I advocate for the study of hip-hop because it shows that harmony is not the only aspect of music worth studying. However, hip-hop is also underappreciated as a source of harmonic ideas in and of itself. The Roots’ “Don’t See Us” is a fascinating example of groove harmony.
The live version has an amazing acapella “turntablism” solo by Scratch:
Here’s my transcription of the hook from the studio version:
The groove is a three-bar loop of Bbm6, Bdim7, and Cdim7, all over a B-flat pedal in the bass. This loop cycles in and out of phase with the four-bar hypermeter you expect in a rap song. The form is strange too; most of the sections are eight or twelve bars long, but there are a couple of thirteen-bar verses too. “The Lesson Part III (It’s Over Now)” uses a similar hypermetrical dissonance to keep you feeling off-balance, but it’s more extreme in “Don’t See Us.”
The three chords in the loop are weird and disorienting too. From casual listening, I thought the whole song was diminished chords. It isn’t, but Bbm6 does contain a G diminished triad, and you can think of it as being an inversion of Gø7.
The Cdim7 kind of makes sense. You can think of it as a rootless voicing of F7(b9), the V7 chord in B-flat harmonic minor.
So, technically I guess the Cdim7 to Bbm6 is a V-I cadence. It doesn’t feel like much of a resolution, though. Also, the Bdim7 chord in the middle makes no particular sense at all, except, I guess, as a chromatic approach to Cdim7. Regardless, the three chords feel less like a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, and more like three colors arranged in a pattern. They are similar enough to match each other, but different enough to be distinct. It almost doesn’t matter what specific chords they are.
Chords in a groove don’t actually have to “function” because they’re really just signposting locations in the meter. But the chords in this tune are challenging your sense of the meter as much as they are guiding you through it. The Roots know you can sense groups of four just fine, so it’s okay if the chords can push and pull against the form. I’d love to hear more conflict between harmonic rhythm and hypermeter.
Thanks Ethan, it hasn’t sunk in, but you are helping to change that, to bring out that harmony is not the only aspect of music worth studying
Listening to The Roots, “Don’t See Us” reveals so much to work on
Jazz lost its appeal as the popular music with the mass audience for music with most sway in the culture
Hip-hop has been around for many decades, has been periodically “re-invented” and has remained a premier, if not the premier genre for popular music in mass culture and not that popularity is the only metric
Hip-hop is massively energised music, it emanates from studios with equipment that could not have been purchased when Leadbelly was recorded
Hip-hop works with textures, and micro-second timing and a beat so far back that its forward or vice-versa
and rhythms and inflections of the voice; and recent hip-hop is fully aware of its resources and roots it would seem
Not that hip-hop is validated by comparison with other genres; but consider that the structure of a groove over a loop or loops and with vocal performances, verses and such, can easily be more intricate than say sonata form
Whatever can be made of it, I wish you the best to make the most of it through the new Course you are teaching this year The NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum
N