LibGuides: On the Road: 4-8/9-12 Hip-Hop Technology: From Turntables to Computers

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Hip-Hop Technology: From Turntables to Computers

Suggested Grade Level: 4-8/9-12

This research guide serves as a resource for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's Education Department course, Hip-Hop Technology: From Turntables to Computers. For additional information on the course and for more teacher resources, see http://rockhall.com/education/distance-learning/courses/hip-tech/

Since its inception in the early 1970s, hip-hop culture has become one of the most important forms of expression for young people on the planet. This class allows students to experience the ways that technology is incorporated into hip-hop music and culture. Students will explore the early innovations of hip-hop deejays and the development of classic turntable techniques like “playing the break,” as heard in “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. The class includes a live demonstration in which students help to create a new musical composition using the latest computer music software. Don’t miss this chance to learn about the creation of hip-hop music and culture and gain insight into the world of music technology and production.

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Our catalog has a subject category for "Inductee." If you enter this term in the search box and choose "Subject" in the dropdown box, you will retrieve information on our resources that are related to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees.

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Databases

These research databases can be accessed within the Library and Archives.

African American Music Reference
African American Music Reference brings together 50,000 pages of text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. The database is constantly expanding to include comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.
RoJaRo
The world's largest free music magazine index covering rock - jazz - roots music - blues - country - rap - soul - folk-latin - gospel - metal - psychedelic - reggae - punk - world music - salsa - afropop - pop - film music-progressive - dance - techno - electronica - avant garde - ska - r&b - exotica - house - etc. Also including music magazine, fanzine & record label information.

For Your Students

Beastie Boys by Dennis Abrams; Chuck D (Foreword by)
Call Number: ML421.B437 A67 2007
An introduction to the Beastie Boys, whose blend of hip-hop beats with a rock edge and punk attitude helped create a fresh sound and bring hip-hop to a wider audience

Online Resources

Rock Hall Video

Rapper LL Cool J talks backstage at the 2012 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, reflecting on the Beastie Boys and how hip hop artists love rock and roll -- from AC/DC to Billy Squier.

Chuck D. of Public Enemy reflects on the Beastie Boys induction into the Hall of Fame and the connections between rock and hip hop.

?uestlove of the Roots discusses his connection with 2012 Hall of Fame inductees the Beastie Boys.

2009 inductee Rev Run of Run-DMC discusses what it was like to be inducted into the Hall of Fame and his impressions of 2013 inductees Public Enemy.

Objectives

These resources, pulled from class discussion and selected from the Library and Archives' collections, will help you to:

Describe how social events influenced the development of hip-hop culture
Identify technological innovations in hip-hop and their contributions to the development of hip-hop music.
Give examples of ways that computers enable musicians to play, create, and store music.

Books

The Anthology of Rap by Adam Bradley (Editor); Andrew DuBois (Editor); Chuck D (Afterword by); Henry Louis Gates
Call Number: ML3531 .A57 2010
This pioneering anthology brings together more than three hundred lyrics written over thirty years, from the 'old school' to the 'golden age' to the present day. Rather than aim for encyclopaedic coverage, Bradley and DuBois render through examples the richness and diversity of rap's poetic tradition. They feature both classic lyrics that helped define the genre, including Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message" and Eric B. & Rakim's "Microphone Fiend", as well as lesser-known gems like Blackalicious' "Alphabet Aerobics" and Jean Grae's "Hater's Anthem"
Born in the Bronx by Johan Kugelberg
Call Number: ML3531 .B66 2007
"Writer and curator Johan Kugelberg has pulled together the scattered remains of a movement that never had its eye on posterity. The book includes a foreword by legendary DJ and Bronx activist Afrika Bambaataa, a hip hop timeline by best-selling author Jeff Chang, the improvisational flyer artwork of Buddy Esquire, Polaroid photographs buried for decades in basements across the Bronx, and personal contributions from influential figures such as Grandmaster Cas, LA Sunshine, JDL, Mare 139, and Grandwizzard Theodore.
Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang; D. J. Kool Herc
Call Number: ML3531 .C536 2005
Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop has been a generation-defining global movement. In a post-civil rights era rapidly transformed by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop gave voiceless youths a chance to address these seismic changes, and became a job-making engine and the Esperanto of youth rebellion. Hip-hop crystallized a multiracial generation's worldview, and forever transformed politics and culture. But the epic story of how that happened has never been fully told . . . until now.
Hip Hop Movement: from R&B and the civil rights movement to rap and the hip hop generation by Reiland Rabaka
Call Number: ML3479 .R33 2013
The Hip Hop Movement offers a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement.
Hip-Hop Turntablism Creativity and Collaboration by Sophy Smith
Call Number: ML3531 .S658 2013
Hip-Hop Turntablism, Creativity and Collaboration values hip-hop music as worthy of musicological attention and offers a new approach to its study, focusing on the music itself and providing a new framework to examine not only the musical product, but also the creative process through which it was created

Audio

Back to black: 100 years of black music: music that changed the world, 1900 to 1999 by Various performers
Call Number: CDB COLL BACK 2001
Featuring music by Chic, the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaataa
Back to the old school: adventures on the wheels of steel by Grandmaster Flash, the Furious Five, Grandmaster Melle Mel
Call Number: CD GRANDM BACK 2006
Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy
Call Number: CD PUBL-E FEAR 1990
Giant single: Profile Records rap anthology by Various performers
Call Number: CD COLL GIAN 2012
King of Rock by Run-DMC
Call Number: CD RUN-D KING 2005

Video

2 turntables and a microphone: the life and death of Jam Master Jay by Guy Logan
Call Number: DVD JAM-M TWO 2009
Go inside the unsolved murder investigation of Jam Master Jay, legendary DJ and part of Run-DMC. Learn how security tapes of the incident came up missing, why witnesses are no longer talking, and more. Features interviews with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Russell Simmons, and others
From mambo to hip hop: a Bronx tale by Henry Chalfant
Call Number: DVD COLL FROM-M 2009
This well-crafted hour-long documentary - produced in conjunction with NYC's City Lore project and Latino Public TV - traces the music of the South Bronx, where Puerto Ricans who emigrated from Puerto Rico to the South Bronx in the 1950s and 60s merged their music with the African-Americans who moved in during the 1970s to create the original hip-hop movement of break dancing, scratching and B Boys.
Godfathers and sons by Marc Levin
Call Number: DVD VAR BLUES 2003 GODF
Hip-hop performer Chuck D and heir to Chess Records, Marshall Chess, travel to Chicago to explore the history of Chicago blues and to make an album that will pair contemporary hip-hop artists with veteran blues musicians.
RUN-DMC: live at Montreux 2001 by RUN-DMC
Call Number: DVD RUND LIVE 2007

Archival Resources

New to Archives? Check out:

Evening With series. Darryl McDaniels. (in 2 parts)
In this Rock Hall event, Darryl McDaniels of Run-D.M.C. discusses the group's Hall of Fame induction, the early commercial rap scene, rap and race relations, the political power of music, critics' assertion that rap would be a fad in the mid-1980s, McDaniels' concern with gangsta rap's lack of political conscience, and the importance of education.
Chuck D
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Grandmaster Flash
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Hip-Hop
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this topic.
Public Enemy
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Run-D.M.C.
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
ARC-0023 Alan Light Papers
The bulk of the Alan Light Papers dates from 1997 to 2002, when Light was editor-in-chief at Spin and working on three book projects: Tupac Shakur, The Vibe History of Hip Hop, and The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys. The collection emphasizes Light’s research and editorial processes, through his extensive research files and interviews, handwritten edits, notations and drafts, as well as the practicalities of publication, through writer and photograph agreements, budgets, and correspondence. Seen within a broad context, the files offer a condensed documentation of the history of hip-hop through the 1990s. There is a focus not only on individual rap artists, producers, and record executives, but also on the controversies that surrounded the hip hop world related to violence, sampling rights, and censorship debates.
ARC-0057 James Bernard Papers
The James Bernard Papers span the year 1990 to 2006 and consist of correspondence, clippings, financial records, and other documents related to The Source, promotional materials from the National Hip Hop Political Convention, interview transcripts, press kits, and single issues of non-music magazines related to African American culture, as well as VHS cassettes, two CD-Rs, and audiocassette recordings of interviews.
ARC-0111 Datwon Thomas Collection
The Datwon Thomas Collection spans the years 1999 to 2008 and consists of clippings, correspondence, photographs, flyers, and a calendar documenting Thomas' career as a music journalist. Documented in the collection are hip-hop and rap artists from the late 1990s to early 2000s, as well as the hip-hop and rap cultures of the time. Artists of note include Eminem, G Unit, Method Man, and Young Jeezy. The Collection showcases the impact of journalism and mass media on the rap and hip-hop music culture.

YouTube Videos

Rock Hall Interviews Funkmaster Flex

The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight"

Kurtis Blow, "The Breaks," Soul Train

Chic, "Good Times," Tilt, 1979

Public Enemy, "Fight The Power"