They existed because the majors would not distribute the music. What they built outlasted that problem. The independent labels that...
Yvonne Vaughan
Yvonne Vaughan covers hip-hop, R&B, soul, funk and gospel for BlackSounds.News, writing about the records, the players and the lineage that connects them. Particularly interested in where a sound came from and who carried it.
Specific machines produced specific eras. The limitations did as much shaping as the features. You can date a great deal...
A late-night programming decision created demand for a specific kind of record, and artists supplied it. Quiet Storm began as...
The remix, the version, the MC and the mobile rig were all working in Jamaica before hip-hop existed. Several of...
The pocket is a real, describable relationship between players. It is not mysticism. Musicians talk about the pocket as if...
The names are nearly identical and the music is not. Conflating them erases both. Afrobeat and Afrobeats differ by one...
National distribution usually flattens regional difference. In hip-hop it kept producing new ones. Most genres converge as distribution widens. Hip-hop...
A small number of house bands played on an enormous share of the records. The consistency was not an accident....
Court decisions in the early nineties made dense sample collage economically impossible. Producers adapted, and the sound changed. The records...
A marketing term that happened to name something real: live playing, loose timing, and a deliberate turn away from the...
