Straight Outta Chevy Chase
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
From boom bap to EDM, we look at the line between hip-hop and not, and meet a defender of the genre that makes you question... who's in and who's out.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
No, wait, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR. Hey I'm Jad Abumrod. I'm Robert Colbridge. This is Radio Lab, a podcast. Okay, so Robert, here's a question that I've been puzzling over for a long time. What is the fruitiest fruit that you know? My fruitiest fruit is a plum. Well no, I mean that's yours, I don't want to take that away from you. No you shouldn't. But when you ask most people that question, they say apple or orange. No, I mean it's true. Science isn't figured out that when you make a category in your mind, you're not doing it based on like a set list of traits. You're like, what you do is you call to mind the prototypical example of that category and then you measure this new thing against it. And for fruits, prototype is the Gala apple, if you ask me the red shiny waxy apple. You say there's somebody who's decided that an apple is the fruity fruit? They've done experiments. Oh they've done experiments. They've done experiments. I bet you banana's outpole apples for consumption. Maybe. But that's not what makes a fruitiest fruit a fruity fruit. It's more about like how well it represents the category. Okay. That's what it's about. Why are we talking about this though? Well because I've been wanting to explore this in story form forever, but you never have a story. So it's like a you never find a story, but I got one now. You did what it's not about fruit though. What is it about? It's about this. What is it? What are you talking about? Let me explain. Hey, so we met this guy Andrew Marantz. I work at the New Yorker as an editor and I write stuff occasionally. I wandered in here one day by mistake I think. Super interesting guy, great reporter. And he ended up talking with us about this story he was reporting for the New Yorker, about hip hop. There are all kinds of rappers who are trying to sing. And how hip hop might be changing. Because as we all know, this was a genre of music that began in a really specific time and place. Bronx, seventies, black and Latino kids. But it's since expanded so much that these inevitable questions pop up. And to really simplify it, the more white people come to the party, the more you kind of start going.
Transcription truncated.
From boom bap to EDM, we look at the line between hip-hop and not, and meet a defender of the genre that makes you question... who's in and who's out.