This Is... Reggae? A Long-Winded Analysis of UK Hip Hop

A while ago, one of my friends burned for me, among many other albums, a compilation of UK hip hop. Being a fan of both hip hop and music from the UK, needless to say I was excited to listen to it. When I did, I was… well, not disappointed, but very very surprised. The music wasn't at all what I expected. It didn't sound like hip hop to me. It sounded like… dancehall.

This little incident of mine is just one example of the ways in which hip hop and dancehall are connected not only to each other, but also to many other types of music, as was illustrated fabulously in Wayne Marshall's piece on reggaeton. It is also an example of how perceptions of music are formed by people who are outsiders to certain genres. Since I'm in no way a part of any hip hop scene, especially UK hip hop, this experience was eye-opening for me, since, despite how insignificant it may seem, it really challenged my perceptions of music and genre.

As Marshall illustrated, reggaeton came into being as a result of influences from hip hop, reggae, and dancehall, among many other musical forms. The example of reggaeton is just one illustration of how hip hop and dancehall are related to each other. The exact relationship between these two forms isn't a completely clear one, and theories about this relationship have been controversial at times. One of the most commonly posed theories is that New York hip hop was essentially an American variation of the Jamaican dancehall tradition, where DJs would spin versions of records that would be toasted over. The similarities in form between dancehall and New York hip hop are noticeable, and it is easy to see why this theory has been raised, especially since DJ Kool Herc, one of the pioneers of hip hop, was originally from Jamaica. However, Herc himself has denied the "hip hop comes from toasting" theory, saying "Jamaican toasting? Naw, naw. No connection there." Obviously, hip hop and dancehall have a complicated relationship with each other.

Before I go further, I'll link a couple songs from this compilation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXiM3whh15I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdTCtYuDpgc

As one MC descibes the music of the compilation: "This is a UK thing, it's hip hop and it's reggae and we do reggae - and those Americans don't know about that." While you might think it would be my gut reaction to get defensive about a statement like this, that MC is totally right. I'm American, and I didn't understand that UK thing when I listened to it. While I was aware of the connections between reggae, dancehall, and hip hop when I listened to this compilation, I was still baffled by the idea that songs so easily classifiable as dancehall or reggae, with their distinct rhythms, could also be considered hip hop. It was a direct acknowledgement of the connections between these forms, and it took me by surprise.

Part of the reason these songs didn't sound like what I expect hip hop to sound like is that they don't have rhythms I associate with hip hop. Marshall illustrated very well how certain rhythms are associated with certain genres, but that there is lots of hybridity between those genres, and some artists consider reggaeton, for example, to be a type of hip hop, even though it has its own rhythm. So even though these songs have rhythms associated with dancehall and reggae respectively, they are still lumped in with hip hop, since often times the only thing separating these genres are the rhythms. But that's not everything. Language also plays a very important role.

This raises a somewhat harsh, but important question: if all of these forms are interconnected, who am I to determine what category a piece of music falls into? How does my perspective as an American influence the way I hear music? And how does language play a role in this?

This, I think, is where the vocals come into play. I'm gonna throw out this theory I have for all of you to read. It's not one that I stand by 100%, since I'm still kind of working it out in my head, and some of it is just speculation, but I'd like to see what you think of it. It has to do with how my perspective as an American informs the way I hear music from other countries.

In regard to the way I, and Americans in general, hear music from Jamaica and the UK, vernacular language is one of the most important factors in how Americans interpret music. As I noted in my last post about white reggae bands (which caused some controversy when I posted it on my own blog), in the music of the Police there is a strong association between Jamaican patois and the sound of reggae that isn't actually there a lot of the time. I think in general, a lot of American people have a strong association in their minds between Jamaican patois and reggae/dancehall. In the minds of many, the lines that separate reggae and dancehall are very blurry, and while that's in some ways legitimate, since there's obviously lots of hybridity, it's also problematic in some ways, and, surprise surprise, there aren't any easy answers. I mean, on one hand it's problematic to use only use the word "reggae" in reference to roots reggae ("Be warned that a white person saying they like “reggae” really means “reggae from 1965-1983." Under no circumstances should you ever bring a white person to a dancehall reggae concert, it will frighten them." – Stuff White People Like), it's also problematic to use "reggae" as a blanket term for all Jamaican music. I've heard people describe everything from the Skatalites to Sean Paul as reggae, denying that they were listening to ska/dancehall and insisting that ska didn't exist until the 90s/Sean Paul's vocals are in patois, so it's totally reggae. That last point about Sean Paul is kind of what brings it all back to the UK hip hop compilation. In the ears of the listener, a lot of times what makes something "reggae" or "dancehall" is the vocals, since people associate Jamaican patois with music that they clearly identify as Jamaican. Sting did this in the Police. The person who insisted that Sean Paul plays reggae in the same way Bob Marley does wasn't familiar with the term dancehall, so rather than describing Sean Paul as hip hop or rap, he used the word reggae, since it referred to Jamaican music for him. Even though the song he was listening to didn't have a reggae rhythm, he heard Jamaican patois and classified the music as reggae. When I listened to the UK hip hop compilation, I knew about other kinds of Jamaican music, so when I heard the vocal presence of Jamaican immigrants, I immediately thought dancehall, since I knew it didn't have a reggae rhythm, but I still had the initial reaction of thinking of it in terms of Jamaican music, because of what I heard in the vocals. The fact that it was described as UK hip hop, but that I labeled it differently, shows not only that hip hop, dancehall, and reggae are related in many complicated ways, but also that listeners have strong preconceptions about what music "should" sound like, and that someone from America is likely to perceive music in a very different way than someone from the UK.