Is there such thing as prog hip-hop?

Dalek was already mentioned (who recorded an album with Faust) but another one I thought of was Prefuse 73, who I kinda forgot about/haven't listened to in awhile.

ExittheLemming wrote: Hot Rat '69 wrote: I came to the question while thinking about how people often complain that prog rock is too cerebral and cold--that it has no soul. I wondered if there any good examples to refute that stereotype? Maybe this is a whole other thread... 'too cerebral and cold, that it has no soul' sounds like 40 or so years of passive racism to me. Good examples to refute that stereotype? try the 53,141 other members who joined the site because this music somehow moved them in a positive way.

"Oh, I hope not."
                      -Jose Jimenez

I'm going to repost this track, this time with explanation:

Hot Rat '69 wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: Hot Rat '69 wrote: I came to the question while thinking about how people often complain that prog rock is too cerebral and cold--that it has no soul. I wondered if there any good examples to refute that stereotype? Maybe this is a whole other thread... 'too cerebral and cold, that it has no soul' sounds like 40 or so years of passive racism to me. Good examples to refute that stereotype? try the 53,141 other members who joined the site because this music somehow moved them in a positive way. From another perspective, how exactly does hip-hop have soul? This question is about music, not race. I love Genesis and National Health as much as I love Bootsy Collins and Herbie. I'm looking for common ground between my two favorite "genres" of music. But people do ask "how can you sit through a 30 minute suite with harpsichord interludes and goofy sci-fi lyrics?" I say "have you ever heard of Funkadelic?"

Yes, I've heard Funkadelic, (and Parliament) both of which to my stubbornly pale ears sound like long winded cosmiche hippy jam w.a.n.k. (but that's probably my loss, and we do have recourse to the Grateful Dead for more of that) For the sake of clarity, the passive racism I'm referring to is that perpetuated for over 40 years by white male music journalists on both sides of the Atlantic who dogmatically insist that anything that is NOT predicated upon black American popular music styles (e.g. Motown, RnB, Soul, Funk, Gospel etc) is therefore irrelevant, anodyne, sterile, sexless and joyless white cultural art w.a.n.k. y'all? The solution of 'well stop reading it then' is not really an option as this unchallenged conditioning has been assimilated into the popular consciousness to such an extent that a (white) elephant in the room appears to be wearing some sort of 'cloaking device'
Your quest for examples of artists who straddle both genres is as laudable as it is naive: Hip Hop is from a black US urban culture. Prog ain't. Like I said before, sampling a texture does not equate to sampling the content


Edited by ExittheLemming - April 19 2015 at 04:12

Monadology wrote: Surprised at so many straight-up negative answers. If Dälek isn't prog, I don't know what is.

I agree (you don't know what Prog is) Dälek are certainly a very innovative and refreshing hip hop duo who manage to dispense with most of the stylistic cliches that make the genre so numbingly predictable. However, just because they assimilate influences that are perhaps unprecedented and maybe atypical for Hip Hop (industrial, noise, metal, glitch, ambient, Krautrock etc) doesn't make this avowedly Hip Hop band Prog now does it? There are loads of progressively minded Hip Hop artists who will take the genre to unprecedented places in the future that no-one ever thought plausible or possible but that wont be Prog either.

ExittheLemming wrote: Hot Rat '69 wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: Hot Rat '69 wrote: I came to the question while thinking about how people often complain that prog rock is too cerebral and cold--that it has no soul. I wondered if there any good examples to refute that stereotype? Maybe this is a whole other thread... 'too cerebral and cold, that it has no soul' sounds like 40 or so years of passive racism to me. Good examples to refute that stereotype? try the 53,141 other members who joined the site because this music somehow moved them in a positive way. From another perspective, how exactly does hip-hop have soul? This question is about music, not race. I love Genesis and National Health as much as I love Bootsy Collins and Herbie. I'm looking for common ground between my two favorite "genres" of music. But people do ask "how can you sit through a 30 minute suite with harpsichord interludes and goofy sci-fi lyrics?" I say "have you ever heard of Funkadelic?" Yes, I've heard Funkadelic, (and Parliament) both of which to my stubbornly pale ears sound like long winded cosmiche hippy jam w.a.n.k. (but that's probably my loss, and we do have recourse to the Grateful Dead for more of that) For the sake of clarity, the passive racism I'm referring to is that perpetuated for over 40 years by white male music journalists on both sides of the Atlantic who dogmatically insist that anything that is NOT predicated opon black American popular music styles (e.g. Motown, Soul, Funk, Gospel etc) is therefore irrelevant, anodyne, sterile, sexless and joyless white cultural art w.a.n.k. y'all? The solution of 'well stop reading it then' is not really an option as this unchallenged conditioning has been assimilated into the popular consciousness to such an extent that a (white) elephant in the room appears to be wearing some sort of 'cloaking device' Your quest for examples of artists who straddle both genres is as laudable as it is naive: Hip Hop is from a black US urban culture. Prog ain't. Like I said before, sampling a texture does not equate to sampling the content

Naive? So you're saying everybody who's posted on this thread offering examples are clueless?

twalsh wrote: omphaloskepsis wrote: Not a fan of Hip Hop...If I had share my limited priggish Hip Hop collection I like these two lyrically deep Hip Hoppish tunes.  Both are from the 90's.    ( How do you guy post videos?  I can only post links to videos!   MC 900 ft Jesus- The City Sleeps  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTSbnQzl1LE   ..and Consolidated by Consolidated   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FSOAFwkpqI   The later MC 900 ft. Jesus albums veered toward Hip Hop Jazz Fusion, but I can't help but like this funny tune ...Truth is Out of Style!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vgDpI8kU98     I would categorically say that i DO NOT like rap/hip-hop music.  That said, Truth Is Out of Style is pretty cool! I don't hear any prog, but I like it.  In regards to a few above comments, I don't think that samples of prog songs create progressive rap.  I'm not yet sure what that might look like.  Before assessing what progressive rap might look like, first one would have to know what non-progressive rap looks like.  And I'm simply not interested enough to do the footwork.   Any definition of progressive rap would have to come from within the rap/hip-hop community. Except Roll The Bones; that's totally prog.

Edited by Kati - April 17 2015 at 21:17

Someone posted this a while ago and I really enjoyed it so I'll repost it here (because it's proggy/hip-hoppy): 

12HC wrote: hey, i'm actually coming across this post to see if any one else had this idea...I'm working on a genre I call Math-Hop (mathrock time changes done with breakbeats), for my love of prog rock and hip hop check it out :) https://soundcloud.com/harmchaos/optk-1 sorry for this being my first post, i'd like to check out more of this forum and find new artists to check out through you guys!

DJ Premier f. Nas, Apathy & The Berklee Symphony Orchestra - Regeneration Remix (Produced by Apathy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgF5HvSR6Q8 xxxx