G-funk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Gangsta funk | |
| Stylistic origins | West Coast hip hop, P-Funk, Funk, R&B, Mobb music |
|---|---|
| Cultural origins | Early 1990s, Los Angeles, California, United States |
G-funk, or Gangsta-Funk, is a unique type of hip hop music that emerged from West Coast gangsta rap in the early 1990s. G-funk (which uses funk music with artificially lowered tempos) incorporates multi-layered and melodic synthesizers, slow hypnotic grooves, a deep bass, background female vocals, the extensive sampling of p-funk tunes, and a high portamento sine wave keyboard lead.
Unlike other earlier rap acts that also utilized funk samples (such as EPMD or The Bomb Squad), G-funk often utilized fewer, unaltered samples per song [1]. Music theorist Adam Krims has described G-funk as "a style of generally West Coast rap whose musical tracks tend to deploy live instrumentation, heavy on bass and keyboards, with minimal (sometimes no) sampling and often highly conventional harmonic progressions and harmonies".[2]
There has been some debate over who should be considered the "father of G-funk." Dr. Dre is generally believed to have developed the sound[3]. The first hints of the whiny synthesizers and Parliament-Funkadelic-style bass grooves in Dr. Dre's work appeared on N.W.A's single "Alwayz Into Somethin'" from their 1991 album Efil4zaggin. Dr. Dre's first true G-funk single, however, was 1992's "Deep Cover", the title song from the movie soundtrack of the same name, which also introduced the world to Snoop Dogg. When Dre's 1992 Death Row Records debut The Chronic was released in 1992, the album was immensely successful, and consequently made G-funk the most popular sub-genre of hip hop.[4]
Many opponents, however, have claimed that Dr. Dre developed his sound after hearing Above the Law's debut Livin' Like Hustlers, before it had come out.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Brown, Ethan (November 22, 2005). "Straight Outta Hollis". Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler. Anchor. ISBN 1-4000-9523-9. "[Unlike] popular hip-hop producers like the Bomb Squad, Dre instead utilized a single sample to drive a song."
- ^ Krims, Adam (2000). Rap Music and the Poetics of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 74. ISBN 0521634474. http://books.google.com/books?id=Gg8UiSodjz8C&pg=PA75&dq=%22g-funk%22&sig=ACfU3U0SGQ2bjz1RT8pnQ_Cu0oCVBkvpfQ#PPA74,M1. Retrieved on 2008-08-02.
- ^ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "Dr. Dre (Andre Young", in Vladimir Bogdanov et al., All Music Guide to Rock, 3rd ed., Backbeat Books, p. 324. ISBN 087930653X. "Dre pioneered gangsta rap and his own variation of the sound, G-Funk .... [H]e reworked George Clinton's elastic funk into the self-styled G-Funk, a slow-rolling variation that relied more on sound than content."
- ^ Stephen Thomas Erlewine. "Dr. Dre", allmusic. Retrieved December 2, 2008.
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