Ray-Ban and Boiler Room are back at SXSW Festival with an exclusive showcase presented by Kaytranada. Keep your eyes peeled for artist announcements everyday this week.
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International club culture and what we euphemistically call “urban” – essentially mainstream rap and R&B – have not always seen eye-to-eye. But their fractious relationship is like that of family members, because the two vast sections of modern culture are a lot more closely related than we might sometimes admit. And the lineup for our Ray-Ban x Boiler Room 006 session at South By Southwest is essentially a celebration of that closeness.
Frenchman STWO is a perfect example of how electronic / dance music at the moment voraciously reworks R&B, indeed his flips of Brandy, Jennifer Hudson and Janet Jackson are among the most finessed and sensitive examples of this tendency. And the lineup as a whole shows just how little divide there in fact is between dance and urban music in the world which Kaytranada inhabits. Given Kaytra’s superstar status now, it’s entirely possible that he represents an entire new level of overlap, so let’s have a look at some examples of the successes and misfires of previous crossovers.
Hip hop and house have very similar roots, of course. Both have their foundation in hedonistic escape from the harshness of the decaying US cities of the 1970s, and as they settled into their identities in the 1980s, may of their practitioners, particularly in New York, were actually the same people: Masters At Work, Todd Terry, Armand Van Helden all still talk regularly about their backgrounds in hip-hop and the love they still have for it. House, techno and electro-bass were inseparable in NYC (see the mix below) and there was a time when hip-house was such a phenomenon that Farley Jackmaster Funk and Marley Marl announced they were planning an album project together. What could have been…
Meanwhile in Europe, the foundations of rave were built from b-boy and soul-boy culture. Hip hop was a key part of the anything-goes Balearic sound that Alfredo and Leo Mas built at Amnesia from 1985: Kurtis Blow, Run DMC, Salt & Pepa and The Jungle Brothers all formed part of their playlists alongside indie, electronic music and early house. Meanwhile in the UK, pre acid house, pioneers of dance music from Paul Oakenfold to Norman Cook, LFO to 808 State, Norman Jay to Coldcut all came from hip-hop/electro/breakdance/street soul scenes – so when rave finally exploded, the rhythms of rap and R&B were written into it.
Breakbeat hardcore and jungle, of course, couldn’t have existed without hip hop. Just one look at the graffiti artwork on labels like Strictly Underground and Suburban Base is enough to tell you how heavily the b-boy influence weighed on them, and some of the most influential players in the birth of jungle, from DJ Hype to Criminal Minds, were well established in the UK hip hop scene before rave broke. This connection would run deeply through drum’n’bass to boot: think of Goldie’s collaboration with KRS1, of Roni Size / Reprazent’s with Method Man, of Krust’s with hip hop poet Saul Williams.
It’s a tragedy that this fusion never really took off on a bigger scale, just as it’s a tragedy that UK garage’s infatuation with R&B was never reciprocated. However, American producers were paying attention to dance music. Pharrell and Andre 3000 are both avowed fans of acts like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, and Lil Jon once claimed that he would never have created the tough digital drums of crunk – the precursor to the omnipresent trap rhythms of today – if it hadn’t been for the fact that the girls at the Atlanta strip clubs where he DJed loved to dance to Euro-dance music. There’s a strong argument that Daft Punk were among the biggest influences on 2000s R&B and rap with their glossy production and processed vocals: Janet Jackson, Kanye, will.i.am and many more were sampling their work long before Random Access Memories made them global megastars. And for a little while, until things all went a bit mental, it even looked like dubstep might conquer the US urban industry.
Meanwhile, local variants on booty bass – New Orleans bounce, Detroit’s ghettotech, Chicago’s ghetto house, B’more and Jersey club – always occupied a mid-point between house/techno and rap/R&B. So it’s not surprising that these, and ghetto house’s mutant offspring, footworking beats, have in turn inspired no end of hybrids among global electronic producers. All of this has combined to create a climate through the 2000s and 2010s where crossover is no longer the exception. Say what you like about Diplo and M.I.A. but with their hybrids of US and global ghetto sounds with mainstream dance culture, they really set the tone for the current era.
There are terrible, terrible misfires – of course there are: look at David Guetta’s co-opting of US megastar rappers and singers, or at the bizarre annus horribilis of 2008 when EDM’s influence was starting to be felt and rap/R&B producers started sampling any old mainstream dance tat, like Guru Josh, Alice Deejay or even ‘Dragostea tin Dai‘. But thankfully it truly feels like we are reaching a point when the lines of cultural communication are open and staying open: when the likes of Rustie, Hud Mo, Lunice, the Night Slugs team, Flying Lotus, and of course the likes of Kaytranada and STWO can exist with feet very firmly in both camps. On a good day, as we’re sure our Ray-Ban party will be, it can feel like the very best of family reunions.
