Jazzy Jeff

Jazzy Jeff at the Trinity Rooms April 13, 2008
Live in Union Square is the title of the piece. It’s the mid 80s, A dj and the brand eventually known as ‘Will Smith’ are being recorded at a hiphop gig. The Fresh prince is exhorting the crowd to recognise the party rocking talents of his Dj who is showcasing the art of cutting between two copies of a breaks compilation. Jeffs dexterity accommodates an invention known as the transformer scratch which becomes the much imitated chirippppp  that sealed his  rep as a Dj .You can still lick the energy of that gig of the record as the bond between the dj, rapper and excited crowd make throw ‘yo hands in the air’screams as the fresh prince directs his dj to make the record talk by scratching. It’s dope and a proper fun recording , up there with ‘Live at the Funhouse by Run Dmc from the same era.
20 years after that legendary performance Jeff faces the youth of Limerick over a laptop and cd set up in the Trinity rooms with a whole history of  Hiphop behind him. Gone is the breaks comp that pasted ‘Apache’ with ‘Dance to the drummers beat’ instead we taste a menu serving scrolled portions of  shuddering hip hop bass with a side order of hyped vocals. Now known as a producer who nurtured the likes of Jill Scott, Jeff is still‘live’ in squares around the world still doing exactly what he did with the Prince  two decades earlier. He's still pasting the dynamic bits of one record into another while conducting the hype mans motivational rhythms to keep tonights multinational crowd swinging. 

This is the honed sound of  todays commercial club hip hop orchestrated tonight by a Phillidelphia veteran. After a dramatic opening salvo that featured Amy Winehouse and a warped Heavy Metal track, a serious looking Jeff went into deep concentration for a familiar booming journey.
His restrained demeanour was certainly in contrast to much of the lyrical content of the beat heavy club bangers of Biggie, Snoop et all who make up the playlist for a night like this. Old school bits of the Audio two and some raw 80s beats fly by as well. Jeff,s interaction with the Vip area based hype man ensured that this mix of  classic and new passed quickly. There were teased, almost polite scratch routines amongst this impeccably blended set with the clubs system once again a dominant factor in the proceedings.
Glamorous non nationals grinded with the more conventionally dressed locals on the floor and everybody's miming the universal lop sided step routine familiar from countless Rap videos (one guy actually mimicking Snoops ‘pimp chalice’ stage routine near the dancefloor with a straw!). None of that abstract or message type Hip Hop tonight. Everybody's forgotten about Emimen as well so the beat offers that were on sale tonight while not quite from Hip Hops cutting edge, are sonically the imaginary musical lifestyle staples that deliver the good times. 
A few points on a Socio cultural tip though. The show that was delivered tonight is the apex of post bling ‘street clip on tv’ hip hop that currently represents itself as an alternative to a house based soundtrack for universal club consumption. It balances a glamorous  media constructed view of Americana that associates wealth as an aspirational conclusion to a fantastical street hustled creed. Like 50s rock n roll before it it appeals to a generation materially secure yet eager for the frisson that image heavy black music offers. As independent hip hop directions mutate and develop their unconventional modules the commercial side of the classic beat enters is decadent phase. The roots of the union square session are now long gone and the previous  exhortations  to big up the djs selection and delivery in the art via the performance has now mutated into a format that allows the dominance of  a materialist lyrical content at the expense of the craft and artform.
Hip Hop and its  originators like Jeff are flexible and like jazz, the disciplines strength is its diversity. Because today's heads may not hear innovative beats and rhymes with charismatic artists on a day to day radio or tv basis as experienced occasionally by previous generations (think of it as  the audio equivilant of  a type of slow food agenda) , this absence is now filled with you tube derived/ styled packages that only work in a  certain way in a commercial club. whats being sold here and worldwide presently is the idea of ‘something  and /or something ghetto’rather than a Hip hop performance in the traditional sense. Similar points surrounded the move of  some of the pioneering New York Graffiti artists to Uptown Art Galleries in the 80s.The debate then was: is it an extension of the form or a non relevant off shoot ? also how was the discipline to exist in a media magnified format. Todays Club bangin Hip hop reflects those conditions. Ok, if it has to be done this way then the vibe is simply what it is, but the music struggles against the weight of the associated image relocating ‘Hip Hop’ as a background  soundtrack.
Its done very well by the likes of DJ Jazzy Jeff who respected an audience in the 80s who wanted to hear the hottest disco tracks cut up with a rap on top and he continues to deliver that crowd agenda albeit in the much changed and processed environment that is the post bling era.

Paul Tarpey