We all know about that thing with hip-hop, right? About how it's a music and culture so deeply tied to essence that it’s hard to define or confine its parameters. But then, we have hop-snobs, hop-pioneers, hop-champions, hop-protectors, hop-whatevers -- they all want to take turns asserting what is and isn’t hop. Even Thesis, one of the Musicologists, when speaking of Kanye's Late Registration, once said, “Just because it’s a young-black making music, doesn’t make it hip-hop.”
Think about that notion, for a moment, the notion that there is music being created these days, often by hop artists, that doesn’t exactly meet the salient criteria of hip-hop. Not because it’s lacking, but because the textures and elements comprising some of this music is so diverse and melded that you search for a tidy label and just can’t find one. Other times it's a "neo-soul" artist, with an edge or reach, not interested in strictly playing inside that "neo-soul" box.
There is music being made now that defies the current genres. Albums that you listen and come away scratching your head like, "Was that a hop album or a soul album or a rock album or funk album or...? What was that?" Yeah, it could have been, essentially, a hop album, but it was a soul album, too. It was probably also a funk album with jazz elements, maybe a good deal of screaming rock & roll guitars, as well. What is with these artists these days? These artists that can't just stay in one neat lane? Who knows? What we do know is that we like it. Zipping in and out of lanes, swerving through traffic is most definitely a perilous journey, but therein lies the rush -- for the driver and the listener riding shotgun. No, we didn't know exactly where Mos Def was taking us on New Danger or exactly where Dre was headed on Love Below and we weren't 100 percent sure if Erykah was 100 percent in control of the wheel on Worldwide Underground. But, after a while we got comfortable enough to just sit back and enjoy. These artists were and are embarking on a journey that is forging some compelling new territory. It's a movement that has produced a new genre of music. We call it Bridge.
It's a difficult genre to define, since, in essence, it’s a music characterized by the fact that it defies any true definition. That type of rigidity (setting parameters) is counter to what Bridge is about. For a Bridge cheat-sheet, refer to our sidebar with some examples of Bridge albums and some Bridge hallmarks to look for. Otherwise, you can let Thesis, the creative mind that coined the term Bridge, explain: “Bridge in the sense that it connects all of the previous genres in black music (all of them) and this new music caters to every generation from grandma down to the teens. That’s something that most genres didn’t do -- so it bridges the age and sonic gap (from blues to jazz to rap). Also Bridge, as in "take it to the bridge", which is the most funky or creative part of a song. When kats say "take it to the bridge", like James Brown used to do, you know somebody is about to flip it. That typifies Bridge, especially because its pioneers most likely started their careers doing other music (hip hop, soul, whatever), but then just got real creative, and funky and flipped there styles into this new Bridge music.”
It might remind you of the soul and funk music that characterized The 70s. Groups like Sly and the Family Stone, The Parliament and Earth Wind & Fire built on what James Brown began, but were throwing in some Jimi Hendrix and Motown, too. Pionners like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield took decidedly different approaches to their music as well. Mayfield's Roots was far more gutter and dissonant and defiant than much of what he did with the Impressions. Marvin was on a whole 'nother mental and emotional plane on albums such as What's Going On? and Here, My Dear than his duets with Tammi Terrell. The songs were open ended, with layered bass and exploratory lyrics. Stevie ramped up his game so high in the 70s, that the innocent Motown-sound of Lil' Stevie seemed to come from a totally different human being. These new genres were just as much of a "concoction" as they were "evolutions."
We’ve arrived at a similar tipping point. Today is a new era, people. For the first time since Kool DJ Herc flipped some break beats and created hip-hop, we have a new genre of music, where artists are offering albums that venture away from whatever is their core genre, to explore and cook up these beautiful mélanges rooted in all the black idioms: blues, jazz, soul, rock, R&B, reggae and hop. It is the newest stage of evolution in black music.
The ill thing about Bridge is that it’s not an exact science when determining it’s genesis. The same way funk artists can look back to what James was doing in the late 50s and early 60s and soul artists might finger Ray Charles and Aretha as genesis-artists; you can probably go all the way back to some of the incredibly underappreciated gems, courtesy of Gil Scott-Heron, to find Bridge as a fetus. Gil is known in a lot of circles as the progenitor of rap music. He did "spit" poetry back then, that's for sure. But he sung, too. And he sung with a crooner's touch, since he grew up on Motown, but also featured the powerful earnestness of the great socio-political soul artists of the 70s. There was also his music, which featured improvised jazz-stylings by jazz artists like Hubert Laws and Ron Carter. Gil was not a funk artist, he was not a soul artist, he was not necessarily a jazz musician or just a poet and it was too early for rap. He was a very early version of one a Bridge artist, a dude who defied definition.
If we fast forward about 20 years, though, we come across hip-hop albums, such as Aquemeni, Carnival and Black On Both Sides to find the first true Bridge "elements" shining in a real way. With “Spottieottiedopaliscious”, “Hold On, Be Strong” and “Liberation”, Kast gave us such an eclectic sound to find on a hop album. Clef offered a whole lot on his 1997 solo-debut, from reggae to love songs to straight up hop. And “Umi Says” and “Climb” were obviously Mos’ first hard dives into what would become a full fledge movement. “Rock & Roll” is perhaps the most powerful rendition of Bridge, not only because Mos gave it to us at the genre’s earliest stage, but because the sound and the tone were so Bridge. It’s a song that celebrates the creativity and eclectic nature of all the black music genres and it gave the album, a hip-hop album, a fuller feel. I mean, BOB was markedly different than Black Star or what Kweli dropped the next year with Hi-Tek (Train of Thought).
Then Stankonia and Like Water For Chocolate dropped in what would become a seminal year for the direction of music, in general, and a year that had a grand impact on the development of Bridge. Not to be overlooked were Fantastic, Ecleftic, Voodoo and Mama’s Gun. These weren't necessarily Bridge albums, but they all had quantifiable impact in the way this Bridge embryo was developing. D’Angelo with his Brillow pad soul and Erykah with her new-soul (and we mean “new“), both of which manifested discernable hop influence – like gritty boom-bap drum rhythms or grimy bass line – they also featured live instrumentation you’d find on jazz albums. Clef hit us with another gumbo-album, Ecleftic, where he refused to stay in one lane, almost to the point where it made an unsuspecting listener a bit dizzy. The Soulquarians and Ummah also began shaping a sound that was easily able to toggle between hop and soul, because it was essentially both melded together with the sensibilities of men (?uestlove, J Dilla and pianist James Poyser) that could play jazz instruments.
By 2002, with hip-hop and neo-soul plummeting, artists began branching out in earnest. Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections dropped that March, preceded by the galactic song and video for "Closet Freak". Lo was on some other stuff and it was clear that this was an album that (back then) defied any genre and was new in the extent of its quirks and genre-dabbling. There was something for everyone, sounds of everything. I’ll admit that I slept on the joint at first. That often happens when a fearless artist dives into the deep end, head first – not everyone joins. The appreciation and amazement at the lunacy of Cee-Lo was there, but the path he was helping to forge was still unclear. Nine months later, Electric Circus drops. Common is spittin’ throughout, since he couldn’t even begin to attempt the dual roles Mos, 3000 and Lo serve on their efforts; but, ?uestlove oversaw a production work (teaming with the Soulquarians and Common) that sped by Like Water. Steely Dan showed through, UK soul star Omar showed through, Cee-Lo made his customary appearance and Comm took his album to the cosmos, making stops everywhere. What genre of music didn’t you hear on that joint?
Throughout these years, you had to wonder what was brewing. There was a new essence forming, formulas were changing and equations were getting disregarded. So when you finished 3000’s cinematic masterpiece, Love Below, and a little more than one year later, Mos drops The New Danger – the tightest sprawl in recent black music history – in October of 2004, you had to start thinking about identifying a new, developed movement. This wasn’t and isn’t just a few artists indulging their smorgasbord appetites with gluttony – this is a new-breed music with discernable hallmarks.
For some years now, we’ve excoriated hip-hop for its staleness. Creativity, we seem wont to say, is a thing of the past in this music that changed America over the past 30 years (read Thesis and Uncle Harry’s Musicology essays for two different perspectives on whether or not hip-hop is dead for more insight). R&B has been corny for some time now, only to be saved by a new-age soul crew (D'Angelo, Maxwell, Tony Rich, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Musiq) that came on the scene in the last half of the 90s and early in the new millennium. But then a slew of imposters came through to hijack that movement and this new-soul became hackneyed and cliché. Whether artists are stumbling across Bridge as they retreat from the staleness of the current genres or they're finding Bridge through proactive exploration is tough to discern.
But it was bound to happen at some point -- black music never stayed stagnant for too long. Blues developed from gospel and jazz was born from blues and gospel. Later, rock crawled out the womb with conspicuous elements of R&B and blues and jazz; just like funk put a new spin on R&B and rock; and just like the hop was jazz and funk and R&B and soul.
The new day is here. Bridge isn’t ruling the world and it may never supplant the hop and rock as music hegemons. And it's so new that we probably still haven't completely wrapped our arms around this new movement. But, the day is here. Bear witness.
