Hip Housin'

Yo, been lazy and snoozing on the bloggin' but this is the first in a series of content posts that I've been thinking (read procrastinating) on doing. So without further ado lets think back to a simpler time, a time when shaving your name into your high top fade was as smooth as it came, a time when gold ropes weren't just the domain of Too Short, a time when wearing sunglasses inside while sporting a mustache and a fanny pack was what all label bosses did. That time, my friends, was Chicago in the late 80s : The birthplace of Hip House



Or is that Club Rap? Rap House?
Unfortunately Hip House was getting no love from mainstream Chicago, in fact this documentary was produced by the BBC and only shown in the UK.

Here's Fast Eddie with a performance on Chicago TV in the late 80s and his thoughts on the lack of support that Hip House was receiving


Ma' fuckers be cutting shapes in that clip, except for that bowl-cutted reporter?
No love? Seriously?!
According to Tyree Cooper in an interview he did with 5 magazine, not only was the mainstream not getting with Hip House but the New York Hip Hop community was also giving the movement no love :

TYREE: BET used to have a show called "Rap City." There was a guy called Prime. Prime and I were in New York during the New Music Seminar. Prime says, "Let's go to this rap unity conference and talk about the unity in rap music and why they don't play Hip House videos. Ask why BET plays Fast Eddie and Mr. Lee but MTV was bigger and they (Ed Lover and Dr. Dre) were getting the same videos but weren't playing them."

The panel was Prince Paul, MC Lyte, Ice-T, Ed Lover and a couple others. Prime said, "Why don't you go to the mic and say something about why they don't play any Hip House videos if you're about unity?" So I did. I said my name and they recognized me because Ed Lover tried to do a Hip House record and said it didn't work. I said you should have got me to do the production. So he asked me why, when Rappin' Duke did "Da Ha Da Ha," they didn't call it "Country Hop."

I said, "Well that's cause it was B-Boy Music, it wasn't even Hip Hop then."

So we got into an argument and the panel kind of closed after that. It was getting heated. A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian - all these Hip Hop heads, and lot of them didn't even have deals then, they we're just young guns. A lot of them were like, "Fuck all that dance music, all that crazy ass fag shit."

I'm like, "You don't know that shit was born and bred in Chicago on the South and Westside. Just as hard as y'all think y'all are, MFs in Chicago is just as hard." Twenty years ago, Hip House would have been the Down South rap of the time, it was the next big thing.

When Dr. Dre from NWA got in contact with Benji asking for me or Fast Eddie to do House mixes or a House track for a new artist they were producing, that's when that shit got big. The artist was The D.O.C. "Portrait of a Masterpiece" came out, and that was the same thing. Then you had Daddy-O from Stetsasonic openly dissing House Music but "Talkin' All That Jazz" was just that. Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One - no one liked Hip House but everyone knew it. New York on their own were still trying to get their respect. For another sub-genre to come along was threatening to them. If that didn't do it, all the shit that came after it did it. All the records from Europe that were getting played in America that were called Hip House or had a Hip House mix and it wasn't anything to do with Hip House. But commercial stations like B96 were playing and it and there were too many sub-genres for the stations to keep up with it.

Read the rest of that interview here http://www.5chicago.com/features/september2008/tyree-cooper.html

Until the dollar bills started showing up, then everybody jocked the sound.Wonder how many "Hip Hop Heads" realize this.

Tyree is still doing his do, he moved to Berlin and has recently started a label: Supa Dupa Records

So reach out and say what up to the man on facebook and check this classic bit of slept on history that he created



Sorry for the long time between drinks will do another post in the next two weeks until then stay rapping at 120 bpm
Sam