Andre Benjamin and Antwon Patton aka “Andre 3000 and Big Boi” formed the hip-hop duo all the way back in 1991. So how did this little known group from Georgia work their way to changing the hip-hop industry? It all started with the radio success of the song “Players Ball”, a hard hitting rap that fit the mold set by rappers of the early 1990’s such as Ice Cube, The Notorious BIG, and Tupac Shakur. While the success was not ground breaking, it did open the door for hip-hop/rap in the southern United States. Before them, Hip-hop artists came from two major sources, New York and Los Angeles as that was where the international recognized music labels were. They had proved that they could make a the music industry change by accepting southern rappers and blazed the trail for others like TI, Lil Wayne and Ludacris. Yet while they changed the demographics of millennial hip-hop they also began to slowly change the music itself.

In the early 2000s, hip-hop was set to a strict standard that used heavy beats and followed the pattern of a verse, chorus, verse. This standard is broken around the 1:40 mark where Andre 3000 interrupts the flow of the rap and forms a slow pop type lyric. Even stranger is the use of dog’s barking as a counter-beat that plays on top of the heavy drum beat that carries throughout the song. These simple things were the beginning of the pop influence that Outkast had begun to adopt. And people took notice. “Ms. Jackson” would go platinum in the United States with over 600,000 copies sold and would be in the top 10 in 15 other countries. However there most famous track was yet to come.

“Hey Ya!” would put Outkast front and center to the hip-hop world that was unknowingly going through a change. The easiest change that can be picked up is the use of gospel like choir background singers. As seen in the textbook, choir groups have been around since the beginning of the 20th century but had disappeared from popular music for quite a time. Andre created the choir sound by looping his voice over and over, as he was the only singer in the entire song. The second change is the use of a full range of instruments, not just a drum beat. Surprisingly, Andre 3000 learned how to play guitar just for this song and would play every instrument except for the bass which is properly represented in the video above. This would show the industry how classic musical instruments could be implemented to give the a song more pop appeal. And while these changes alter the course of hip-hop, it would help change how music was heard around the world.

In today’s music world, apps such as Spotify and Apple Music provide listeners with an endless supply of songs from around the world. But back in 2001, the radio and CD’s was the main platform. That as until Apple released iTunes, their online music purchasing and downloading platform. This now allowed computer users to download their music to the newly released iPod. So how did “Hey Ya” get involved? Since iTunes allowed users to purchase individual songs instead of the whole album, popularity did not depend on the overall album sales. Outkast’s “Hey Ya” would ride this wave of popularity and become the first song to reach a million downloads and be certified platinum as a download. This technology combined with the success they had turned the table on how music would be sold today.

So how would Outkast use this popularity to complete their change of hip-hop in the early 2000s. As they have already modified the music around them, it only makes sense that they would change the way that hip-hop appeared. When they first appeared on the mainstage they would be seen as another generic rap group from their style alone. 

Seen here is the classic west-coast style with the branded clothing which were seen across the industry. The idea came hand-in-hand with the idea of lots of jewelry, it showed the wealth that the artist had. And Outkast was no different when they appeared, yet by the middle of their career they decided to change the script.

This is from the song “Roses” on the speakerboxx album of 2004. I found that this best describes the noticed change for the group. Instead of staying in the constraints of the hip-hop environment, they pulled influence from the pop genre. For example, in the video for “Roses” they have multiple outfits that represent the 1950’s which was not representative of the “gangster” style seen in most music videos. And they would take these styles to the stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By changing their appearance and their musical styles, they would change how a hip-hop artist could represent themselves. So while people around the world witnessed them rise to the top, they also got to witness monumental change.

 

Paul Anka is largely unknown by young Canadians who are surrounded by homegrown artists such as Justin Bieber and Drake. However, Anka is by far one of the most influential Canadian singers to gain North American and International fame. Even more impressive is the fact that he achieved this status at only 14 years old after auditioning in New York City. He then recorded “Diana” which would push him to #1 in Canada and the US.

Yet, his singing skills were only outdone by his skills in composing and writing. Famous songs such as “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and “She’s a lady” by Tom Jones all featured the lyrics written solely by Paul. Other compositions included the theme song to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and “This is it” by Michael Jackson. These songs are what allowed Paul to stay in the music scene for over 40 years as he would appear in the Top 100 first in 1960 and for the last time in 2013. This is a feat that only few artists such as Cher, Santana and Paul McCartney have surpassed and is the reason that Paul is still singing today. His songs have even made the charts in Italy, France and Japan showing the expanse of influence that Paul has had on the music industry across the globe.

The above recording is the original Monaural recording of Crazy Love. In this song you can hear two distinct influences, one from Frank Sinatra and one from Nat King Cole. From Sinatra you can hear the big-band type sounds from the beginning with powerful trumpets and strings. This can be best heard in Sinatra’s “Taking a chance on love” as seen below. Listen to the pauses in his singing to hear the distinct trumpets.

Another key feature to Paul that is from Frank Sinatra influence is the way that Paul hangs on to the notes before he changes pitch. This form of crooning is something that Sinatra had been doing in his performances since the early 1950’s showing that it was an obvious influence. This influence would become even greater as the two would closely collaborate after the success of “My Way”. Lastly, he seems to have adopted his stage presence from certain aspects of Frank’s performances. Paul would use his hands for emphasize while staying relatively near the mic stand as did Frank during many large performances. Some could argue that this was the standard way of performance at the time, however, the close contact between the two of them indicates that their was a specific influence.

Another large influence in Paul’s career was Nat King Cole, the world famous Jazz pianist who was the first African American person to host a show on national broadcast. But what did Paul draw from Nat as he wrote his songs? The key is repetition. Paul structured his songs just as Nat did by having a chorus that was consistently sang after each verse. This can be seen when comparing “Lets fall in love” and “Put your head on my Shoulder”.

Each song has a distinct chorus that is repeated for emphasis. Paul would take this technique for all of his writing career and it would become the main writing format that is still used today.

For Paul, he had a distinct advantage when it came to the other crooners of his time. This advantage was based solely on his ability to write music. Most singers of the time had writers in the background such as Frank Sinatra who ironically had Paul in the background writing one of his most famous songs. This ability was first seen from Paul when his first signed contract was a singer/songwriter contract, Something that was relatively uncommon in the industry. He wrote for Tom Jones, The Partridge family, Van Morrison, and Don Mclean. So after his entire career, Paul has made more hits as a writer/composer then he has a singer. This shows the versatility of the Canadian legend.

Through all of these achievements Paul Anka put Canada on the map as a country that could produce international musicians. An easy comparison would be Michael Bublé who has enjoyed large international success. It could be said that without the groundwork laid by Paul, modern day crooners such as Bublé would not have the access to American and International markets. That is why Paul Anka is such a significant name in popular music with connections to Canada.

And to bring this bog to a close, I will leave the readers with an amazing fact about Paul Anka. As mentioned multiple times earlier, Paul Anka was the writer/mastermind to “My Way” the song that would somewhat define Frank Sinatra’s career. However, did you know that he wrote that song in only one night? This shows the absolute brilliance of the man. While he did have a French version to work with, he still had to mold it into an English song that made lyrical sense and would be good enough to present to his life long hero, Frank Sinatra. Instances like this is why Paul Anka is a defining Canadian (even though he became American in 1990….)

References

musicvideosparttwo. “Nat King Cole Let’s Fall In Love.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Mar. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2acqTQfSAKk.

O’Connor, Austin. “10 Things You May Not Know About Paul Anka.” AARP, 17 Apr. 2013, www.aarp.org/entertainment/music/info-04-2013/10-things-about-paul-anka.html.

“Paul Anka.” Biography, paulanka.com/biography/.

Milos1430. “Paul Anka – Crazy Love – 1958.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Sept. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMDyNjz4bwg.

Junievelasco. “Paul Anka – Diana.” YouTube, YouTube, 26 Aug. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh0doCIySw4.

The Payola scandal was described as a “Cancer” by Billboard and “a blur of booze, broads, and bribes” by DJ Joe Finan. The essence of the scandal was that labels and distributors were paying for their music to get played on stations across America. And for most of the fifties, this was the normal procedure for all disk jockeys. However, that all came to an end due to a scandal that was in no way connected to the music industry at all.

Charles Van Doren was a contestant on the game show “Twenty-One” when an accusation of fraud towards the show came into the light. He was a prominent celebrity at the time having just been named the host of “The Tonight Show”. His prominence was an ultimate factor in the congresses decision to investigate the rigging of game shows. They would go on to find that multiple shows were using the same kind of techniques and were all charged with fraud. This would cause quite the stir with the Congress who would then turn their sights to a sound that was changing the course of history. Rock and Roll.

Above we can see Alan Freed, the man who coined the term Rock and Roll, as he enters the Congress to speak before the investigative committee. With the Gameshow scandal fresh in their minds, Congress decided to look into the reports of payments being the deciding factor for play-time on many US stations. These reports stated only what was near common knowledge for anyone involved in the industry. Nearly all major Disk Jockeys were taking payments as it was only illegal in two states, New York and Pennsylvania. Yet since most were cash deals, they were never reported and made the takers guilty of fraud. So why did Alan Freed become the face of it all?

He was a D.J. in Cleveland that created the first rock concert, the Moondog Coronation Ball, which in Rock and Roll fashion crashed a stadium with a 10,000 person capacity with 20,000 people. He made waves by playing what was defined as “Black-music” on TV and Radio. He was the face of the new wave of Rock and Roll and was an easy target as the head of the Payola scandal. After hearing the testimonies of over 200 DJ’s and finding hundreds of thousands that had been paid, they dropped most of the charges. Except for those on Alan Freed.

Freed was still being charged with 26 counts of commercial bribery when his station, WABC, let him go. He had lost all his radio and television deals and was reduced to nothing when the District Attorney decided that their point had been proven and that the problem of Payola had been ended. This left Alan Freed out of all the progression to come with Rock and Roll and would be the last major thing in his life before his death 5 years later. Other than ruining the reputation of one of the builders of Rock, the investigation lead to the creation of new federal laws that banned any type of payola unless the broadcaster openly admitted to being paid. A small result for the lengths that were taken by the committee.

Yet did these investigations really eliminate the process of Payola and properly address the problems it created?

The answer is not really. The laws put into place did block the direct way of paying the DJ’s however left many loopholes that companies would take advantage of. For example, ” some employees attempted to cover up the transactions as paperwork for fictitious contest winners” meaning they were paying out DJ’s saying they won contests that were never actually created. Yet can we be surprised? The entire industry is like every other business in that money is the prime driving factor and in order to make the most money, people need to be listening to your songs the most. So when you evaluate the Sony case shown above, you should think about the risk vs. reward of what they did. They likely increased record sales by having DJ’s overplay their songs which creates millions of dollars for them. Yet they were only fined 10 million dollars which to a company as large as Sony, is mere pennies in their bank. The risk vs. reward would say to take the risk.

However, from my other perspective, that of being a music lover I see the negatives immediately. The fact that artists coming from labels who do not have the financials or do not have the greed will be less exposed to the general public. This prevents their music/art from being properly presented based on their talent. Ultimately, the grassroots musician would face major restrictions in the way their music was broadcasted until radio was no longer the main communicator. At least that’s what everyone hoped as the digital market opened up and music could be found on many platforms other than radio. Yet, the framework of Payola did not disappear.

Anyone familiar with Spotify will recognize this as the home page for the over 70 million paid subscribers. Yet, the page that is supposed to be a reflection of each individual’s musical tastes and favourites was instead transformed into this upon the release of drakes new album. So the question remains, has payola really been addressed or has it just been transformed?

Sources

Weinraub, Bernard. “The Man Who Knew It Wasn’t Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The New York Times. October 14, 1999. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/14/arts/the-man-who-knew-it-wasn-t-only-rock-n-roll.html.

“The Payola Scandal Heats up.” History.com. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-payola-scandal-heats-up.

Vineyard, Jennifer. “Sony BMG Apologizes For Payola Involving J. Lo, Avril, Good Charlotte, Others.” MTV News. July 25, 2005. Accessed July 18, 2018. http://www.mtv.com/news/1506321/sony-bmg-apologizes-for-payola-involving-j-lo-avril-good-charlotte-others/.

Mar, Alex. “Sony Ponies Up for Payola.” Rolling Stone. June 25, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sony-ponies-up-for-payola-94599/.

Shah, Saqib. “Spotify Offers Refunds to Angry Customers after Annoying Drake Music Promo.” The Sun. July 04, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6693597/spotify-refund-drake-music-ad/.

“Spotify Users – Subscribers in 2018.” Statista. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/244995/number-of-paying-spotify-subscribers/.

“Alan Freed – Radio Aircheck – WJW Cleveland 1954.” YouTube. April 20, 2011. Accessed July 18, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

“Alan Freed, Dick Clark and the Radio Payola Scandal.” Performing Songwriter Ent., LLC. August 24, 2015. Accessed July 18, 2018. http://performingsongwriter.com/alan-freed-payola-scandal/.GqKRYJS60Rc.

 

 

 

 

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