BRING THAT BEAT BACK

A thorough and occasionally raucous history of hip-hop’s boundless sonic dimensions.

It’s difficult to think of another book that devotes this degree of research, thought, and passion to the sonic elements of hip-hop, from the pioneers who scrambled to assemble their booming sound systems for raucous parties in 1970s New York to contemporary moguls who earn riches unfathomable to their musical ancestors. The book is about sampling, but it encompasses so much more. Patrin organizes his study around four seminal figures: Grandmaster Flash, who turned the act of scratching into an art form; Prince Paul, the postmodern prankster who brought ingenious levity and a collage master’s imagination to the genre; Dr. Dre., the ambivalent gangsta rap soundscaper whose biggest enemy may be his own perfectionism; and Madlib, “the underground experimentalist and record-collector antiquarian who constantly broke the rules of what the mainstream expected of hip-hop.” Along the way, the author provides lessons in what sampling means to both its most daring practitioners and its aesthetically conservative naysayers. It’s clear where Patrin’s sympathies and interest lie: This is the work of someone who sees sampling as not just an art form, but also a jumping-off point for discussion about art and entertainment in the postindustrial age. Repurposing is the name of the game, and the artists featured here have figured out a multitude of ways to practice their craft. In their own way, they’re not just musicians; they are also anthropologists, historians, and alchemists. “If sample-based hip-hop has one particular irony,” writes the author, “it’s that it often relies on manipulating the music of the past, and in ways that could only be accomplished by the state-of-the-art technology of the present.” If that sounds heady, know that the text is also compulsively readable. The subject is sampling, but the narrative is as much cultural history as audio exploration. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.

No one wants a dry hip-hop book, and Patrin’s work is thoroughly engaging from first needle drop to last.