DID PIGMEAT MARKHAM , CAB CALLOWAY & THE LAST POETS INFLUENCE RAP MUSIC & HIP HOP CULTURE? - JAYQUAN

for this particular segment i want to talk about artists like cab calloway especially pig meat markham even the nicholas brothers the mills brothers uh the jubilees um and recent conversations that have been coming into the larger conversation as far as their influence impact on hip-hop rap music specifically in the larger hip-hop culture so first i like to say there is an influence certainly but we've started to hear things like well the first rap record was picked me markham and you know boy cam calloway was the first round you know the rap artist or you know we're hearing these different things and one thing that i like to provide when i speak is context to these conversations now you could say that pygmy markham was the first rap record but you have to put context to here comes the judge it was definitely speaking in syncopation over b it's just about ready to do that thing i don't want no tears i don't want no lies but all i don't want no alibis this judge is hip and that ain't all he'll give you time if you're big or small fall in line or this court is neat peace brother here comes [Music] but you have to look first at that particular segment and what rap music is okay rapping before it was a musical genre in urban neighborhoods in black neighborhoods rapping was just talking you know you'd be rapping to a female um you had h rap brown the activists spoken wrong uh you had muhammad ali some people eventually became ray goodman and brown they had a song called baby let's rap now um isaac hayes had a series of songs called ike's rap because he talked through the songs so rapping didn't have to be speaking in rhyme but it was generally speaking and many times it was speaking and wrong so this goes back to the blaxploitation era of black movies it goes back to jailhouse culture it goes back to playing the dozens it goes back to the signifying monkey all these things are very very much within urban uh subculture and they developed and changed and morphed into different things over the years so we have to keep that in mind so you can look at video of the berry brothers or the nicholas brothers the mills brothers and they're doing moves that look a lot like what modern day breakdancing would be and you had people speaking in rom long before uh sugar hill records and joy records or any of what we call the modern day rappers before kingdom or any of that it may be a good idea to go back and look at my 20 or so of the first rap recordings um and these are modern day rap recordings and you'll get a little more context so what we have here is again uh part of a subculture that has morphed into something else so i break down this what i call jive talking into three categories now that doesn't mean it's just three it could be several more but i break them down into three categories of what i consider early wrapping so you had the street job talk which was very much very braggadocious this is the you had like frankie crocker you know legendary uh dj rest in peace radio dj wbls legendary um in music in the world of uh soul music urban music he spoke in rhyme and it was almost like a pimp type element to it and definitely braggadocios always talking about what what what they could do that's what these these particular guys would speak about rudy ray moore muhammad ali even the black exploitation era of movies the rhymes you would hear were always about i can do this i can do that you know i can sell ice to an eskimo things that are pretty much ridiculous but a metaphor for how cool i am you know if you go all the way back to temptations who weren't rhyming on this particular song but when they made i can't get next to you you know they were doing they were saying these things that were like these super things i could you know i could do this i could do that you know i could you know i could do this with a single grain of sand but i can't get next to you so i'm not saying that that influence rap but it's the same thing these these early brag bragging young men were talking about their sexual prowess how cool they were and in general it was a thing where you know you're talking about uh a group of people a race of people really who have been through a traumatic experience and not even 100 years after that traumatic experience as a form of saying hey this is who we are i'm not who i was defined as through you know through the system of american oppression this is who i am we took it all the way in the other direction so i'm not what i was defined as here i'm this then you'll be cleaned and avoided why not i'm as free as the breeze and i do as i please besides don't take nothing but a little money there you go baby fun loving you're a scholar in the gym like it says sweet meat well now i don't mean to be dipping into y'all's business but i've been listening to you dudes talk about women's and i want to run down a little something to you now all you need to get a woman is a strong rap hey what i say every woman in the streets wants a piece of me they call me sweet uh [Applause] [Music] i am known from the gold coast to the rocking shores of maine phone loving is my name and love is my game i'm the bed tucker the milk shaker the record breaker and the population maker the humdinger the gunslinger and the baby bringer i am fun loving fun loving the hard hitter and the polly loose again the sludge the women's pet the men's fret and the [ __ ] is pinned up in the trickster i said fun loving the cherry picker the city slicker and the titty wicker i ain't giving up nothing but bubble gum and hard time and i'm fresh out of bubble gum i'm the man who walked the water and tied the whales telling or not i taught the fish how to swim crossed the burning sand and shook the devil's i rolled around the world on a snail count a sack that said [ __ ] alma i want 49 miles above wine and i use a cobra snake for a necktie yes i gave a highway patrolman a speeding ticket and sold a blind man a fleshlight i am the only man in the world that knows why white milk made yellow i even know where the lights go when you cut the switch off now i might not be the baddest man in the world but i'm in the top two and my father is getting old [Applause] father is getting up ladies and gentlemen we are seven acknowledged wonders of the world you are about to be entertained by the eighth the young man who has become a legend in his own time soul finger agent double oh so it's the frankie crocker show do it frankie do it to it suck it to me mama say baby this is an album that's bound to put more dips in your hips more cut in your strut and more glide in your stride if you don't dig it you know you've got a hole in your soul don't eat chicken on sunday push girl other cats be laughing and choking frankie crocker steady taking care of business cooking and smoking for there is no other like this old brother tall tan young and fly anytime you want me baby i'm your guy oh y'all getting single and i love to mingle can i mingle with you baby closer than white sunrise closer than cold zone ice closer than the colors on the dome closer than i have is on the country home gonna get next to you mama so that's one section was the the actual braggadocious street job talk but then you had guys who took that speaking and they made it political you had the last ports you had to watch prophets you had gil scott heron you had gary berger gary bird again was a radio disc jockey the disc jockeys were early with this uh with this rhyming speak too and we'll speak to that but the political guys the guys who talked about what was happening on the front lines in the black community those guys were they were rhyming as well or what you were called rapping and they didn't necessarily refer to it as rap you never heard the last poet say much about i'm rapping if they ever said it on a song but that's what they were doing rapping in the black community in the urban community was just talking not necessarily over a beat at all and not necessarily rhyme you're just talking it's time for us to face the truth and level with each other it's time for us to face the fact that every brother ain't a brother there are some who say to the world at large i'm no color i'm just a man and there are some who say to the folks of town that black power is not their plan but through it all we kid ourselves and fool one another by failing to see the simple fact that every brother ate a brother i mean a brother wants his people to have the things they need to survive and a brother doesn't destroy his brother he fights to keep him alive a brother doesn't live off other brothers he makes it you will not be able to stay home brother you will not be able to plug in turn on and cop out you will not be able to lose yourself on stag and skip out for beer during commercials because the revolution will not be televised the revolution will not be televised the revolution will not be brought to you by xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions the revolution will not show you pictures of nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by john mitchell general abrams and spyro agnew to eat hogmas confiscated from a harlem sanctuary the revolution will not be televised the revolution will not be brought to you by the schaefer award theater and will not star natalie woods as steve mcqueen or bullwinkle and julia you have nothing to say just a hearing on me just silently for playing your roles while others decide whether you've ever died [Music] [Music] so that was the second category and the last category in the three that i have are dj's uh these are mainly radio personalities like jocko henderson rest in peace um hank spann rest in peace gary bird gary bird he crossed a couple of them you know he was he was in the political category but he's also in the dj category and these guys and of course frankie crocker you know he again he crossed the jive talking category and he comes over all as well into the category of the dj's now these guys again they their cadence was very important and popular i know a lot of people contacted me you know they got a little kick out of my um imitation of some of the early radio djs and their cadence you know it's very much the cadence that big bang hank came with um grandmaster kaz had a lot of that cadence um even wonder mike from the sugar hill gang they had that uh that radio disc jockey cadence like i said uh in the place to be would be like that's their cadence 256 at wwrl in new york this is hank spann definitely glad to have you there for my saturday affair thank you very much new york in new york to serve the server dealing the feeling inside your mind on a beautiful saturday afternoon 69 70 degrees three o'clock in the big apple grandest night the pips getting down five on the survey daddy can swear oh i declare wwr the server deal in the field and at 251 inside your mind with skull snaps fantastically funky music from skull taps lp the jam's calling is the new day 254 in new york on a saturday with a service sweet swinging oh this is jock in the background with the record machine saying how do you do later on when you got into modern day rap you had people like dj hollywood and others who syncopated it and made it more on the beat but in that same time frame of these things happening you have pig meet marcum's record here come the judge which he was speaking syncopated very much so but let me discuss why these things are not directly related to hip-hop some of them are not related to it at all they did influence but it's not hip-hop when you have somebody that's doing separate parts of something that makes up a whole that doesn't mean that they're doing that whole so what i mean is if our loose definition of hip hop is emceeing djing graffiti and b-boying and somebody was doing uh a version of these one of these elements one or more of these elements before we named it hip-hop and proclaimed that these are the parts that doesn't make it hip-hop because hip-hop didn't exist yet until you know until my generation came along and we we said hey these things make up this particular subculture so the fact that somebody was doing something that was very close to it or even influenced it does not make it that now i'm not trying to split hairs here but i'm trying to give some clarity to a record like here come the judge pigment markham was not an emcee and he did not claim the via mc he was a guy that was talking rhythmically over a record mc's are masters of ceremony and a master of ceremonies he's the host he's he's the host of the party now you remember in my previous lessons i said that the original mc was the dj because the hip hop dj used to try to talk over the records that he spun and many hip hop djs especially a dj like flash he was so busy manipulating the records and making an art form out of it that it wasn't feasible for him to speak but most importantly he didn't like his speaking voice so he employed mcs that just emceed you had dj's that like i said most djs talked in some kind of way but people like flash and herc and others early bambada they all employed mc's to speak and in the beginning the mc spoke mostly about their dj and how good the dj was go back to any old school recording uh go back to the names of these groups grandmaster flash and the furious five grand wizard theodore and the fantastic five the dj's name was always first and the mc talked about the greatness of the dj so cab calloway even though he's very much in the early days of call and response i'm sure somebody in hip hop saw something that said hey you know whether they saw it directly from callaway or cab callaway inspired somebody who inspired rap so when that call and response most definitely call the response comes from the church uh but chad callaway never had a dj callaway never rhymed over break beats he never rounded syncopation he never claimed to be mc and these paternity of people who call themselves emcees they performed at certain places no matter what city you were in um there was a very much fraternal thing to it that these guys that came 20 30 years before that and even more had nothing to do with so pigmy markham was not speaking about his dj because he didn't have a dj he was not speaking over break beats you know this culture started with parties outdoor parties in the beginning and the mc and dj speaking braggadociously most of the time getting the party people motivated speaking over break beats and pig meat markham was not doing that the last poets weren't doing that they definitely inspired uh some of us who went on to do that even i called some of the the segways and rhymes i called them community rhymes because there were certain rhymes everybody said you listened to some of those early rap recordings or the early tapes of live performances and everybody said dip dip dive so socialized everybody said hotel motel holiday inn there were rhymes that everybody bought as a segway everybody said yes yes y'all to the beat y'all you don't stop keep on something that is credited to my my brother uh creole uh you know these things we know we we may never know who did it first you know but there's a true statement there's nothing new under the sun and as it goes with what we're seeing here there's nothing new under the sun but at the same time you know i'm motivated to do this off of the fact that i see this being a bigger conversation because of the technology we have available now to share things we didn't have even 25 years ago 20 years ago the technology in place to see a video like the one by the jubilee where this is a gospel group sometime in the 30s and they're speaking almost syncopated um you know and they're doing these little gospel rhymes and the cadence of of one of their rhymes is almost like rappers delight very very much like it [Music] yes just come on brothers if you want to hear a story about that preacher and the bear gather around boys that don't want you to miss none of this share story cause it goes like this a preacher he went out to hunt it was on one sunday morning though he was one christian young man but he took his gun along well the first thing he shot was a bunch of fine wheels and he showed him a nice fat hair then through the woods on his way back home he met a great big grizzly bear then the raven fell down upon his knees he sent up a great long prayer wise he cast one eye to the heaven on high but kept the other eye on the influence but again these guys are not claiming to be emcees they are not part of this fraternity of people who call themselves mc's djs and the like did they influence it definitely did they directly influence it probably not they came too far i doubt very seriously that wonder mike from the sugar hill gang who set off rappers delight i doubt very seriously he was going into his parents records and heard the jubilee the the jubilees and said oh i'm gonna i'm gonna do what this guy's doing these records weren't popular uh records by the jubilees and people like that cab calloway was immensely popular so it was pink meat markham and people like that but these influences are indirect they're passed down through generations they're seen in the black exploitation movies you can watch some of these black exploitation movies you hear the job talk and this job talk some of it is the same job talk that we would adapt not even a decade later and put into the music so there is an influence there but for the sake of conversation and keeping it clear i don't call pig meat markham the first rap record because if you're gonna if the only criteria is that he's speaking you could go back 30 years before him and the jubilees were speaking and others were speaking and they were speaking almost syncopated but that is not what modern day rap music is modern day rap music added a lot to that a lot to it and made it his own fraternal thing and added other elements the dj and later on the b-boy and the graffiti artist there are many differences so in this comparing contrast you know in closing many many similarities but again because you're doing parts of a whole does not mean that you're participating in the hole because again the whole did not exist until you know almost uh 40 years after the 1930s you know and did people borrow yes they did most likely indirectly but that does not make cab calloway hankspan and these guys hip-hop and they never claimed to be but very much very much the forefathers the forerunners and influencers definitely no doubt about it

Channel: The Foundation

Views: 3,774

Rating: 4.9725084 out of 5

Keywords: jayquan, gil scott heron, pigmeat markham, rap music, fatback band, king tim III, grandmaster flash, sugar hill gang, jubilaires, d.j. hollywood, the last poets, mills brothers, nicholas brothers, berry brothers, early rap, isaac hayes, ll cool j, run dmc, hank spann, gary byrd, frankie crocker, jocko, jocko henderson, super wolf, cab calloway

Id: 9B8kYuRkcdI

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021