Industrial hip hop
Industrial hip hop is a fusion genre of industrial music and hip hop.
History[edit]
1980s[edit]
The origins of industrial hip hop are in the work of Mark Stewart, Bill Laswell, and Adrian Sherwood. In 1985, former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart released As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, an application of the cut-up style of industrial music, with the house band of Sugar Hill Records (Doug Wimbish, Keith Leblanc, and Skip McDonald).[1] In 1986, The Beatnigs were formed in San Francisco. As a collaboration between Michael Franti, Rono Tse and Kevin Carnes, The Beatnigs combined hardcore punk, industrial and hip hop influences, described as "a kind of avant-garde industrial jazz poets collective".[2] The band's stage performance included the use of power tools such as a rotary saw on a metal bar to create industrial noise and pyrotechnics.[3] In the late 1980s, Laswell's Material project began to take increasing influence from hip hop. Adrian Sherwood was a major figure in British dub, as well as working with industrial groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, Einstürzende Neubauten, Ministry, KMFDM, and Nine Inch Nails.
Tackhead, a collaboration between Sherwood and the Sugar Hill band, picked up where Mark Stewart left off.[4] The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Consolidated from San Francisco,[5][6][7] MC 900 Ft. Jesus from Texas[8][9] and Meat Beat Manifesto from the UK are also early representatives of the style. The industrial group 23 Skidoo, Miles Davis's album On the Corner, and the Nine Inch Nails single "Down in It" are also important precedents for the style.
1990s[edit]
Industrial hip hop was carried forward by figures from a diverse number of scenes. Young Black Teenagers featured an industrial-influenced sound on their 1991 self-titled debut album, provided by the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy's production team.[10] Perhaps the most unlikely adopters were Justin Broadrick and Mick Harris, previously known for their invention of the grindcore style of extreme metal, while in Napalm Death. After participating in the jazzcore group Pain Killer with Bill Laswell, Harris's Scorn project delved into dark ambient and industrial hip hop. Subsequently, Broadrick began to work with Kevin Martin, previously of God (also a jazzcore group). The later work of Broadrick's Godflesh,[11] as well as his collaborations with Martin, Ice,[12] Techno Animal,[11] and Curse of the Golden Vampire, are prime examples of industrial hip hop.[13] The last of these was also a collaboration with Alec Empire, from Berlin, who also participated in the style in a number of his albums.
Related genres[edit]
Industrial hip hop is connected to (and sometimes confused with) the more experimental variants of trip hop. It also anticipates many of the developments of dubstep. Illbient is also adjacent to, and possibly a subgenre of, industrial hip hop. Contemporary industrial hip hop is also closely connected to digital hardcore and breakcore.