Connecting to a Collective Rhythm & 'Having It'

"Hip-Hop is soul music, homie. Let’s hope more people tap into the soul. And that comprises more than just Hip-Hop. Rhythm music, that drum. That steady, steady rhythm… that holds you down, opens you up, takes ya mind off your thoughts, where you ain’t thinkin' about livin', you just livin’… That’s an ideology... which opens you up to all ideologies. All different things. Opens you up to a discussion. It unifies, brings people together. … The world don’t have that ideology."

- Head-Roc (Interview, 2005)

If there’s one aspect of Hip-Hop that has been understandably absent from academic discussion on the topic, it’s the idea of “connecting to a collective rhythm.”  And if there is one point I would like readers to take away from this essay, it is the centrality of this idea to Hip-Hop.  It is closely tied to my assertion that effective academic interpretation of Hip-Hop must go beyond traditional social and cultural analysis and into the realm of consciousness.  As my primary research illustrates, one of the central qualities of a dope emcee, and of an authentic emcee, is the ability to connect to a collective rhythm or to ‘touch’ his or her audience.  Here are two accounts where this came up in response to the question of what makes an emcee dope:

Zion: For me, it’s the ability to touch me, and stir something inside me emotionally – more even so than mentally – somethin' that’s gonna make me look at life a different way, even for a split second. That’s what I look for in emcees.

Aceyalone: I think some emcees are dope because they have it. What is it? It is just it.  No way to explain it.  You can kind of say its flavor… It’s like ‘wow, I’ve never heard that.’… Sometimes when an emcee puts something in a way, you’re like ‘okay, I understand it when you put it like that.  You touched my heart. I feel you. I feel that.’

Undoubtedly, this idea of a connection between emcee and crowd members is difficult to articulate (and some argue that one should not attempt to describe it).  If we consider it to be a form of ‘tacit knowledge,’ perhaps it is not possible for an outsider to fully grasp such a concept.  Still, seeing that this idea is central to our discussion, we may benefit from drawing on previous academic work that has tackled similar ideas.  In Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim describes the idea of a “collective effervescence” where, in a gathering of people, there is a “joining of feelings and ideas” (Olaveson, 2001:98).  If we apply this concept to emceein’, we can think of connecting to a collective rhythm as a point at which an emcee’s expression of his or her feelings and ideas resonates with those of individuals in a crowd.  Whether or not members of the crowd identify with the emcee, it seems there is an intangible connection that can occur when they know that an emcee is ‘rhymin’ from the heart.’  Put another way, there may be a particular sensibility that grows out of a deep appreciation, or a love, for the art of emceein’.  Ab-Original (2005) offers his perspective on this idea:

Ab-Original: It’s about that feeling, and sometimes is sounds kinda corny to talk about that feeling, but that’s what it is, man. It’s about love… And as long as you got that and as long as you’re bein' true to yourself, there’s no way that somebody can tell you that you’re gettin' it wrong.

Though some in the academic world may feel the need to dismiss the intangible and unquantifiable concepts of collective consciousness, love, or having “it,” I argue that it is crucial to include them in any sociological discussion of an art form.  One instance of support for this comes from a review of Shusterman’s Pragmatic Aesthetics, in which Maleuvre (2001) points out that attention to “the rhythm of life” can provide insight to art where intellectualization cannot:

Shusterman’s Deweyan zest to connect art with the rhythm of life does a good job of debunking the abstract, over-intellectualized understanding of art fostered by the museum and the lecture hall; it is a caveat against embalming expressions whose reason for being was to shout with life (121).

Interview Excerpt: Head-Roc

Before listening, you may want to stop the background music by clicking the pause button on the music player above.

Interview Excerpt: Aceyalone

Before listening, you may want to stop the background music by clicking the pause button on the music player above.