Living Under The Influence

The Influential 

Everyone is influenced by someone and each one is influenced by something. There is no better way that the power of influence gets blatantly expressed than in the Art-form called Hip-Hop. They may call it everything from Sampling, Interpolation, Cross-pollination or plain old Jacking. Even as I write this, I am listening to one of Hip-Hop’s underground most celebrated new groups, Pacific Division or Pac Div to the steadily growing young fans. It’s the Blend Tape; and this being one of their pre-album tapes, there’s typically plenty of their influences ‘sampled’ for good measure. Some of the most creative tunes are the resuscitated Reflection Eternal song Definition and the ATCQ classic Bonita Apple-bum, now tentatively called ‘Put Me On’. 

Of course this is not a new thing in Hip Hop, in fact there Art-form thrives on bringing back to life all types of beats, melodies and even concepts that ordinary folks wouldn’t imagine having anything to do with Hip-Hop. It is a tradition that goes back to the foundations of Hip Hop, from the pre-Hip Hop days of Jamaican Sound Systems where DJ’s/Selectors and Singer/Toasters would simply play breaks and Versions from famous songs and sing whatever came to mind just to move the crowd.

But then moving the crowd meant something quite different to what it means today. What it meant then denoted both having a sense of fun while still being conscious of the pro’s and cons of your immediate environment. Hip Hop has evolved in many ways from the Kurtis Blow and Sugarhill Gangs anthemicparty movers into a universal multi-billion dollar industry replete with its posers, imposters and yet the true Influencers still manage to maintain the respect they deserve. 

A clear example was during this year’s Grammy Awards, when MC’s Lupe Fiasco and Common tore through the stage alongside their influencers Sugar-Hill Gang and they effectively brought the whole auditorium to their feet. It was both entertaining and educational, especially for those who think that Hip Hop begins and ends at Jay-Z and Kanye West’s proverbial throne.

Back to the Pac Div phenomenon,I do dig the youthful freshness of these guys and its fun too, which has become the crucial missing element in the music. 

They clearly are not obsessed with materialism or over zealous about women in that misogynistic manner in which the Art-form has been mistakenly imbued.  But then again that might still change as they gain more fame and they pockets get filled with ‘wads’ as one of them puts it in the song ‘Syc&Mibbs’, clearly a braggadocios ode to all things fresh, including styles.

But then again, the question is will they be able to influence the next generation after them? I can bet a trillion Zim-dollars that they most probably won’t. But this has very little to do with their raw talent, but much more to do with the nature of the Networked society in which we live. One has really got to either Shock and Awe us in order to make a lasting impression, yet again to use the phrase a lasting impression may not suffice since it is also clear that no much really lasts these days. True influence and longevity is something that can depend on a multitude of factors, ranging from a rigorous work-ethic, being at the right place at the right time. But all these factors are not only immeasurable, they are unpredictable. Hip Hop itself is the very epitome of unpredictability. Who knew that an art-form born out of the slums where Black people were meant to languish and not amount to much more than what was pre-planned for them, would elevate itself into the boardrooms of Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations firms all over the world?

Today, one is able to get all types of Hip Hop, from the Ebonics and mystical hard-core sounds of the Wu Tang Clan, Afu Ra, Killah Priest, Poor Righteous Teachers and T-Love, to the super charged and materialist posturing of Cash Money/Young Money and Bad Boy Entertainment and it is a global phenomenon with distinctive styles in every language and form.

But Hip Hop is also facing the same challenges that confront art in the networked world. Products are becoming much more difficult to differentiate, to diffuse and to sell. Yes, one can simply post their best work on Myspace, Reverb-nation, Google, and into millions of internet radio stations and portals, yet this cannot guarantee the ultimate success of their product, In fact it can be the most original work of art but if a significant number of users does not pick it up and repeatedly play it and pass it on, it becomes just another dot in the vast abyss of pseudo-significant data in cyberspace.

This brings us to the power of ideas. The Malcolm Gladwell books The Tipping Point, Click and most recently The Outliers have become worldwide best-sellers. Interestingly when I finally read these publications and listened to the audio-tapes, I did not find anything truly remarkable about the ideas postulated there, the other was surely a well read and consummate researcher and was able to scientifically come to the conclusions that there are phenomena that can be predictable and also unpredictable which influence the decisions of a consumerist society.

In Outliers he also shows how certain sociological factors can result in specifically measureable outcomes so that certain people are able to achieve much more than others. Without diminishing Gladwells hypotheses I must say that ultimately, nothing influences people more than what has been called the gut-feeling or the intuition and that is what was also meant by the Rastafarian Jamaicans when they said ‘Who Feels It Knows It.’

Menzi Maseko (c)