For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Brandon Bennett that I recorded on September 22, 2020 in Washington Square Park. The remix is made from the twenty most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of several hours of conversation.
Brandon is the youngest of my three research participants, and the closest in age and aesthetic preferences to students. He is also the only one who is a beatmaker and producer–I use his own tracks extensively in this remix. You can hear Brandon’s freestyling in a study I did of a cypher, and also hear him doing a fill-in-the-ryhme game of his own devising in an afterschool program that he and I worked in together.
Due to Covid, I’m doing all of my dissertation interviews outdoors, which means having to put up with NYC’s extreme noise pollution. Washington Square Park is the noisiest environment I’ve interviewed in. I de-noised the recording as best I could.
The interview begins with my asking Brandon, “What is hip-hop?” He identifies it first and foremost as a vehicle for young people’s self-expression and self-identification, especially young people of color in urban environments. This is a theme he will keep coming back to throughout the interview. For the music in this section, I use his track “Zoomin’” (2019).
Next, I ask Brandon to describe his own music learning experiences, formal and otherwise. He talks about learning some piano from his mother, and the basics of FL Studio from his father. Otherwise, he talks about learning by self-teaching, by slow and diligent trial and error. I’m particularly impressed by the fact that he spent his first few years producing using the trial version of FL Studio, which allows you to export audio, but not to save sessions. He worked around this limitation by exporting each idea as an audio file and then importing it into the next new session, using it more as a multitrack tape recorder than a DAW. This is an example of what Rayvon Fouché calls “black vernacular technological creativity,” a core theme in the story of hip-hop. For this section, I use Brandon’s track “Demons” (2019).
Next, I ask Brandon how he learned to rap. First, he echoes a theme of Toni Blackman’s: that to be a good emcee, you have to develop your confidence. Brandon began writing poetry before he moved to rapping, and he contrasts the two. In poetry, you just have to choose the words, but in rap you also have to attend to the sound and energy of your delivery. Brandon then returns to the theme of emotional expression, specifically the challenge of doing it in a culture of black masculinity where overt emotionality is discouraged. He credits a librarian who encouraged him to get his feelings out onto the page. I use his track “Patience” (2019) here.
Next, I ask Brandon about the culture of freestyling in urban black communities. Until quite recently, I had no idea how much hip-hop musicality is a part of daily life for kids in a place like Harlem or the Bronx. When I was working with Brandon at New Design Middle School’s afterschool program, every student and staff member was willing and able to freestyle except me. A sixth grader challenged me on this: “Mr Ethan, I want to hear you rap.” I did not grow up in this kind of participatory culture, and I wish that I had. Brandon talks about drumming on cafeteria tables and always being ready to battle as an essential part of the community feeling of a school or a neighborhood. For this section, I use his track “Finesse” (2019).
When I ask Brandon what he thinks of current mainstream commercial rap, he compares it to the “golden age” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, pointing out that the lyrics were raw and gritty back then too. Since he specifically references Biggie, I use “Juicy” (1994). Next, Brandon brings up the recent emergence of female rappers as a higher-profile presence, starting with Nikki Minaj, and then artists like Princess Nokia, Rico Nasty, Rapsody, and Tierra Whack. Here I use Rapsody’s “Power” (feat. Kendrick Lamar & Lance Skiiiwalker) (2017).
I ask Brandon to identify some of his favorite producers. He namechecks Kenny Beats more than once, so I use Kenny’s instrumental for Denzel Curry’s “DIET” (2020). I continue this track under our discussion of the promise and dangers of academicizing hip-hop. Brandon says you can formalize the technical basics, but not the actual creative process, that the students will have to steer their own adventures. Here I use Brandon’s “Understand Me” (2019).
Brandon believes that the best thing schools can do for hip-hop creativity is to provide studio space. He sees music technology as the most important aspect of hip-hop history, the samplers and drum machines that made the entire aesthetic possible. As an example, he cites the backwards-masked drum machine beat in “Paul Revere” by the Beastie Boys (1986), so of course I have to put that in. Brandon usually has a laid-back affect, both in ordinary conversation and as an emcee, and it’s notable that his voice rises in pitch and intensity in this section due to his strong feelings on this subject.
Brandon believes that hip-hop education can’t succeed without cultural relevance. Teachers have to start where students live in order to build trust and credibility. His voice rises again as he describes how a stressed-out and tired high school student will not have the patience for an out-of-context history lecture. I use Brandon’s “Gassed Up” (2019) here.
Finally, I ask whether white people should be studying hip-hop. Brandon believes that it’s important that they do, because they need to understand the music’s origins in struggle and systemic oppression. He doesn’t want white people to see the culture as a “fashionable hat” that you put on and take off at will, but rather as an expression of real people facing tremendous adversity. He concludes by saying that hip-hop creativity could benefit anyone as a personal expressive journey, that it’s a dark and “cobbled” path rather than a will-lit, smoothly paved road. I use “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” by Kendrick Lamar (2012) here for its sober and reflective mood.