(idm) Hip-hop history/CD philosophy

From the Quaternions
Sent Tue, Apr 20th 1999, 23:26

I'm trying to work out a possible paper topic, and I have two in mind, but
I'm not sure how much documentation there is in magazines and books, so
I'll raise my questions here first...

1) In a discussion with a friend about how dinky old-skool hip-hop beats
were,
and how cheesy the rapping was, he said something to the effect of "the
lyrics evolved because the beats evolved." By that he meant that the
electro sound determined the cheesy party rapping, and that once electro
was appropriated by Freestyle, and hip-hop became denser, then rhyming
styles evolved too.  Now, I'm sure this "beat determinism" isn't entirely
accurate, but it has a certain amount of possibility--Chuck D wouldn't
have sounded the same without the Bomb Squad fucking shit up behind him,
etc.  Is there any literature out there on the development of hip-hop
production?  What about on the x0x instruments, and their relationship to
hip-hop?  My teacher said something about dub/reggae behaving the sme way,
that the toasters keyed off the production with their rhyming style. I'd
also postulate that the reason jungle MCs tend to suck is because the
beats are too fast for them to stress words right, among other
difficulties, so their rhymes sound enormously awkward.  Anyway, any
literature on instruments/drum patterns/production/rhyme styles in
hip-hip/dub/jungle, etc would be greatly appreciated.  Is there a good
magazine article on drum machines?

2)Have any artists besides Oval exploited the theoretical possibilities of
the CD medium? What can you really do with the mdeium anyway, besides
playing a disk straight, or making it skip?  Are there any other possible
manipulations?  Hidden tracks don't particularly interest me.
        Obviously, with records, plenty of people have fucked with the
medium itself--Marclay, turntablists, etc. Cd's are obviously harder to
manipualte, but that doesn't mean people haven't done it.  Are there any
writing which theorize about the consequences of didgital playback and the
CD medium? Has Lesser done much with skipping CDs? I've heard the name
Gilles Deleuze dropped now and then--what relation does he play to all of
this?

Any leads would be much appreciated, whether they're artists to listen to,
things to read, or people to contact.  I'm trying to figure out whether
either of these are feasible topics.

Later
Sam