Old School

What it is

The first decade of recorded rap, roughly 1979 to 1985, when a producer either hired a band to replay a disco break or programmed a Roland TR-808 because it was cheap and nobody else wanted one. Sugar Hill Records kept a house band on retainer and cut records that were funk sessions with rapping over them. Two years later Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker ran Kraftwerk through an 808 on Planet Rock and the drum machine won the argument. What survives from both ends is a beat built for a block party rather than a bedroom: faster, brighter and more upright than anything the genre did afterwards.

What it sounds like

Bright and busy. A live-feeling kick and snare with the room still on them, a cowbell hammering a syncopated figure, and hi-hats keeping an eighth-note pulse rather than filling every sixteenth. The bass is a played line that moves constantly, not a sub that sits on the root. Everything crowds the front of the mix because these records were cut to be loud on a park sound system, so there is very little happening below 60Hz and a great deal between 200Hz and 4kHz. Handclaps double the snare. Nothing is drenched in anything.

Key elements

• The breakFour bars lifted from a funk record, or replayed by session players because a re-record was cheaper than a clearance. The break is the song and the rap sits on top of it.
• The 808 cowbellPlanet Rock made the TR-808 cowbell a rap instrument. It plays a 3-3-2 figure across the bar and cuts through everything because it lives around 800Hz, where nothing else in the arrangement does.
• Handclaps on the backbeatAn 808 clap layered under the snare on 2 and 4. It widens the crack without lengthening the snare, which is why the backbeat reads as loud without smearing.
• A bassline that movesElectric or synth bass, played, walking and syncopating rather than holding roots. It carries as much of the groove as the drums do, and it is mixed almost as loud.
• Eighth-note hatsThe hi-hat marks eighths and opens on the last offbeat of the bar. Dense sixteenth-note hats arrive later, with the MPC and with sampling proper.

How to get them

• KickPick something short and midrange-heavy with its fundamental near 70Hz rather than 50Hz. These records had no sub, and a modern 808 boom underneath an old-school pattern turns it into a costume.
• SnareA live snare with two or three hundred milliseconds of room on it. Layer an 808 clap under it about 6dB down and high-pass the clap at 400Hz so it adds crack rather than body.
• CowbellTR-808 cowbell, unpitched from the machine, on steps 1, 4, 7, 11 and 14. Pan it slightly off centre, keep it completely dry, and mix it louder than feels reasonable.
• BassPlay it in rather than draw it, or draw it and then drag notes ten to twenty milliseconds off the grid. Roll off below 50Hz so the kick keeps whatever bottom there is.
• Tempo and feelSit between 98 and 112 with the swing near 54 percent. The Sugar Hill band played with a light shuffle and the 808 records were programmed straight, so a small amount of swing covers both halves of the era.
• MixBus everything into one compressor, slow attack, about 3dB of gain reduction, then high-pass the master at 60Hz. That is roughly what a 1982 cutting engineer did to your record whether you asked or not.

Reference points

Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker, Kurtis Blow, Whodini, early Run-DMC, and the Sugar Hill house band. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.