Picking up on Rob's post (yes I'm aware of how déclassé it is to have a derivative first post but whatever), I note that Rob neglected to mention the most influential auto-tune musician, Roger Troutman. I dare not call him an auto-tune user as Troutman, of Zapp & Roger fame, employed the talk box or voice box/vocorder. Troutman is arguably the godfather of modern hip-hop's use of this effect given how often he's been shouted out for it or been sampled by hip-hop artists (see this Wikipedia entry for the number of references starting with EPMD sampling him in 1988 through to the full-on homage that is Snoop's Sexual Eruption video). He wasn't totally unsung in his lifetime (tragically cut short a few years before auto-tune went mainstream), as he collaborated with Dr. Dre and 2Pac on California Love, which Dre basically rode as a beat with little alteration. That same year he put out a greatest hits record to capitalize on the G-funk era's use of his work.
There was an article in Slate a couple years back trying to explain why T-Pain and auto-tune effects had become so popular so quickly – their answer: novelty and a new-found comfort with technology thanks to Web 2.0. I don't quite buy that, since it makes no sense and implies that we're slowly becoming cyborgs or at least cyborg-sympathizers. Far more credible to me is the notion put forward in a different Slate article around the time of Rick James' death. In that article, Tony Green suggests that Zapp was part of a group of black R & B artists that came too late to the funk/disco party of the late 70s (though it's worth noting that Zapp was a member of P-Funk during that era) and too early for G-funk and hip-hop's mainstream success in the 90s. This, Green posits, is because MTV and the other mainstream tastemakers of the era did not play R & B or most any music made by black artists until the mid-1980s when this sound had already come and gone. DJ Major Taylor has a similar theory and dubs this early-80s genre – which mixes funk and new-wave synth – Blacktro (Blaktro? Blaqtro?). Quick Blacktro short-list: Zapp, Cameo, Prince and his progeny from that period, The Gap Band. So under this theory, America has ALWAYS loved auto-tune it just didn't know it yet.
I leave you with THE classic Zapp track – Computer Love followed by the original California Love which features some dated-sounding rap. The first verse is by Bigg Robb who is still holding it down having just released a new album entitled 8 Tracks and 45's which features abundant talk-box! (Rob, I think it's time you start adding redundant letters to your name or officially adopt the moniker Young Robb.)
Computer Love:
1 comments:
Nice first post! Youngg Rrobb?
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