Influence and Progression

Music is inspired, always. Genres of music inspire new artists to create sounds of their own, and the outcome can often turn out completely different to the sound the artist was inspired by. This is important to bear in mind when considering the British genre trip hop in relation to its American predecessor hip hop.

Modern American hip hop is now commonly viewed in a negative light; the common view is that it has transformed into something mainstream, and even manufactured. The videos that accompany many modern hip hop songs often share very similar themes; hypermasculine males and overtly sexualised females, and the lyrics are often on the same level. Hip hop as it was in the 70’s is dying out, but the original artists are still well respected. Especially so to many trip hop artists whose music was directly inspired by the old, American sound.

Most critics say trip hop was formed when British DJ’s decided to put their own cultural twist on the American genre hip hop. Trip hop artists have been active since the 90’s, examples including Massive Attack, Tricky, UNKLE and Postishead. James Lavelle of UNKLE famously said ‘British hip hop lacks the lyrical skills of US counterparts, but British kids have got the musical side.’ What hip hop artists developed musically, trip hop artists perfected as a sort of natural progression of music, and perhaps Lavelle’s opinion on lyrical skill is fairly judged seeing as artists like Tricky and Portishead layer their songs with dark, dramatic tension instead of producing their music made up heavily of lyrics.

Tricky in particular has brought the genre well beyond the original American sound. The English musician, hailing from Bristol, takes on elements of Jamaican music, as well as heavy, drawn out African sounding drum beats, which are characteristic of his music. Even his vocals, which fans describe as ‘asthmatic whispering’ due to his half-sung, half-rapped quiet style, have been compared to the German Sprechgesang vocal sound, which means ‘spoken-song’.

And Tricky was not the only trip hop artist in Bristol; the city was in fact the hotspot for the new sound, partly due to the large amount of black youth in the city’s population. Tricky himself is a black man, and he has referenced his identity in his work, mainly his album ‘Maxinquaye’, exploring what it is to be a black man on the music scene today. He claims in the documentary ‘Naked & Famous’ that media photographers urge him to appear angry in photos, as that is the way black musicians are marketed.

In a lot of ways, trip hop is the natural progression of hip hop. Trip hop takes on many elements of its predecessor and remains expressional, emotional and relevant. Hip hop has become highly manufactured, at least in America, so trip hop artists today are, to an extent, carrying on what hip hop artists started, albeit with a distinctly British twist.

Hear Tricky’s music here:

Joe Grainger