he knew what was going on beyond their block, and he wanted to expand his little brother's horizons. So they sneaked out to see dancers and rappers from other neighborhoods. And now the door was locked.

June watched T scale easily from the garage door handle to the bathroom window and arc his legs over the sill. It was an artful maneuver, but as T emerged into the hallway, there was Papa Keaton, standing right there, arms folded. “Oh shit,” T said.

T didn't know when he would get yelled at, but punishment would come. There was no escaping the wrath of Papa Keaton. The Keatons trusted their children, but they were also naturally worried about the pitfalls of adolescent life in the Bronx of the mid-'70s, which had become a dangerous place. It had been just a decade and a half since Robert Moses completed the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was meant to unite greater New York and instead destroyed so many Bronx neighborhoods. The Bronx became the nation's defining example of urban decay, with trashcan fires illuminating whole blocks of rubble and gangs like the Black Spades, the Sex Boys, the Mongols, and the Savage Skulls controlling the streets. In October 1977, President Carter stood in the ruins of one housing development and pronounced it a disaster. Reagan later made the same trip and declared that he hadn't seen “anything that looked like this since London after the Blitz.”
Images Press/New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images

T had a bit of mischief in him, but he was fundamentally a good kid. At a time when only one in four students in the Bronx graduated from high school, T always stuck with his studies. And when he was asked to join gangs, he had an honorable way out with music, which was neutral territory. Hip-hop had become a refuge. The city might be in ruins, but there were kids making music amid the fallen masonry and broken glass. Across the Bronx, DJs competed with each other in both style and wattage : The best records had to be played on the loudest system. T liked to get close enough that he could feel the bass on his cheeks.

By the time he graduated from high school, T had developed a strong reputation as a rapper, but since that was not yet a viable career he also enrolled in computer courses and got hired as a security guard at a pharmacy. T liked the job, but his head was full of music ; every Wednesday, he took his paycheck to the nearest record store. T worked on his lyrics all the time, filling notebooks and even carrying around a Dictaphone. He could be seen on the Grand Concourse muttering into the cumbersome machine like a doctor commenting on charts.

T didn't know it then, but his circle was an artistic vanguard, and many of his friends would become some of the great pioneers of hip-hop. He freestyled with Big Daddy Kane over the phone, hung around with Kurtis Blow, and saw Flavor Flav at block parties. When T met KRS-One, he was living in a homeless shelter at the Franklin Armory on 166th, long before he became a local sensation onstage.

One of the most important venues in the Bronx was Disco Fever, on Jerome Avenue. The Fever started as a disco club, until an MC named Sweet G managed to grab the mic and the place lit up. The owner immediately booked hip-hop acts, starting with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, whose first Tuesday night brought 700 people to the door. Soon everyone was either at the Fever or trying to get into the Fever, which was not easy if they didn't know the doorman, a huge ex-con who had done time in Attica and often guarded the entrance in a fur vest with no shirt. In the back of the Fever was a VIP room, hidden by a fake brick wall for private bacchanalias and outfitted with a panic button that flashed red lights if the cops showed up.

T was tight with the staff at the Fever, and he regularly got coveted spots on the club's stage and in the backroom. He had an effortless charm : “T had the freshest clothes and the best beats,” his brother Kevin said, “and the cutest girls, too.” Ever since T was little and would exchange notes with hearts and arrows with Wendy across the street, he'd had a way with girls. Now he'd grown into a full-blown ladies' man, with women everywhere, sometimes several at once. There was Davina (on 116th Street), Gwen (on Webster Avenue), Terri (the Puerto Rican girl over on University). The only one T's mother liked was Maddie, whom she thought was a great partner for T. Sylvia called them “Mutt and Jeff” and thought it was cute how they dressed alike, in matching Adidas tracksuits and felt Kangols.

T's feats at the Fever started generating invitations to bigger and bigger events, where he earned $100, then $250, then $500 a night. His moonlighting was paying off. T's clothes got fresher, and his braided links got thicker. But that wasn't all he spent his money on. The first time he got a real wad of cash, he got off the subway at Mount Eden Avenue, stopped at the store, and called his mother. “Go stand on the stoop,” he said, “and wait for me.” So she did, and a few minutes later, there was T, walking up the hill in his leather and chains, his arms weighted with grocery bags full of eggs and milk and whole chickens for his mother.
Getty Images/Alain Le Garsmeur/Allan Tannenbaum

Like everyone else, T noticed more and more promoters and producers in the audience at the Fever and other clubs. The first real capitalists of hip-hop were early impresarios like Russell Simmons, who would manage acts and put on shows. The money then was only in live performance. But then a new label called Sugar Hill appeared and, after a string of rejections from rappers, decided to assemble its own recording group. The Sugarhill Gang released “Rapper's Delight,” a single that hit Top 40 charts and sold millions of copies.

It was ironic that the first hip-hop hit was an orchestrated product, like releasing a single by the Monkees before you've heard the Beatles. But that tune rang out across New York like a clarion call, and in that instant, hip-hop transformed into a gold rush. For the first time, it was clear that there was commercial appeal in this new music. And money to be made.

Once hip-hop was being recorded, rappers and DJs were desperate to get their acetates or test presses played, especially at the Fever, where a spot on the rotation would get you noticed. Eventually, an aspiring disc jockey calling himself Mr. Magic bought some late-night time on WHBI, a New York public-access station, and broadcast one of the first hip-hop shows. Mr. Magic soon had plenty of records to play. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released a single, “Superrappin',” that ignited their recording career. Then Kurtis Blow became the first rapper on a major label when he signed with Mercury and soon had the first hip-hop gold record. The sun was setting on the days of a local music floating through Bronx parks. The chains went from fake to plated to solid gold.

In Manhattan, hip-hop started appearing at clubs like Negril, Smalls Paradise, and the Roxy, a former roller rink at Tenth Avenue and 18th Street in Manhattan. The Roxy was a living laboratory for the enormous musical innovation of the moment, when uptown and downtown cultures met and New Wave and hardcore and hip-hop were all emerging simultaneously. Above the door was a sign : COME IN PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. On Saturday nights, the wait to get in could take four hours, and you might find Keith Haring sharing the ﬂoor with Mick Jagger. It was after T became a regular at the Roxy that, in 1983, he and Kevin were introduced to an N.Y.U. student and aspiring producer named Rick Rubin.

T began carrying a pen and a notebook around Haym Salomon to record details about his life there that he might otherwise forget : names, descriptions, things he liked about people. His notebook became a codex of observations and anecdotes about the gallery of characters around the nursing home. Along with Leon and Gary, there was Bernie, a former professor who was sharp as could be. Norma, who called T “bubeleh” while demanding pecks on the cheek. Sophie, who had three children and loved Humphrey Bogart. And Betty Ford, who delighted in saying she was not the former First Lady.

Norma, Sophie, and Betty became T's core social group, his own kaffeeklatsch, convening at lunch to watch The Honeymooners or soap operas. T became Haym Salomon's new favorite resident, the guy everyone wanted on their bingo team. He shouted out Jeopardy ! answers and joined the Seder table for Passover. He kept helping out the Haym Salomon staff as well, clearing trays in the cafeteria or delivering food to the rooms of infirm residents. Soon T was fielding requests of all kinds. Extra pillows, missing chess pieces—he'd take care of it. When T first arrived, some of the staff wondered whether he'd be able to recover at all ; now he helped run the place like a beloved local politician or, as T put it, like the inside boss of a rather pleasant, slow-motion prison.

At one point, T realized that his fellow residents were the dead center of the Danny Kaye demographic. His mother brought in a VHS copy of The Court Jester, which he screened one night after putting word out around the home. He served snacks and juice and introduced the film to a full house. By the end, half the crowd was asleep, but the rest loved it.

But some of the best entertainment was the home itself. T noticed how senior citizens, left with nothing but free time and a knack for grievance, could easily revert back to the politics of middle school. Haym Salomon had its own social hierarchy, with cliques and catty chatter. T and his kaffeeklatsch became a clearinghouse for gossip. Bernie might be an interesting guy, for example, but Betty said he was also a horndog.

“Professor Bernie ?” T said.

“Yup,” Betty said. “The guy's a ﬂasher.” Bernie would approach the nurses' station in a state of excitement.

“We call him Fresh Bernie,” Sophie added.

T had caught the attention of the female staff himself. “One look at you and I can tell that you are a stallion,” said Della at reception one day when T walked by. One of the other nurses used to make unannounced “patient checks” on T when he was in the communal shower—enough times that he started asking Marshall to guard the door.

Other than that, T loved the attention. He was a nearly indiscriminate flirt, playfully flattering every woman in the place, young or old. “How's my favorite spring chicken ?” T would say to Norma, poking her in the paunch. “Como esta, mi amor ?” The ladies loved it. “Come here you !” they'd say, demanding hugs in the rec room.

But around Haym Salomon, T's favorite gal was clearly Sheila at the switchboard. She started staying later, after her shift was over, to hang out with him. Sheila was struck by T's smile—it was the first thing she noticed about him—and one day she invited him to lunch. T got a day pass and drove with Sheila to get pasta. They had just one hour, but it was a revelation. He hadn't thought about life outside Haym Salomon in quite some time. And he certainly hadn't sat across a table from a beautiful woman.

Sheila had been a fan of T's music growing up, although she was too shy to admit it at first. Others around Haym Salomon learned about T's past, too. Some staff and residents didn't believe it—until strangers started showing up at the front desk of Haym Salomon looking for the one and only T La Rock. Two women came in looking for autographs, and a guy came by to deliver a demo tape on cassette to “Mr. Incredible,” just like in the old days.

Sometimes T would sit alone on the patio with his notebook, searching for that lost time and documenting his attempts to re-assemble his self. It was a fragmentary catalog of stories about the person everyone said he once was. T started sharing those stories with Marshall and Sheila. This seemed like great progress, even if T often forgot what he'd said already and told the same stories over and over, like he was reciting lyrics.

“You know, when you came in, your chart was bad,” Marshall told T one night. “I never thought we'd be sitting here like this.” It wasn't that long ago that Marshall had to help T bathe, and now they shared a nightly routine as friends. Marshall often worked the swing shift, a quiet time in the home after most of the staff left and residents had fallen asleep, and he and T would wander the halls and joke around, or jimmy open the door to the kitchen to get extra treats. They'd sit out on the patio, enjoying the spoils of their kitchen raids and staying up late into the night, talking about life and love.

“I can't figure out how to be with just one woman,” Marshall said. He was married, but he had a wandering eye back then.

“You need to be careful running around like a jackrabbit,” T said. “You gonna get busted.”

Marshall liked hearing about T's heyday ; he especially liked to hear stories about the women from T's time as a star. They spent long hours talking about their mutual love of hip-hop. Marshall knew T's music, even if T still didn't quite know it himself.

After his mother brought him CDs of recent releases, T wandered the halls of the home with his headphones on, feeling the new rhythms of hip-hop. When T heard those records, he could tell things were changing fast. Production was different. Lyrics were layered, narrative, full of subtext. Public Enemy and N.W.A. had already upended the genre, and the past few years had seen the appearance of a series of revolutionary albums : Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Nas's Illmatic, Biggie's Ready to Die. Over on Marcy Avenue, Jay-Z was selling his mixtapes on the street.

One of the hottest new records was Tupac's Me Against the World, which had a track that celebrated all the rappers who came before him : What more could I say ? / I wouldn't be here today if the old school didn't pave the way. Tupac remembered Mr. Magic, Flaaaash, and Grandmaster Caz. He remembered poppin' and lockin' to Kurtis Blow. He remembered all them parties on the block. And he remembered T La Rock.

When T took the train down to Rick Rubin's dorm room in Weinstein Hall at N.Y.U., he didn't know what to make of this odd white college kid with long hair and heavy-metal posters taped to his cinderblock walls. But the two of them got along well, and when they talked about the records stacked in crates next to Rick's couch, T could sense the musical fire Rick carried. Then he heard the beat Rick had made. Oh, my God, T thought, stunned. This dude got something new.

Rick had been thinking about this beat for some time. He figured out how to take a Roland 808—the heaviest-sounding bass machine yet made—and fiddle with the electronics to get an even deeper sound. His sonic goal was to re-create the kick of being in a club, the way hip-hop was first heard, with that heavy thump booming through massive speakers. This was how Rick's beat sounded. And T loved it.
Run DMC

T and Kevin started spending more time in Rick's room, building a song around that beat. The three of them would sit on the couch (Rick had moved his dorm bed into the hallway and pushed the desks together to arrange his DJ equipment) while his roommate tried to do homework. Some of Rick's friends—fellow hardcore-turned-hip-hop enthusiasts calling themselves the Beastie Boys—stopped by to listen. Rick brought in a guy named Jazzy Jay to scratch on the record, and when the song was ready, they booked Power Play Studios in Queens for $45 an hour to record what they had given the title “It's Yours.”

It was hot in the studio, and the booth was cramped—Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys had tagged along, as did some girls—but when the on-air light turned red and the acetate wheels turned, T knocked out his verses in one take : Commentating, illustrating / Description giving, adjective expert / Analyzing, surmising, musical / Myth-seeking people of the universe, this is yours !

Ad-Rock and the accompanying girls can be heard shouting out during the chorus. Rick mixed the song right then. During playback, T could sense there was something different and new in how the sound came together. “It's Yours” was stripped down to its rawest elements, a disco-less rhythm composed of pure beat, scratching, and rhyme. “Yes, yes, yes !” T yelled with a smile, holding a monitor headphone to his ear. “More bass !” He'd never heard anything like it. He wanted more. “Aw, man, kick up that bass !”

The next day, T was back on the job at the pharmacy. He nearly forgot about his recording. There was no distribution for a homemade rap album then, other than out of the trunk of Jazzy Jay's car. Someone must have bought copies, though, because “It's Yours” slowly started circulating, eventually winding up in the hands of New York's first hip-hop DJs. One day, T was in the stockroom of the pharmacy when the radio announced “the number one requested hip-hop record of the day,” and T was surprised to hear his name. “You're a star now !” his boss said. When T got home after work, the news had hit his neighborhood, and everyone on the street ran up to him. Yo, I heard you on the radio ! You got the hottest track out right now !

Six months after it was recorded, the song had avalanched into a genre-defining phenomenon. When LL Cool J heard it in his room in Hollis, Queens, he decided to send his own demo to Rick Rubin. “It's Yours” was a smash hit at the Fever, where everyone in hip-hop heard it. Russell Simmons was ﬂoored by that pioneering beat, tracked down Rubin, and combined his talent relationships with Rick's producing genius to form Def Jam, which would become the most inﬂuential hip-hop label in history. And it was the sound of “It's Yours” that formed the backbone of albums by LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Run-D.M.C. The line drawing of a Technics turntable on the sleeve of the “It's Yours” single became part of Def Jam's iconic logo.
James Estrin/The New York Times/Redux

“Mr. Keaton to the front desk !”

Sheila's voice on the loudspeaker meant it was time for one of their lunchtime excursions. They'd been going out more often, and both looked forward to their frequent outings. They had an easy way with each other and had made a deep connection. Sometimes at lunch, they lost track of time, got back late, and T would have to sneak back in undetected.

Sylvia thought that her son's friendship with Sheila was probably helping T recover. She still came every day on the train, checked with doctors, and brought baked goods for the diligent therapeutic staff on the fourth floor. She'd report back to Papa Keaton, who couldn't make the trip that often because of his own health problems, and the rest of the Keaton family. Their visits, too, had become rarer. T had been at the home a long time.

In a way, T was closer with some of the people in Haym Salomon than he had been with anyone else in ages. After all, he was spending every day with them, talking about their families, the many wonders of their brilliant grandchildren, and, of course, the past.

There was a lot of loss in all those years. Families broken. Friends long gone. People in Haym Salomon tended to steer clear of those difficult personal matters, but sometimes the conversation would stray, like when Sophie talked about her divorce. Her husband, she said, had left her for her sister. “Well, that doesn't make sense !” said one resident who had nosed her way into the conversation. Sophie agreed. No, it didn't make sense, but that's what happened. T could see that Sophie was upset and rescued her by changing the subject. She looked grateful, if still on the verge of tears.

T had even grown close with Leon, his first roommate, who'd had a stroke and couldn't talk. T would sit with Leon, listen to him mumble. “I can understand him,” T told Marshall. “I know what he's saying.”

It was true. T would pass by Leon's room every day and ask how he was doing. Leon was often depressed and would try to push away, but that only drew T in more. “What's wrong ?” he'd ask. Leon would try to answer, but his words were garbled.

T studied Leon's movements and facial expressions. They were able to develop their own sort of sign language. And since the staff struggled to understand Leon, T began translating for him. When Leon needed something, the nurses would get T, who would lean in to hear Leon's mumbles and then explain that he needed more pillows or pain relief or whatever. Eventually Leon's weird noises started verging on words. T knew Leon was making progress when Leon tilted his head to watch one of the female orderlies walk by, turned to T, and said : mashehathaniceath. “Yes,” T said. “She sure does have a nice ass.”

This became Leon's main interest, the curve of the orderlies' asses, which was one gesture he could clearly make. This pastime was one of his few reprieves from an otherwise dreary existence. T noticed that Leon was lonely and had only rare visits from his sister, who seemed to not want to be there. Nor did Leon seem to want her to come. At times, Leon could get violent, as displays of force were the simplest form of public communication. T was called in to calm those situations down. “Come on, Leon,” T would say. “It can't be that bad.”

He had never really seen depression before Haym Salomon, but there was a lot of it around the home. It was hard to say who was the worst, but Leon was a tough case. One night, Leon and T were talking, such as they could, and Leon managed to communicate that he was feeling suicidal. He couldn't move, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything for himself.

T was struck by Leon's agony. He didn't want anyone to feel that way. He told Leon that he understood being in pain, but that it was just a momentary feeling. Leon was unmoved, so T just kept talking. It might be hard to believe, T said, but there's value to living, even like this. You are better alive than dead. Eventually, T saw Leon's mood changing. And his own. He felt a happiness rising just by saying these words. “You have a purpose,” T said, at which point he was crying himself. “Even if you don't always know what it is.”

This was one of the things that Sheila liked about T, that he was such a good listener—both with the residents and with her. As they spent more time together, they both felt they could open up more. “I had your 12-inch,” Sheila told him one day, revealing her days as a teenager who loved his music. “The one with the red-and-black turntable.” Yeah, he said, that was a limited edition : “You had to really look for that one.”

Once when they were out, someone recognized T and asked for an autograph. When he held his pen to the paper, T had a sudden shiver—he was transported back to a hundred moments like that from a decade earlier, to a time when T was a star and he had fans out in the world, fans like Sheila, who was just 14 when she put together enough money to be first in line at the record store to get her hands on the song that was rocking the whole city.

On July 4, 1984, Def Jam had a release party for its first hip-hop record. The venue was carefully chosen. “It's Yours” had become a kind of crossover hit, especially in New York, where the song was in heavy rotation, and Danceteria was a multi-format club, a place where you might find Grandmaster Flash and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the audience together and Madonna on the stage.

Run-D.M.C. were at the party that night, and the Beastie Boys played a set, though they hadn't recorded a full album yet. When it was T's turn to perform, he ran to the stage, white Kangol on his head, white gloves on the mic. He heard his track, all bass and hi-hat, and was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the crowd, already screaming, “T La Rock !” Before he even started his lyrics, he thought : I can't believe they all know my name.

A few weeks later, T finally quit his job at the pharmacy to focus on his hip-hop career. His plan was to start writing more tracks with Rick Rubin. In the meantime, though, Rick had also signed LL Cool J to Def Jam, and T felt that sort of stole his thunder. LL's sound was drawn directly from “It's Yours,” but the new rapper was younger and hungrier, and Rick believed he could make him a star. Which he did.

T felt like he was being replaced. So when he got an offer to become one of the first rap acts with Sleeping Bag Records, a disco label that was embracing hip-hop full force, he took it. (The co-founder of the label would later help distribute Jay-Z's first record.)

T put out an EP for Sleeping Bag called He's Incredible, only half of which he wrote down before freestyling the rest in the studio. For Lyrical King, his first full-length LP, T teamed up with a visionary producer named Kurtis Mantronik for a few of the songs, including the single “Back to Burn.” The label couldn't press records fast enough.

T started touring overseas, playing sold-out shows in places he'd only read about in school : Amsterdam, London, and Stockholm. It was there that T met Cristina, a blond and blue-eyed beauty whom he called his “little Swedish meatball.” As usual, T had an effortless way with women and was easily smitten himself. T and Cristina fell so hard for each other, she followed him to the airport and they both cried at the gate, right in front of his whole crew, who were all yelling at T because the plane door was closing as he ran back for one more hug.

Back home, he told his mother he was in love, but she didn't want to hear it. “Ma, this is important,” he said. “If you're not talking about Maddie,” Sylvia said, “I don't want to hear about it.” When Cristina came to New York, she and T had to hide out from Maddie. “You've been running around with the ladies all your life,” Sylvia said. She thought T would get his wits about him and slow down.

But T had become a bona fide star. He was accustomed to walking on stage with Run-D.M.C. in front of 15,000 people. When he would show up on the old block, all styled up in his jacket and gloves even though it wasn't cold, people sometimes thought he was strutting. Oh, here comes Mister Top of the World, they'd say.

It was strange for T to think about how far he had come. And his old friend Craig thought the same thing the first time he saw T on stage, when he came back to New York for college break one summer. Not more than a few minutes after Craig started driving back to the city from the airport, he heard T's voice coming through on WBLS : Do you like it ? Do you want it ? Well, if you had it, would you flaunt it ? At first Craig couldn't believe it. Then he heard the song again and stopped the car. Oh shit, that is my man T on the radio ! Next came an announcement about where T was performing, so Craig went, and sure enough there was T, a young star commanding the stage with his tight pants and matching jacket and his name flashing across his belt.

After the show, Craig found T at the side of the stage with the other hip-hop honchos. Craig could see T acting the part of the big-timer, but when he saw Craig, T broke the façade and smiled like a kid again. He brought his old friend into the VIP room, where there were drinks and girls and record execs and a monitor displaying the sold-out show. Craig was stunned by the whole scene. So was T. Of all his friends and the musical Keaton brothers, T never thought he'd be the one to get famous. “This is all just so crazy,” T told Craig. “It's like I'm dreaming.”

“Where are we going ?”

T was trailing behind June, like he often had. But he felt confused.

“Just follow me,” June said.

They were in a strange place. A different part of the city. T had been there for weeks, walking the streets. It wasn't foreign, but it wasn't home. He'd been going to sleep, waking up, looking for something to eat. It wasn't no fog or nothing scary. It was just regular days. Then June appeared.

“Come with me,” he said. “There's a shortcut.” June started walking, and T followed.

“But where are we going ?”

“Don't worry,” June said. “I know the way.”

They walked several blocks, winding this way and that. They passed beneath trees, they stood in the shade of brick towers. T wanted to go another way, but June insisted. He told T that he was in pain. He wanted to check it out. T realized they were at a hospital. Elsewhere, T was in a hospital, breathing with a ventilator, comatose. As the doctors told T's mother that her son might not survive, he was with June, her other son, the one who was murdered, navigating a realm of the lost. June said he was hurt. It was like a page turning, one scene into another. A doctor came, and June had to leave. But he reassured his little brother.

“Stay here,” June said. “It will be all right.”

“Okay,” T said. And when June left, he sat down on the bed, laid himself down to fall asleep, but instead, he woke up.

He was in a hospital bed, still in the ICU. There at his side was his mother. She'd been there since his injury, since Kevin found T, covered in blood, since Tone got the call from the hospital. And now here he was, suddenly awake. T couldn't move yet. There were tubes. And machines. His mother called the doctors. They looked at him with surprise. Sylvia cried. He asked where June was, but his brother had been dead a long time. “I just saw him,” T said. “He told me to come here.”

Nearly two years after T woke up in that ICU, his recovery felt like a near miracle. He still sometimes repeated himself, or had lapses in short-term memory, and a few times he had gotten confused on outside trips, like his first venture onto the subway, when he walked to the station near Haym Salomon and climbed the stairs to the elevated platform like he had his whole life, but got spooked by the sound and the steel. It felt foreign, he told Sheila later, almost futuristic, like he was on a spaceship.

But soon T began to wonder when he would be able to live on his own again. “Why am I still here ?” he asked Sheila one day. “That's a good question,” she said. T had become content at Haym Salomon. His life had settled into a routine : watching soaps, marking the Jewish holidays, presiding over a social circle in which members occasionally died. At times, he nearly forgot he was waiting for something else.

In truth, T worried that he was not ready to leave. Out there, he had been T La Rock, and he simply wasn't sure how to face the world as someone else. And as who ? Both his identities—Terrence and T La Rock—had been erased, and he was reconstituting them piece by piece, like a puzzle. That's how he described it to people : Imagine you're putting together a puzzle, a giant jigsaw puzzle of yourself, but the pieces don't always fit. With great effort, he had pieced quite a bit together. But the picture taking shape on the puzzle was no longer the same as the one on the box.

Because as his memories came back, something strange started happening. After being so desperate to remember his life, T was stumbling across things he'd rather not recall. He realized he'd been not just a ladies' man but a Lothario, with so many overlapping women that he'd developed a system of codes with friends as an early-warning system so he wouldn't get caught cheating. As these memories returned, T sometimes didn't want to believe them.

“Did that really happen ?” he asked his mother. “Yes,” she said. “That's all true.”

It all came back to him : the frantic cloak-and-dagger of infidelity, the accompanying anxiety and guilt. Loving all the ladies is different in real life than it is in song.

“But I would never do those things,” he protested to his mother.

“But you did.”

One memory deceives another. Those pictures on T's wall were not just a glorious history to relive. They were also a record of life's complexities and T's mistakes, big and small. By the time of T's injury, Maddie and Cristina and all the rest of the women from T's youth had moved on, and he was, in fact, alone.

“In a way, you're lucky,” Marshall told him. “A terrible thing happened, but you get to do things new.” If you think about it, Marshall said, how many people get a chance to wipe the slate clean and live a better life ?

T took Marshall's words to heart. He thought about how some people would be happy to exchange, revise, or erase their lives altogether. At first he'd been troubled to find that his memory was complicated and contradictory, but then he accepted that this ambiguity contained a choice. He didn't have to be entirely defined by the deeds of the past. Ever since the injury, he'd been trying to figure out who he was—until he realized he could decide who he would be.

Since it was the Fourth of July, T decided on a patriotic tune to close out the show. He had become the de facto musical director for the latest Haym Salomon extravaganza. After the triumph of T's performance at the synagogue in the spring talent show, the staff had enlisted his help for their Independence Day tribute to Irving Berlin.

T worked on it for weeks, researching the life of Berlin and his contribution to the American songbook. He developed the set list, picked out the big musical numbers, and rehearsed some skits. When the big day arrived, there was a good turnout in the rec room. T had made ﬂyers and distributed them around Haym Salomon : SPECIAL EVENT. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED.

There had been only a boom box for the talent show, but this would be a proper pageant, with a live band—guitar and piano and even a brass section—to accompany the cast of singers, assembled from the residents and employees, all in matching red, white, and blue. As the show started, they all looked to T for guidance. “Don't be nervous,” he prepped them. “The crowd is on your side.”

T opened with a few jokes and then ran the band through the program—“A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” “Anything You Can Do”—and landed on the grand finale, “God Bless America.” The crowd couldn't quite manage a standing ovation with all the wheelchairs, but in the scheme of Haym Salomon entertainment, the show was a roaring success. Afterward, there was a cast party of sorts, with virgin drinks in Dixie cups. “That was so good !” said the activities director. “We might have to take our show on the road !”

Not long afterward, T finally approached the social workers to take a serious look at “transition.” They brought in a housing agency to help him start looking for apartments. Not the Bronx, he said. It wasn't that he was worried about safety there. “I just feel like that time is over,” he said. Maybe he could make a fresh start in Manhattan ?

T was never one for good-byes, and he wasn't looking forward to the ones that were coming. When he told Marshall he was leaving, there was a moment of confusion.

“Like, leaving to visit someone ?”

“No, leaving Haym Salomon. I'm going home.”

Marshall found himself a little choked up before he could say : “Yo, man, congratulations !” They talked about how it was a strange thing to have become friends under these circumstances. And yes, they would of course stay in touch. With Sheila, the conversation was more difficult. He knew they wouldn't really see each other after he left. Whatever they had together would stay in the halls of this place.

T wanted to avoid a big public farewell, but on his last morning at Haym Salomon, the walls were hung with colorful crepe paper and everyone came out to see him off. T's kaffeeklatsch was in full effect. Leon and Bernie, naturally. Even Gary managed not to dive for a foxhole.

“Why are we celebrating ?” a patient asked.

“Because T is leaving.”

“Then I'm not celebrating !”

T's mother helped him gather the records and other mementos from his room. The photographic history he'd created on his walls fit into a few boxes, which they carried out the door.

T moved to an apartment in Washington Heights and set up a studio in his bedroom. At first he was anxious about being out in the world again. He stayed close to his new home, seeing almost no one other than his family.

Then, not long after he left Haym Salomon, he was invited to an old friend's birthday party, a big hip-hop bash. T worried he might not recognize people. Or even worse, they might not recognize him. But within a few minutes in the club, he was getting plenty of love. When the host saw T, he said, “This is such a great birthday present just to see you.” As word spread that T La Rock was in the house, the shout-outs from the stage started. LL Cool J, Chuck D—they all paid their respects from the mic.

When I met T, he still lived in Washington Heights. He'd become a fixture in the neighborhood, known by all. Everywhere T went, he was stopped constantly by friends or neighbors or the guy at the bodega or just some adoring children. At times it seemed as if cartoon bluebirds were about to alight on the brim of his hat.

That hat, of course, said T LA ROCK. As did much of his clothing. The walls in his house are full of mementos of T in his hip-hop prime. T loved telling stories about that time. It had been nearly three decades since T's last commercially successful album, and yet there remained an enormous emotional gravity in T's mind toward his life as a star.

On the one hand, it makes sense : Hip-hop is a vast self-mythologizing narrative, and T had been there at the beginning, bright and hopeful at the dawn of a new art form. He lived through something incredible. But perhaps legacy can get in the way of life. At times, it seemed as if T inhabited an interpretive center devoted to his former self. I wondered if holding on so hard to this historical idea of T La Rock came at the expense of the new T La Rock, or Terrence, or in any event the delightful guy of the present who can't walk down Fort Washington Avenue without being overwhelmed with smiles and waves and hellos.

Then one day I realized I was misjudging T's perspective on the past. I was sitting with him at a restaurant near his house (where, unsurprisingly, the owner came out to give T a hug), talking with him about his time at Haym Salomon, filling in details. We were covering familiar territory, but small details of the story were changing. On the one hand, that wasn't entirely unusual ; learning about T's life was less like picking up a lost book than embarking on an archaeological excavation, where discoveries were made in layers. But something else struck me. “The thing is,” T said, “when I tell you all this about back in the day, I'm not the same exact person, so you're getting it through my eyes now.”

I saw that the T I'd been spending time with was not the same T who danced on Featherbed Lane, or asked Rick Rubin for more bass, or stood onstage with Run-D.M.C. “A lot changed at Haym Salomon,” T told me.

Imagine starting over, not just with a new job or a new home but with a neuroplastically new you, a mind reborn. Once T discovered there is no single self, preserved in mnemonic amber, but a collection of conﬂicting selves, he could choose which selves he wanted to live with. He told me he liked to think he'd re-balanced the composition of Terrence and T La Rock. “It's a balance,” he said, “that I will always be looking to improve.”

Today T performs pretty often, sometimes to big crowds. There is a strong following for old-school hip-hop, and a circuit for performances. Last summer, T was invited to a show called The Golden Era at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. On the bill were many old friends and veterans of Disco Fever : Kurtis Blow, Soulsonic Force, Slick Rick—and T La Rock. It was a summertime concert that played to a cheering throng of deep fandom, like a fetish ball for New York circa 1983.

Before T's injury, he was already past his prime—the title of that Tupac song from 1995, the one that pays homage to T, is “Old School”—but he wouldn't have wanted to admit it. Here, that identity could be embraced. Being old-school allowed T to celebrate the past. No one can be a young star forever, even if you're the biggest star in the world, and part of life is managing the ongoing reconciliation of past deeds and present wisdom. Or maybe that reconciliation is wisdom itself.

When T arrived onstage in Newark, he looked like a natural. Hat on, ﬂat brim, mic in hand. It was early evening. The crowd had heard from a bunch of acts already but put up a huge cheer when T appeared. He hadn't stood in front of this many people in a long time.

It was, as they say, a warm room. When the song rolled to the edge of the verse, T didn't miss a beat. He knew all the words, and the crowd did, too. T looked out at his fans and grinned. Among the many things he had forgotten was that he was, in fact, remembered.

Joshuah Bearman is a writer and a contributor to This American Life.

L'histoire de la mixtape en 100 chroniques

DrNoze — 2017-07-11T20:43:59Z

Dans un livre, encore une fois sorti chez l'excellent éditeur « Le Mot et le reste », Sylvain Bertot parcourt l'histoire de la mixtape de rap.

Depuis ses débuts, autour de l'année 2000 en tant que rédacteur en chef des sites New Skool, puis Hip Hop Section, jusqu'à aujourd'hui avec son site Fake For Real (mais aussi ses deux précédents livres, Rap, Hip-Hop et Rap Indépendant), Sylvain Bertot a écrit des chroniques d'albums de rap par milliers. Toutes allient le recul du chercheur avec l'énergie du passionné de longue date. On avait déjà discuté avec lui de son ouvrage sur la scène dite du rap indépendant qui tentait de révolutionner le hip-hop autour de l'année 2000. Avec son dernier livre chez Le Mot et le reste, Mixtapes : Un format musical au coeur du rap, il revient sur l'histoire de la mixtape.

Mixtapes, un format musical au coeur du rap

Sylvain Bertot ouvre son livre sur une anecdote. Il relate un malentendu avec un annonceur publicitaire qui souhaitait mettre fin à leur partenariat après avoir relevé la présence de liens illégaux dans les forums de son site, Fake For Real. Après vérification il s'avérait que la quasi totalité des liens en question étaient tout à fait légaux et pointaient en réalité vers des mixtapes gratuites hébergées sur Datpiff ou LiveMixtapes. Même après rétablissement de la vérité, l'annonceur ne modifia pas sa position, il était en effet impensable, pour lui, que des rappeurs distribuent ainsi gratuitement leur musique.

Et pourtant, l'économie du rap, depuis bientôt une dizaine d'années, est bel et bien basée sur la distribution gratuite d'albums dématérialisés. Des street albums, réalisés rapidement et sans concession, dans le but de satisfaire son insatiable fan base, et que l'on appelle désormais « mixtapes ». Mais comme dit l'adage « if it don't make money, it don't make sense ». On fera donc confiance aux rappeurs pour trouver de l'argent autrement, vente de produits dérivés, concerts et showcases, sponsors. Certains vont même jusqu'à créer leur propre marque de vêtements, voir leur chaine de restaurant ou leur boisson énergisante. Soit les bénéfices indirects de leur notoriété liée à la diffusion de mixtapes.

Mais si la mixtape a une longue histoire en commun avec le rap, elle ne l'a pas toujours été sous cette forme et elle est passée par de nombreuses étapes, depuis les premières « party tapes » des années 1970 aux « street albums » de ces dernières années. C'est cette histoire que Sylvain Bertot a entrepris de nous raconter en détail, du moins dans la première partie de son livre.

La mixtape à travers les âges

Le livre se divise en deux parties. Dans un style sobre et dense, l'auteur commence par une présentation précise d'une cinquantaine de pages et qui passe en revue, avec moult détails et de nombreuses anecdotes, les différentes étapes de la vie compliquée de la mixtape. Mais la plus grande partie de l'ouvrage est constituée par une série de cent chroniques, faisant la part belle à la période qui va des années 2000 à nos jours.

Sylvain Bertot démarre donc au coeur des années 1970, la période glorieuse des block parties. À l'époque où les DJ étaient encore les véritables stars et où le rap ne s'imaginait pas encore pouvoir avoir une existence sur disque, des enregistrements officiels ou non de ces lives, les "party tapes", permettaient de diffuser l'expérience de ces fêtes et d'en faire circuler la légende. Viennent ensuite les « battle tapes », des enregistrements des affrontements entre diverses équipes de rappeurs.

Plus tard, dans les années 1980 puis 1990, lorsque les rappeurs supplantent les DJ sur le devant de la scène et rencontrent l'industrie du disque, la mixtape advient alors sous sa forme classique, soit une compilation de morceaux mixés avec plus ou moins de dextérité par un DJ. Pour sortir du lot, certains misent sur la quête des inédits, quitte à les voler, comme DJ Kid Capri ou DJ Clue. D'autres choisissent la créativité et la technique pure pour se distinguer, comme DJ Q-Bert et les X-Ecutioners.

Début 2000, les rappeurs se lancent à leur tour dans la confection de mixtapes et celles-ci migrent au passage majoritairement de la cassette au support CD. Certaines scènes isolées, comme celle de Memphis, utilisaient déjà dans la décennie précédente le support cassette pour sortir de véritables albums underground. Mais le tournant se fait surtout au début des années 2000 avec les mixtapes de 50 Cent et des Diplomats. C'est véritablement à ce moment que les rappeurs récupèrent le format à leur compte pour diffuser leur musique à une fanbase toujours plus gourmande, sans avoir à passer par l'industrie du disque. Au départ il s'agit surtout de poser des freestyles sur des instrumentaux, plus ou moins empruntés à d'autres, pour faire patienter les fans jusqu'au prochain album.

Mais le Sud avait, encore une fois, quelque chose à dire, et avec sa série des Gangsta Grillz, DJ Drama (et d'autres), impose Atlanta sur le marché de la mixtape, et rapproche le format encore un peu plus du concept contemporain de « street album ». Le business de la mixtape, alors encore principalement gravée sur CD et à la frontière de la légalité, est alors un marché très rentable.

Un événement malheureux joue un rôle décisif pour l'avenir du format. En 2007, DJ Drama se fait arrêter par le FBI et saisir tout son matériel et ses collections de disques. Cette mésaventure produit l'effet d'une bombe dans le milieu. Désormais il sera de moins en moins question de mixer les morceaux des autres pour en faire du profit. Les DJ seront alors plus que jamais focalisés sur les inédits, rappés sur des instrumentaux originaux. Et pour être vraiment certains de ne pas avoir de problème avec la loi, on distribue même tout ça gratuitement, en dématerialisé, sur internet.

Aujourd'hui, nombre des mixtapes qui sortent quotidiennement sur les plateformes de téléchargement comme Datpiff ou Livemixtapes se passent de DJ et plus grand chose ne les distingue de véritables albums. Ces « street albums » ont le mérite d'être plus authentiques que ces derniers et délivrés des compromis artistiques liés aux impératifs commerciaux désormais courants dans l'industrie du rap (édulcoration de la musique et des thèmes, featurings imposés, diversification des ambiances et des cibles …). Ils sont désormais le véritable lien entre un artiste et sa fan base, alors que l'album commercial tente, de son côté, de toucher un public plus large.

Un florilège de 100 mixtapes à écouter

Si l'introduction du livre présente un historique de la mixtape très complet allant des années 1970 à nos jours, la sélection qui suit, elle, est beaucoup plus partiale et se concentre très nettement sur l'ère post 2000, soit « l'âge d'or » de la mixtape. Ainsi, sur les cent chroniques que totalise le livre, on n'en dénombre en effet que dix pour la période située avant 2000.

Délaissant complètement les années 1980 dont il ne reste pas grand chose aujourd'hui, on commence donc avec une cassette de DJ Ron G datant de 1991 (Mixes #1). Puis l'auteur balaie rapidement la décennie avec, entre autres, les mixtapes de Kid Capri (52 Beats), DJ Clue (Holiday Hold Up 96), DJ Q-Bert (Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Muzik), Funkmaster Flex (60 Minutes of Funk Vol.1), sans oublier DJ Screw (June 27th). On notera également, au milieu de ces mixtapes classiques de DJ, la présence avant-gardiste, du street album Smoked Out, Loced Out de la Triple 6 Mafia.

Puis, après 2000, on s'attaque au coeur du sujet. Si l'on admet que les meilleurs albums de rap de ces quinze dernières années sont, pour la plupart, des mixtapes, Sylvain Bertot en fait donc, ici, un florilège. En essayant de balayer le genre dans toute sa largeur, il nous offre, entre incontournables et coups de coeur plus personnels, un panel hétéroclite de ce qu'à été le rap depuis une quinzaine d'années, de Bones (DeadBoy) à Gucci Mane (Chicken Talk), en passant par Sage Francis (Sick Of Waiting Tables...) et The Weeknd (House of Balloons).

On y croise aussi les chroniques de la sombre et déglinguée Nasa : The Mixtape de SpaceGhostPurrp, de l'extravagante 6 Kiss de Lil B, ou de l'extrême violence de Exmilitary de Death Grips. On se régalera encore de la chronique de la très nihiliste Back From The Dead de Chief Keef et de l'indétrônable 1017 Thug de Young Thug. Outre ces classiques, le lecteur rencontrera certainement nombre de projets dont il n'avait peut-être jamais entendu parlé auparavant. Alors, bien-sûr, on pourra toujours être en désaccord avec certains choix de l'auteur, et chacun pourra regretter l'absence de tel artiste ou au contraire la présence de tel autre, cela fait bien partie du jeu.

Courtes et toujours très claires, n'oubliant jamais de remettre, et l'artiste, et l'album, dans leur contexte, les chroniques de Sylvain Bertot sont d'une redoutable efficacité. Le choix de vouloir couvrir un champ large, et de ne se permettre qu'un projet par artiste, est à la fois la force et la faiblesse de l'exercice. Il permet en effet de survoler un grand nombre de styles et d'écoles différentes et de faire ainsi découvrir des scènes au lecteur curieux, mais il frustrera aussi ceux qui voudront aller plus loin dans un genre.

Après des années de disette éditoriale dans le domaine du rap, les initiatives de l'éditeur « Le Mot et le reste » viennent donc combler une lacune et rencontrent à ce titre un succès mérité. Espérons donc qu'il continuera sur sa lancée, si bien entamée avec les ouvrages de Sylvain Bertot (mais également ceux de Mehdi Maizi et Vincent Piolet pour le rap francophone), en proposant des livres de sélections d'albums centrés sur des scènes plus précises, comme la trap d'Atlanta, le Devil Shyt de Memphis ou la scène dite « underground » des années 2010.

Tous les espoirs sont permis puisque l'éditeur a déjà commencé en sortant en ce début d'année 2017, New York State of Mind, une anthologie du rap new-yorkais par Pierre-Jean Cléraux.

Illustrations : IvanLaVague