One Smith Barney office featured a “boom boom room” where women workers were told to “entertain” clients. Smith Barney branch managers had been asking female employees to remove their tops in exchange for money. It’s simply part of hip hop’s DNA, and you know it when you feel it.Octo– On this day, in retail stock brokerage, Smith Barney reached a multi-million dollar sexual harassment settlement with a group of female employees. Where did boom bap come from? That’s not hugely important. “When Flash tells me that in regular conversation, not only do you not question it, you accept it.” Despite the two decade gap between the slang phrase and the sub-genre, both conceptions of boom bap emphasize the power and impact of the kick and the snare drums, whether as a cue to rapping along to the beat or something to prioritize in the studio. “Grandmaster Flash told me recently that if it’s hip hop then it has to go boom, bap, boom-boom, bap,” he says. “I also used it when I was recording other songs,” T La Rock continues, “but in those days they would always cut the songs shorter and edit out the ad libs towards the end of the song, which was when I would say boom bap quite often.”ĭJ Premier suggests that there’s wider credence to T La Rock’s early invocation of boom bap as an old-school slang phrase. Who was doing it before then?” He adds that the only other person he recalled saying the phrase was The Amazing Bombay, a member of his previous group The Undefeated Four. ![]() Asked if he might be the inventor of the phrase, T La Rock is resolute. (At the time Premier had courted some critical acclaim with his group Gang Starr, but had received little in the way of wider mainstream recognition.) Diamond D remembers it as “a bold statement to make in an era of shiny suits.” KRS knew it wouldn’t be a commercially successful decision, but he was more concerned reconnecting with “the streets and all those that clung to the original break-beat sounds of hip hop.”īoth KRS-One and Diamond D cited “It’s Yours” as the first time they heard the phrase ever used. His plan already in mind, KRS told them he wanted DJ Premier to produce it instead. ![]() KRS says that the executives at Jive Records suggested he work with big name commercial producers of the day on Boom Bap. Remembering the time period, KRS says that hip hop “production was extremely watered down and less confrontational… The album title Return Of The Boom Bap was a call back to the original intent of hip hop’s music production and rebellious music style.” If boom bap is hooked around drums that smack and hit with a grit-sodden crunch, then 1993’s Return of the Boom Bap is the sub-genre’s grand call to arms. ![]() The Bronx-born Diamond D, who’s best known as part of the Diggin’ In The Crates collective, backs up Premier’s description, saying, “It’s raw, gritty and unpolished hip hop that normally features a DJ scratching.” He adds that the SP-1200, MPC-60 and Akai-900 were the technological tools of choice that got him “that 16-bit boom bap sound.” Talking to Premier, the idea of strength and power was key to boom bap’s genesis. Most recognize DJ Premier and Pete Rock as two of the sub-genre’s most famous producers. To find out where boom bap came from, it’s important to define what it is. Classic boom bap is a persuasive experience, with beats that are visceral and rousing. ![]() But Joey’s take is markedly more laidback than the bounding, energetic ’90s version. Boom bap has been used in more glowing terms to describe the music of Joey Bada$$ and his Flatbush-based Pro Era collective, not least after Bada$$ dropped rhymes over a DJ Premier production earlier this year. The phrase is frequently applied to East Coast hip hop to suggest that its architects are dated and trading on former glories. These days, however, the notion of tagging something as boom bap has become more of a backhanded compliment.
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