Hip Hop and its Middle Eastern Influences

         Adam Wielebinski

        Modern Middle East 

        Section 1

        December 15th 2016

         Winter of 2015 is when I started getting into hip hop as a genre of music. But also, it was when I truly started getting into music as a whole. Before that, I subconsciously limited myself to rock, alternative rock, and punk. I didn’t passionately like any of these genres, and liked very few artists in each and only liked certain songs. Back in my sophomore year and the first half of my junior year of high school, I didn’t particularly care for music at all. I didn’t have a favorite artist or a favorite song or anything like that. In my sophomore chemistry class, there was an instance where a girl in my class asked me what kind of music I like, and I bleakly replied, “I don’t like music”. Friends and classmates would sometimes play me a song to listen to, always classic rock or punk, and I wouldn’t care for it at all.

          There was only one rapper whose music I enjoyed at the time, well he was really the only rapper I knew so by default he was my favorite. The extremely popular Eminem. He was the only rapper that I dared to listen to. My high school was almost 90% white, and many of the students made jokes about rap and made it out to seem that if you listened to it you were an idiot. Eminem was the only one who could avoid this stereotype, so I decided to listen to him. I liked his music a lot more than the classic rock my peers frequently attempted to push onto me. But eventually, I finished my journey into Eminem’s discography and wanted more. I didn’t really know where to go from there. I decided that I would listen to the best hip hop album of all time and would see if I liked it, and if I did I would continue to listen to hip hop. My logic was that if I didn’t like the best ever, then I wouldn’t like anything else. I typed into the Google search bar “Best rap albums of all time”. I clicked on the first link that came up and with reckless abandon went straight to the number one spot. In this spot was Nas - Illmatic.

I didn’t have any expectations before listening to this album, the only thing I knew was that Nas would be rhyming. I typed “Nas Illmatic” in the youtube search bar and clicked the first video. I listened through the intro, and was anticipating the first actual song. The beat comes in for N.Y State of Mind and I’m instantly intrigued. Nas has a little intro before he starts rapping and his last line is “I don’t know how to start this shit”. He didn’t know how to start the song, but he still managed to make the best song I had ever heard in my life up to that point. Arguably the best hip hop song of all time as well. The song is four and a half straight minutes of extremely intricate lyrics. I barely caught most of his wordplay, but whatever I somehow grabbed excited me. He paints a stirringly vivid picture of life in the Queensridge project he grew up in. N.Y State of Mind finally ends and I think to myself that there’s no way the rest of the project can come even close to it. But then Life’s a Bitch comes on. I think the same thing after every song on the album. After the album finally finishes, I cannot pick a favorite song since the whole album was insanely good to me. This is when I first became hooked on hip-hop.

Since then, I’ve dived deep into the genre and have listened to many different artists and gone to several concerts. My current favorites are Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, Schoolboy Q, and Danny Brown. I’ve also started producing my own music as well (nothing good yet, but I’ll get there).  I had always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument, but I was discouraged since even if I learned how to play it, I wouldn’t like most of what I could play. Producing solves this problem for me, and I can finally tap into a creative side I never utilized before. Now I’ve also started to take an interest in international hip hop.

Currently, Japanese hip-hop is on the come up. Artists from Japan and some other Asian countries are gaining followings and relevance. You can frequently see international influence on American hip hop as well. There has been a wave of Jamaican inspired hip hop coming from Toronto, most notably from Drake, that has become extremely popular. Tropical hip-hop sounds are in right now, major examples include Hotline Bling, Pick Up the Phone, and Deja Vu. If one can sense what is going to be popular next, then there is major success waiting for them. Kanye and Drake are the two best examples of this success right now.

Since I’ve started becoming interested in hip hop from other countries and also taking a Modern Middle East class, I’ve started investigating how the genre is doing in this region of the world. Unfortunately, I found that hip hop is not doing well in the region and it doesn’t have much of a following. I started with an interview of a floormate of mine, Danny, who happens to have Middle Eastern and Spanish heritage and also produces hip hop music. I also have a video interview of Khaled M, a prominent Middle Eastern artists from several years ago.

https://soundcloud.com/user-108804711/middle-eastern-hip-hop-interview-with-danny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XV5-dPjhtY