Why instrumental hiphop doesn't suck

J Dilla. RIP, Feb 10 2006

DJ Prestige over at Flea Market Funk has written a great piece - it's a rebuttal on why instrumental hiphop doesn't suck a la the SF Weekly's article.....

"I came across this article in the San Francisco Weekly by Phillip Mlynar stating that “Instrumental Hip Hop Sucks. Ban It Forever”. Now if you have been a follower of Flea Market Funk, you know that not only do we promote the vinyl from original artists that fuel instrumental Hip Hop, but support today’s producers and artists that make quality music.

Some of them are strictly instrumental Hip Hop. In his article, Mr. Mlynar rips the entire genre (except DJ Shadow, for some reason he gets a pass and “is exonerated from the crime of instrumental hip-hop by virtue of his music being more correctly in the lineage of Steinski’s witty cut-and-paste experiments.”).

He goes on to bash artists like DOOM, Diplo, RJD2, and Dilla. While this is America, and of course just an opinion of Mr. Mylnar, I am really offended, and appalled that a writer for a national weekly was allowed to publish such trash. What came across was an ill informed, horribly researched, personal witch hunt on music he doesn’t like. If you look back on the articles he wrote in 2011, they ranged from “The World’s Most Regrettable Hip Hop Tattoos” (oh wait I saw an ice cream cone on a guy’s face!) to multiple articles on Kreayshawn, some *surprise*, DJ Shadow, and a whole lot of lists that look like something ego trip list would publish. Let’s break down why this article doesn’t make sense.

“It’s music without a start or end, without peaks and momentum — it’s hip-hop without a money shot. Tragically, it also forgets what makes hip-hop so invigorating in the first place.”:

Obviously, there is no research in the this at all. Way before DOOM or Madlib released the instrumentals, way before he was on DJ Shadow’s dick (I’m surprised he didn’t refer to him as “Josh” in the article), there were instrumentals. DJ’s cut up the breaks, extended the groove, and made people dance. We all are aware of that.

Let’s take it back to mid-80′s, when Delicious Vinyl was not yet started (although it was a concept without the label really), and the Dust Brothers were making instrumental Hip Hop. These guys made sample based instrumental records and played them way before they even had a record label off the ground. People danced to this on the weekly at clubs like Power Tools, where their originals were mixed in with Funk, Disco, Heavy Metal, and underground Hip Hop of the day. These instrumentals would become the back bone for one of the best sample based record ever, the Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique....

Read the rest of the article over at Flea Market Funk.