Sound check: rock, the new rapper's delight

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Let there be rock: Jay-Z, who headlined at Glastonbury, is now set to support Coldplay this month at Wembley Stadium

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Collaborations between rap and rock are nothing new — but until now, the spheres of hip hop superstardom and indie rock experimentation have remained discrete. That all changed this week.
At a free show given by Grizzly Bear in Brooklyn last Sunday, fans of the psychedelic rock band — generally a pasty, beardy bunch — were astonished to find among their number not only the world's biggest rapper, Jay-Z, but his glamorous R'n'B singer wife, Beyoncé.

The footage of Beyoncé standing among the crowd, not quite sure which degree of ass-shaking should be brought to bear on the quartet's song Ready, Able — a loose dirge in 6/8 time — does not suggest that she will soon move in an acid rock direction. But since rap mogul P Diddy was recently spotted at an Arctic Monkeys gig, it is fair to say that the more credible end of rock is flavour of the month among hip hop's tastemakers.
Given that Phil Collins is generally the rapper's white artist of choice [fact], this is a significant development. Who knows, maybe we will soon see the ­hoppers of Harlem fighting turf wars
about which Belle and Sebastian B-side is superior.

After the Grizzly Bear gig, Jay-Z, who is set to land his first British number one single on Sunday, was alarmed that his presence was deemed surprising. “I've always said that I believe in good music and bad music, so I'm always at those type of events,” he told MTV.

However, his further praise for Grizzly Bear — and indie rock, in general — is intriguing.
“The music that they're making and the connection they're making to people is really inspiring,” he said, admiring the dedication of their fans, before musing: “When rock was the dominant force in music, rap came and said, Y'all got to sit down for a second, this is our time.' And we've had a stranglehold on music since then. So I hope indie rock pushes rap back a bit because it will force people to make great music for the sake of ­making great music.”

He sees the two genres as locked in a sort of musical arms race, where one can suggest to the other the way to improve itself, with the ultimately beneficiary being music itself.
Certainly, by agreeing to headline Glastonbury last year, and impeccably dealing with the idiotic controversy that followed, Jay-Z showed himself to be undaunted by rock audiences; a close friend of Chris Martin, he will support Coldplay at Wembley later this month. Perhaps in this second billing there is a tacit awareness that hip hop lags behind rock as a live spectacle, that although the suburban kids who once bought rap albums by the millions now burn them off the internet for free, they are willing to cough up for concert tickets. Perhaps, in turn, indie bands could take inspiration from hip hop's entrepreneurial spirit. A Fleet Foxes sportswear line, perhaps?

But it is on a musical level that the new alliance most intrigues. A free exchange of rhythms and dynamics between black and white music was a hallmark of Sixties pop but it is only recently that forward-thinking bands have again breached the divide. The early leak of Jay-Z's forthcoming album, The Blueprint 3 (out on 14 September, but available at www.mtv.com/music/the_leak for streaming), reveals numerous attempts to court different audiences. However, Jay-Z tends to be at his best when working in isolation with a tight focus — and the reaction from bloggers has been muted.

Conversely, feted indie bands such as TV on the Radio, Yeasayer and Dirty Projectors are now cleverly incorporating hip hop dynamics and production techniques into their songs. Last year, Vampire Weekend used a soca drumbeat on their song Mansard Roof, with delightful results.
Most promising are Animal Collective, a trio who have produced one of the year's most acclaimed albums in Merriweather Post Pavilion, which merges psychedelia, folk and R'n'B to genuinely original effect. The chorus to their single, My Girls (“I don't mean to seem like I care about material things …”), is pure Destiny's Child, both melodically and lyrically.

You can even imagine Beyoncé getting bootylicious to it.

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Following their surprise appearances at the Reading festival, Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup comprising Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones, have announced a winter tour. They will come to roost at Hammersmith Apollo on 17 December (tickets on sale from 10am today: 0870 264 3333; www.seetickets.com). There's also a new animated teaser at www.themcrookedvultures.com — cartoon vultures stalk menacingly to a song called Scumbag Blues, which features a pleasingly evil guitar line and typically pummelling drums from Grohl.

* Matthew Herbert, who once produced an album exclusively from samples of human bodily functions, is to manufacture an album of pig noises, to be released next year. “I will be there at its birth, during its life, present at its death and during the butchery process. Its body will then be given to chefs new and old: there will be a feast. It will all be recorded and then turned into music,” he explains at http://thisisapig.blogspot.com/ — where you will also find videos of the lucky swine.

* When Noel Gallagher called an end to Oasis with a rather curt note on the band's website last week, he found room to apologise to fans in Europe who had already bought tickets for the band's tour. In Berlin, however, not everyone was placated — as will be revealed if you type “Hitler's reaction to Oasis split” into the YouTube search engine.

 

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