A Boom Bap Continuum started as a rant. It was me (Laurent Fintoni) ranting against what I saw as music journos once more attempting to pigeon-hole one of hip hop’s many divergent evolutions into yet another meaningless buzzword. In the 90s we had trip-hop. In the 00s we had glitch-hop, IDM and then wonky. For me it was always hip hop, always beats. I couldn’t understand the need to separate the forward thinking productions of pioneers like Prefuse 73, Dabrye or El-P into anything other than hip hop.

The rant led to a series of short, not fully formed articles and interviews which were essentially an early attempt at drawing a history of what I saw as the evolution of hip hop’s boom bap aesthetic from the 90s work of people like Premier, Pete Rock and the Beatminerz to the 00s when people like Prefuse 73, Dabrye, Danny Breaks, El-P and Machinedrum paved the way for a beats renaissance in the late 00s triggered by various factors including Dilla’s passing, the explosion of the internet as a tool for global communication and perhaps most importantly as a vector for the spreading and diffusion of musical ideas and scenes worldwide. You can read the original article, The Return of the Boom Bap, here.

The mix happened because I was struggling to articulate the ideas I had surrounding all this and as always when this happens I turn to music. In fact the A Boom Bap Continuum mix was preceeded by Wonk Fonk – a mix I did to accompany the article for Serie B. If I can’t say it in an articulate manner than I almost always opt to say it with music. Jim (2tall), Joe (Clockwork) and myself spent the best part of a year putting the whole thing together as the ultimate statement on the subject we could ever make. And that was it. The mix was a success all things considered and we all moved on. You can read more on all that in the Why? section of the site.

Turning A Boom Bap Continuum into a lecture was never something I’d thought of or planned. Like all good things in life it just happened. Sometime in 2011 I came across a call for submissions for the Sonic Lectures series at Centrum in Berlin. And that’s when I thought it would be an interesting way to revisit the ABBC ideas and themes, especially because Centrum was calling for lectures that would be ‘non-traditional’ in that they could include audio/video and installations rather than be the traditional ‘sit in a chair and talk’ lecture. Ironically since agreeing to do the Centrum lecture I’ve realised that having made the statement with music I wanted to make in 2009, I’m now full of ideas about how to articulate the ideas behind the mix (and the original rant) into words and sounds. And so a lecture is the perfect way to do that. Full circle and what not.

The A Boom Bap Continuum lecture is therefore based on the rant, articles and mix which preceeded it. It’s the vocal version of it all – it includes ideas, theories and history around the idea of a boom bap continuum, of this evolution of one of hip hop’s defining sound aesthetic, it also includes a hefty dose of music as words can only explain so many things and depending on how things go it may also include various multi media elements I’d like to work on in the coming year, such as an infographic. I’ll also be working on a series of new interviews with many of the people I see as pioneers of this evolution and which will come to be part of the lecture in some shape or form.

I’ll be posting various information, sources and more in the blog as I go along and updating this page in time. You can check a schedule of lectures here and should you be interested in bringing the lecture to your city/college/night/space than please get in touch (details in bottom right corner of site).

Disclaimer – A Boom Bap Continuum is just one idea/theory about the evolution of hip hop production. It is not meant as a final statement or much less a sort of truth about the state of things. Just one idea which I’ve found echoes with many people – fans, producers and music people – and which I’ve therefore chosen to continue to explore because I love music and I love the potential it creates for things like this. So in case your first reaction to all of this is that I’m trying to make things into fact or to put people and music into a neatly coherent history then please understand that this isn’t what I’m trying to do. Being a journalist I’m fully aware of how easy it is to impose your interpretation of something, and while it’s not always possible to avoid it I’ve every intention to try and bring the musician’s own voices into this theory over the coming year(s). Thanks.