The Semantics Of Hip-Hop

11/06/1998 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Justin Hampton

Consider the article you are about to read a translation, for the skills of a modern-day DJ and electronic composer amount to their own language--if you're willing to follow the sprawling logic of one Paul D. Miller. Several years ago, Paul transformed himself from a mild-mannered reporter for the Village Voice into DJ Spooky. Ever since, he's been the center of much debate and discussion in the downtown NYC art scene for introducing the terms of DJ culture to the semantics of modern conceptual art. With the release of his major-label debut, Riddim Warfare , Spooky attempts to reinterpret his style for the masses by grafting strange bedfellows such as Thurston Moore, Killah Priest and MIT media lab head Julia Scher atop noisy yet accessible hip-hop hybrids.

"Here I was, for a year kind of attacked for having too many ideas, and [people were] saying, 'Oh, hip-hop kids don't go to college, what are you talking about?'" explains Spooky. "I wanted to throw it back in those people's faces, that urban youth culture has ideas and in a certain sense, conceptual art is about the environment, bottom line...because yes, I can come from this academic background, but it's also important to build bridges between different cultures."

The multitude of guest-star collaborators and the catchiness of tracks like the Kool Keith-Sir Melenik duet "Object Unknown" on Riddim Warfare seem far removed from what Spooky describes as the sinister sci-fi "theater of samples" of his first album, Songs Of A Dead Dreamer. For this project, Spooky sought to move closer to the source of the sampling by working directly with the cultures involved, an act Spooky feels is the responsibility of any sampling artist. "Take for example, [what happens if] you sample an old funk record," he asserts. "You actually are dealing with people from different milieus but you don't really care about their present situation. Anybody can sample anything, but if they can't deal with the people, then it's an empty gesture."

This desire to cross contexts in society also shows in the amendment of Spooky's eclectic, weather-beaten production style to suit song structure for his introduction to the mainstream. "To me, a lot of the New York downtown scene is self-indulgent wanking. They'll play a little riff, but they can't think about the wider or larger arena of music. You can be downtown-hip-avant-garde, but if only 50 people come to your show, then that to me is like a loss of your own message. People like John Cage, Steve Reich, or Pauline Oliveros [were] conceptualists, but they were efficient at getting their [message across]."

Spooky will continue to spread the word through a worldwide tour with Plastilina Mosh and Emergency Broadcast Network, where he'll be performing with a live band. And for now, Spooky's message seems to be coming through. He describes a recent concert he performed with Pauline Oliveros, attended by one of his former music professors. "[He] was like, 'Wow, I've been hearing a lot about you.' And I used to get into arguments with him. I'd bring in hip-hop tapes to class and press play and say, 'Repetition, loops.' His first thing was, 'When I hear repetition, I get suspicious'...But my professor was there at the recital, and I was shocked. All's well that ends well. It was all kind of funny."