BDM
- Jan 30, 2022
- 6 min read

Hip House - When Two Worlds Collide (By Anthony) Feat: DJ Rednote AKA Shane Hockett

House is a feeling

and in that House,

lives a bunch of other Houses,

confused yet ????

I can honestly say I've given up count and lost track,

but that's the beauty In that flower we call House music,

it's always progressively morphing,

forever changing & evolving,

and if you're not part of the evolution, you are not part of the revolution.

The specific genre of house music we're going to talk about today is Hip House.

I can remember around

late 88-89, Acid House was flying around, and so was I, acid & airplanes taking trips over to the UK, just before the Rave scene started fully flowering,...... there was a new fusion of House music out.

Now Hip House was arriving on the backs of Acid House & Chicago House,

with some wicked hip-hop vocal artists bringing the punch into it,

& making an amazing hybrid.

If my memory serves me

(that gets blurry in this specific boogie)

The venue happening at the time in Toronto Canada had been The Copa

Just off Young Street, south of the Old Concert Hall, hosting an acid house night I believe was on Saturday is where I started getting my 1st exposure to hip-house.

So what is it all about?

in 1988, hip hop was approaching the crest of its fabled golden age. Public Enemy and N.W.A. were assaulting America with hard-hitting polemics from both coasts,

Marley Marl’s funky productions were launching the all-star Juice Crew squad to rap royalty and acts like Eric B. & Rakim and the Ultramagnetic MCs were dropping futuristic rhymes that sounded like they were beamed down from another dimension.

Beyond the roll call of future hall of fame artists, in Chicago, a fresh grassroots movement was about to sprout up and notch a cult position in the hip hop history books. They called it hip-house.

Officially created in the spring of 1988 by a young artist from the west side of Chicago named Fast Eddie, the hip-house formula was an upbeat fusion of its two namesake genres. House music beats, tempos, and melodic synth piano lines were paired with the sort of funk and soul samples hip hop producers were mining at the time, while MCs rapped over the energized beats with club-centric lyrics.

This fresh sonic mix quickly caught on and spread beyond its Chicago foundation, where local artists like Tyree Cooper, Mr. Lee, Kool Rock Steady, JMD, and Sundance became figureheads of the scene. In New York City, a wave of key hip hop artists embraced the trend and recorded one-off hip-house efforts, spearheaded by the Jungle Brothers’ reworking of a Todd Terry production for “I’ll House You.” Hip house scenes sprang up in Washington, D.C., and overseas in London, too, as the major labels began to pay attention.

FAST EDDIE

Honestly, I was kind of bored with all the tracks that were being released out of Chicago. I just wanted to hear something different. I was really into hip hop before I was into house music. I was at this record label [DJ International] and I wanted to do some hip hop music and they weren’t producing or releasing hip hop music, period, at this time. This was Chicago, so we just looked to dance music.

I just started sampling the hip hop music, hip hop tracks, drum loops. A lot of my inspiration was James Brown, KRS-One, and a lot of the older hip-hop guys.

I started sampling and sampling and sampling and I just came up with this sound, and it didn’t have a name at the time –itwass just trackings I was making. Then at one point I produced this one track and I called it “Hip House,” and from that point on that title took off.

“Hip House” was the first record titled with the hip-house, but I did “Yo Yo Get Funky” before I did “Hip House.” I would consider “Yo Yo Get Funky” more of a hip house song. When I produced those tracks, I asked 20 to 30 different MCs would they rap on this track, because I wanted to try something different. No one would do it. They would just flat-out tell me, “No, I’m not going to do that house mouse stuff.” I just ended up writing it myself. That was the first rap I ever wrote in my life.

(Fast Eddie - Hip House)

TYREE COOPER

As Fast Eddie was putting [the song] together, I walked into the studio at DJ International and asked him what he was doing. At this time in Eddie’s career that I can remember, he didn’t want to do house music anymore. He was fed up with house music, so he just started doing hip hop. He came back to DJ International and wanted to do some hip hop and Rocky Jones [the label founder] was like, “We don’t sell hip hop, we just sell the house.” I guess Eddie was like, “Well, screw that, I’ll just combine the two.” So he put together a house record in the fashion of a hip hop record.

We recorded at Underground Studios, basically a home studio for the most part, but with just a little bit more money involved than a home studio. It had a 16-track recorder, we had an engineer, we had a mixing boy; you had the tape deck, keyboards, two-track recording deck. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it did the job. (Tyree)

There are many different sub-genres of house music. If you want to find your specific interest in house music, then there are some things you should know about. Hip House

At the end of the 1980s when both Hip Hop & House genres were riding high and the house was hotter than ever, the scenes mingled. Rappers wanted some house hype on their albums, and dance producers employed MCs to add some flavor to their tracks. The result was hip-house: a blend of NYC style, Strictly Rhythm beats, funk breaks, and party-hyping lyrics.

The hybrid enjoyed a brief spell beneath the mirror-ball, producing artists such as Doug Lazy and KC Flight, and European pop acts like Snap, Technotronic, and The Adventures of Stevie V, who sought to tap into the trend. But it burnt out fast, and it would be a long while before the styles would collide in the mainstream again.

These are period pieces, time capsules containing the vibe of their era when each of the genres was fairly new and full of potential.

Mike Dunn - So Let it Be Houze! (1988)

Among the first pioneers of Chicago house music, DJ and producer Mike Dunn was also a big hip-hop head. His decision to rap over this sparse, skeletal acid track marks it as arguably the first instance of hip-house – or of NYC and Chicago cross-pollinating in this way.

Jungle Brothers – I’ll House You (1988)

If you had to distill hip-house down to a single track, you’d be left with I’ll House You. No other track quite captures the lightning-in-a-bottle vibe. Part of the Native Tongues crew alongside De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers’ early music mostly consisted of , sample-heavy rap.

Fast Eddie – Yo Yo Get Funky (1988)

That ‘woo, yeah!’ breakbeat sample from Lyn Collins funk classic Think became ubiquitous around this time, but Fast Eddie’s use of it, along with vocal snips from Planet Rock, connected it to genuine hip-hop heritage while inviting us onto the dancefloor, adding huge air raid sirens to amp up the party.

Doug Lazy – Let It Roll

(1989)

Mixed by Raze (whose evergreen Break For Love remains one of the most memorable early house tracks), Doug Lazy’s production is a masterful concoction of rolling breaks, dubby FX and an iconic bassline. All topped by the assured tones of Doug himself, it’s one of the less in-your-face examples

Bomb The Bass – “Beat Dis” London, (1988)

Bomb The Bass

releases another classic example of acid-inspired hip house

with “Beat Dis”

which charted around the world.

Technotronic

“Pump Up The Jam”

(1989)

“Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic becomes one of house music’s first major US hits.

Technotronic (founded in 1989), was the restless offspring of innovative Belgian producer Jo Bogaert AKA Thomas De Quincey.

KC Flightt – Planet E (1989)

A melange of samples culled from Jamie Principle’s Baby Wants to Ride and most prominently, Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime, this mid-tempo house cut is unusual, with KC Flightt’s allegorical lyrics tackling alcoholism and racial inequality. this classic stood out for its daring social commentary.

If you want to take a trip through the wormhole of House music

and end up in the world of Hip House

you have arrived

Black Donnelly Radio & The Mixcloud chart

DJ Rednote Selector / AKA Shane Hockett

has made a return with a brand new

Highview show

Dedicated to

Hip House

- The Highview / episode 38 -

by Rednote Selector a brief history of Hip House Music from mid 80's to 1990

Black Donnelly Exclusive

Click the picture below for the trip

Research Credit ; Recording Arts Canada, / RYM / Mixmag

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ANTHONY