You gotta understand something though. Yes, Hip Hop's strength is often in the "simplicity" of the beats. However, just because the beat is "simple" doesn't mean it's simple to write either. That's what's so freakin hard about writing Hip Hop sometimes. The saying "less is more" clearly applies to it, but trying to make a modern catchy beat by the guidelines of "less is more" can get very hard to do.

Creating good Hip Hop can take a great deal of creativity. You need to make a beat that stands out from the rest, you must know how to edit and tweek voices and have a good grasp on sampling. So many people just associate Hip Hop with sampling everything and no real work goes into creating it. That assumption is so far from the truth.

Hip Hop has come a long way over the years. This is a style of music that changes by the day. You could rip out a tight beat at 12 noon today, and by 12 noon the next day that beat is already o'l school I've said this many times on this forum. "Writing CHEESE-HOP is much easier than writing Hip Hop". I did a lot of Hip Hop when my wife and I were just dating in college and both living on campus. It was a lot of work, and wasn't easy. There's a lot more to it than just the beat itself. There are many other factors that play into the completion of the song. If anyone here thinks that Hip Hop is a talentless and easy as pie style of music, I say you're sorely mistaken. There's so much more to it that often does not gets discussed here, such as where to apply the breaks, vocal effects, background vocals and effects that apply to them, re-sampling the beat and slicing it or using auto-chop to get different variations of the same beat,.... the list just goes on........... I've posted a few Hip Hop beats here, but those are just beats. If I was to use those for a complete composition the "beat" itself is a just small fraction of the completed work.

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 04-30-2007).]