#patrick neate

[ek-tahyp]

New York seemed like a daunting place: a city on fast-forward where every sentence ends in an exclamation mark. Not so much a melting pot as a sack of shingle in which the multi-million stones blunt and sharpen each other in equal measures.

Patrick Neate, Twelve Bar Blues

[declineof-blog-blog]

It was difficult to grasp what the point of “How Hip Hop Changed The World” (channel 4, 12th August) was.

The first problem is that the entire documentary felt aimed at people who’s knowledge of hip hop was based on what they hear on Radio 1. This meant lots of Tinnie Temper, plenty of pint sized cunt Dappy and an inexplicable moment when Jessie J (large forehead and all) compares herself to the great Lauren Hill. Not really hip hop then…more pop hop. When it did cover the classics of oldschool it did so with a staggering lack of depth.  Where did these records come from, how did they effect people and what were they about? Don’t expect any more depth than “this was good”, “this was popular”, “this had a thing called a break beat in it”.  Don’t expect to learn a fucking thing. 

If this was a documentary on how Hip Hop has worked its way into all areas of modern society, it also failed. Unlike the fantastic “Where You’re At” by Patrick Neate it chose to focus more on “celebrity moments” rather than true fans of the genre. Patrick Neate travels to Tokyo and finds hip-hop festivals where local kids dress in Adidas clothes and rap in Japanese.  Channel 4, on the other hand, has a video of Prince Charles looking confused next to a turn table. There are loads of interesting scenes that have formed across the UK recently with their own Hip Hop based rules. Rather irreverently this documentary has 5 minutes on how the new Olympic Logo looks vaguely like graffiti. 

More than ever it highlights how alot modern Hip Hop is about making money. There is nothing wrong with this in itself, but there is something quite sinister about modern pop-rappers playing black stereotypes for the benefit of white kids. We get that hip hop has changed the world but if it was once about “creating something from nothing” its is now as manufactured as any other form of pop. Or so you would believe. There are plenty of great underground scenes at the moment, none of which were covered. Maybe this documentary should have been called “How Hip Hop Changed the Mainstream”.

Its not all bad though. Nas features prominently and its always nice to hear from De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Better still the largely forgotten 80s British scene is covered in some detail. There is obviously a good documentary to be made about Hip Hop and its world wide reach, this just isn’t it.