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Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip Hop JOSEPH SCHLOSS Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 2004 225 pp.
Joseph Schloss sets out to define and historicize the art of sampling, while critiquing current literary trends that confine the spaces of hip hop by drawing on circumstance and poverty without recognizing the artistic integrity of hip-hop production. In this highly conversational text, which is accessible to most, Schloss includes a comprehensive but brief overview of his methodology and research practices, drawing from more than ten years of ethnographic exploration to capture the voices of the producers themselves and to get at the heart of why they produce music the way they do, not by circumstance but by choice. Schloss highlights the explicit ethical and aesthetic rules at play and argues that the specific overarching norms are deeply embedded in African-derived aesthetics, social norms, standards, and sensibilities, even when the production stems from individuals who are not African-American.
Schloss reports that much of the scholarship performed in the hip-hop world is lacking certain perspectives and he hopes to fill those spaces with the voices of the community. Thus ethnography, as he puts it, "is a good place to start" (3). He says meeting the producers, convincing them of his...