Buckaroos of the Bugaloo — Village Voice — January 1981
by Barry Michael Cooper
#HipHopHistory
(My “Buckaroos of the Bugaloo” piece for the Village Voice is the first essay on rap music in that storied weekly. It focused on The Funky Four Plus One, a dynamic Bronx, NY quintet which featured the phenomenal Sharon Green, a.k.a. “Sha-Rock.” Sha-Rock was not only one of the most gifted and skilled rappers emerging from the Boogie Down — male or female — she was a trailblazer for women rocking the mic in a male-dominated field. I call Sha-Rock Hip Hop’s “Penrietta Lacks” because she is the lyrical cell line for every great female MC from Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, and Lil Kim to Remy Ma, Nicki Minaj, Azelia Banks and Cardi B. I remember telling the esteemed Village Voice editor — Robert Christgau — that Hip Hop was an emerging genre that could possibly have a substantial and significant impact on both modern music and pop culture. Christgau — the forward thinking iconoclast that he is — listened to me and published the story. It ran the week of 27 January 1981. — Barry Michael Cooper)
BUCKAROOS OF THE BUGALOO
27 January 1981 — The Village Voice
by Barry Michael Cooper
Ronnie Ron is a real
Smart smary
Yesterday he gave
A death preview party
But I didn’t wanna go
Coulda got upset
So I cut
Cut-Cut him off
Like a tee vee set
Are you “ready for this?”inquire the Funky Four Plus One in “That’s The Joint.” Are you ready for rapping? Many people are, heralding this counter-polyrhythmic poetic litany as an art form, the “new wave” in black music. Others see it as an ugly fad, disgusting nigger music coming from those wretched “boxes,” aggravated aural assault/vandalism. It’s like the graffiti dilemma — is it art, or is it a nuisance. I think it’s an art form, but maybe I’m biased, because I come from the land of DJ Hollywood (the undisputed champeen of of all rappers), Eddie Cheeba (“The Peoples Choice/the award winning voice/Eddie/Cheeba/Cheeba/Chee-Chee-Chee-Cheeba”) and of course, Kurtis Blow (he’s on the go) to name a few. To paraphrase Kurtis Blowski, “A place called Harlem is my home.”
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Are you ready for this? Well I just can’t miss, with a beat like this. The beat — the beatbeat — the fonky beat is the key to rapping. And that’s what turns a lot of white and black listeners off. The beat is a product of the street and all of its’ raw, primal, and instinctive energy. These transcontinental urban griots echo the despair, pain, and anger of the South Bronx and Harlem (the world’s two major rap centers) which a lot of the cool-jerk white liberals and b.s. black bourgeoisie don’t want to hear. Rapping reminds them that every is not cool and correct on the home front, like punk rock in England and reggae in the Carribbean. In fact, the “toasting” records of the West Indies are reminiscent of American rap.
The James Brown D.T.P.R.’s (dance/trance/psychorhythms) of rapping were a welcome change, a disco deterrent from the psychoid Giorgio Moroder oscillator/squelch wavelengths and the mechanized hustle, the ’70s version of Orwellian Dancestand. This musical revitalization grew from the basements and parks and spread to the rec centers and ballrooms, including the Renaissance at 138th Street and Seventh Avenue several decades earlier. At the “Renny” (closed down because of gunpoint robberies by gangs known as stick-up kids and rampant angel dust usage), you coiuld hear kids, some as young as 11 or 12, “mixing” (playing two records simultaneously, or in sequence, while cross-fading similar rhythm tracks from each record), or rapping over certain D.T.P.R. sections of “Good Times,” or “spinning” (a mixing technique of repeating a certain word or phrase on a particular record by retarding the movement of the turntable manually) Captain Sky’s soop-soop “Super Sporm.” Some of those pre-teenage deejays got so innovative on “Sporm” that they would create rhythms out of the scratchy noise of the vinyl near the label of the record. In essence, they made the turntable “talk.”
What a lot of the rap dissidents don’t realize is how difficult it is to rap to the beat. Even though Blondie’s “Rapture” is a hit, Debbie Harry’s execution is awkward: her syncopations off and her cadence out of time. Rapping requires the adroit skill you see when little black girls perform the “Double Dutch” maneuver in jump-rope. The bass, the percussion, and drums act as rotating rope rhythms while the rapper waits for the right time to jump, to move in and out of the groove on time and on the measure. If call and response aren’t exact the rap is a failure, so the groove has to be repetitive, precise, steady, as on MFSB’s “Love Is the Message” or the standard, Chic’s “Good Times.” On “Good Times” Bernard’s bass provides an anchor, a rock against which the emcee (who usually takes on the duty of rapping while the deejay “spins” the records, the most noted exception being DJ Hollywood, the Il Padrone of rappers, who did both) expounded on themes of monetary security (“makin’ cold currency”), sexual endurance (“I’ll lay ya right back on a steady pace”), and egotism (“the best emcee’s at the top of the pile”).
Rap records have flooded the market ever since the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” DJ Hollywood had “Shock Shock the House” on Epic, but it was a letdown to his thousands of fans, including myself. Hollywood seems to be laying low for the time being, but when and if he does make a comeback, everyone will have to take notice. “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow-zowski (an Uptown word/name nonsense game), an eloquent, absurdist, double-entendre rap dealing with bad luck, made him an international star.
I didn’t like it when it first came out (I preferred “Rappin’ Blow”), but the B.F. Skinner-type operant rotation of the major radio stations had me programmed to intone: “And-these-are-the-breaks.” The Sugarhill Gang’s latest offering, “8th Wonder” is interesting, with Big Bank Hank (a DJ Hollywood Memorex) and Wonder Mike cooling out in the background to let Master Gee “go-off” with a fast and aggressive rap.
These rappers do the job, but they’re just specks in the powerful cyclone created by the two best crews in the world: the Funky Four Plus One and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. After debuting with “Rock the House,” on Enjoy, the Funky Four came up with a minor masterpiece called “That’s the Joint.” The bassline is heavy, accented from time to time with submachine gun riffs, while the five emcees’ rubbery polyrhythmic tradeoffs at the break help funk up the atmosphere. Sharock the lone (1) female of the group, phrases with almost clinical authority, especially on “I got money/and I-can-jerk.”
Kevvy Kev is the apex, as he incants a mesmerizing rap about various excess, basketball-dribbling phonetics and syllable fractions in his easy slur while the other emcess counterpoint against the double-time cadence of “Rock the house/rock-rock the house.”
But the most creative crew of all is Flash and the Furious Five, because they rap unison, flawlessly. “Freedom,” on Sugarhill, is a monster jam highlighted by clockwork call-and-response and Cowboy’s rap at the finale over finger snaps-that’s right, no music, just finger snaps. But their first release “Superrappin,” also on Enjoy, is the classic rap record. They manipulate space and time to create symmetrical vocal patterns that envelope the groove; at one point they rap so fast that it’s hard to understand what they’re saying. All the emcess — Mr. Ness, Raheem, Kid Creole, Flash (even better-known as a mixer than a rapper), and Cowboy who rides the groove like his self-styled “buckaroo of the bugaloo” — have great moments, but it’s Melly Mel who turns the record inside out. His speedy rap near the climax describes the vicious life cycle of a street hood. The story isn’t just exciting, it’s ingenious; his capsulized account of a brutal fate recalls what Jean Toomer did in Cane, condensing life into a paragraph. This high-powered literary device is what will make “Superrappin” last.
It should also be an example to rappers who limit themselves thematically to money, sex, and narcissism, because the audience will tire of the repetition. What rap records need to do if they are to have any longevity is to expand content and direction. Rapping can be used to entertain and educate — “edutainment,” as the late Eddie Jefferson said. It could also be used to Reveal, like this:
The GRANDMASTER
Is cuttin’ faster
Listen to his spinnin’ sound
As the circle goes round-n’-round
And His line goes on-n’-on
Leadin’ to the break a dawn
Two figures that become as one
Known as “The Shape of Things to Come”
And you know that. Right?…
(All quotes from “Real Rap,” by Barry-B-ski and the Omniscient One)
