Dat Mixtape Project for New Media Literacy

By: Derrais Carter (This is the first draft of a larger project. It needs YOUR feedback)
In “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robinson, and Margaret Weigel report on new media literacy and participatory culture in the digital age. New media literacy is defined as “cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape.” Jenkins et al’ provide a list of eleven new media skills including appropriation and distributed cognition; both of which are central to this project. I use appropriation and distributed cognition to evaluate the generative potential of www.datpiff.com, an online free mixtape website. I have two guiding questions for this analysis. First, how do mixtapes utilize appropriation at the juncture of history, memory, and time? Second, how can datpiff be used to promote distributive cognition in the digital age? To answer these questions I first explain musical sampling in hip hop and the role it plays in mixtape creation. I then provide numerous mixtapes from datpiff.com on my blog in order to make a case for their importance to distributive cognition. By placing them on my blog, I am providing a public forum for people to openly engage and discuss their interpretations of what is being done on these mixtapes. It is similar to the comment function of datpiff, however my comment section reflects what aspects of these mixtapes can help class exercises.
Throughout this project I include various multimedia clips to illustrate my method, and I offer no definitive conclusion. Rather, I present the reader/listener with a productive space for his/her own mediation in the continuation of this endeavor.
Datpiff is an online free mixtape download community dedicated to promoting hip hop music. The name, datpiff, meaning “that superior” is meant to position the website as THE mixtape authority. Generally, datpiff is aimed at the free circulation/distribution and evaluation of mixtapes. Guests may browse the entire site, but uploading and downloading privileges are reserved for registered users. Uploaded mixtapes are created by professional deejays (djs) and producers as well as amateurs. The mixtape upload feature helps level the professional playing field for up-and-coming djs and producers because their work is not separated from the more experienced artists. Also, underground, or independent, producers can showcase instrumental beats while artists provide users with remixed and unreleased lyrical verses. I am analyzing datpiff because the free content, in conjunction with sampling websites and free audio software, provide free educational tools for classrooms in the digital age. There is no “standard” mixtape on datpiff, thus my analysis is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather I use datpiff to present an “opening” of what the website offers for classroom media literacy.

Dat business
When the datpiff homepage loads, the advertisement at the top of the page offers a bit of irony. The ad is for www.Lawyers.com. This specific ad highlight’s divorce (although it seems plausible to place copyright at the center of the ad). Other advertisements on the homepage are powered by videoegg which is a rich media ad company . Red Robin family restaurant and Superpages use the same ad space at different times. Whenever the user holds the mouse over the ad for three seconds a multimedia commercial loads. Refreshing the page, however, exposes the user to a new set of ads. A Suntrust ad replaces the Lawyers.com ad and videoegg is replaced with an interactive ad where the user can make Susan Boyle slap herself by clicking her hand as she cries.
The left side of the homepage is roughly divided into five sections which provide users with a list of featured mixtapes and videos. The first section features three mixtapes that may not gain the exposure of mainstream rappers and djs. These mixtapes feature more local/underground rappers. The second section promotes the eight most popular mixtapes of the last 24 hours. The next section highlights the top eight videos for that day. The fourth section focuses on the top eight mixtapes being steamed live and reloads every five minutes. The final section highlights the week’s top videos. Users can also vote on mixtapes with a 1-5 star rating system.

Dat Techne

As an interactive endeavor, this project seeks to engage readers/listeners and provide spaces for their input. The aim of this section is to define terms and ideas that are key to making this project generative: remix, blend/mash-up, sample, and flow.
A remix is an altered version of a song. An authorized remix, in the popular music genre, includes added lyrical verses from featured guest artists, but it can also contain a reconstructed instrumental track . Also, popular music remixes tend to be very similar to the original song. A blend, or mash-up, is an unauthorized remix that has been created from a variety of sound resources in a collage-like fashion to invent a new product . Sampling refers to “the act of taking a portion…of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song.” Sampling makes blends/mash-ups possible:

“Unpack the meanings, unstuff the fragments and the logic remains the same: the part speaks for the whole, the whole is an extension of the part. It’s a holographic thing” DJ Spooky

Adam Haupt argues that “hip-hop artists make informed artistic and political choices when using samples during the construction of new music texts.” Haupt politicizes hip hop sampling practices too quickly, for not all sampling choices are political. According to 9th Wonder, a major hip hop producer, Haupt’s claim is not always true: click here for Soul Culture Video

Haupt generalizes the complexity of the sampling practice by making it SO political. In fact, it is the contentious relationship between samples and historical configurations of identity that make samples important, and not all songs containing samples have such political complexity.

Samples typically make up the core of the song, yet they augment, diminish, loop, or fragment aspects of the original composition so that something new might be created. Some samples, though, change the pitch and/or tempo of the original song and change the lyrics. This is the case with “My Way Home” by Kanye West featuring common. In “My Way Home” Gil Scott-Heron’s song “Home is Where the Hatred Is” is the core of the composition (audio clip).

Kanye West and Common - "My Way Home" (instrumental)



Gil Scott-Heron - "Home is Where the Hatred Is"



The Kanye West track is a slowed down version of Gil Scott-Heron's song. A more complex example is "Fragments" by Wu Tang featuring Del Ta Funkee Homosapien samples Marvin Gaye's "Flying High"

Wu Tang and Del The Funkee Homosapien "Fragments"


Marvin Gaye "Flying High"


A major term in this datpiff techne is flow.

“Flow. Machines that describe other machines, texts that absorb other texts, bodies that absorb other bodies. It’s a carnivorous situation where any sound can be you, and where any word you say is already known. Flow, counter-flow. The idiot as processing device, slave to the moment, outside of time because for him there is only the moment of thought. No past, no present, no future” DJ Spooky

“Rembrandt, Rouke, I am art with the flow…the way I put it together tear em’ apart wit the flow” Jay-Z

“There’s something bout the way the Nina Simone piano flow. It's like a Michaelangelo painted a portrait of Maya Angelou and gave it to a sick poet for the antidote. If music gets you choked up, this is the tree and the rope" Kanye West Get By (remix)

Flow, or the term formally known as appropriation. To Flow is to play with language and time. In terms of hip hop and sampling, flow results in a composition of linear fragments and looped recordings which come together on a sonic terrain. Flow diminishes historical chronology and memory because it respects neither. In fact, flow operates on two levels. On one hand, flow is about the creative moment which seeks not to bring forth some nostalgic iteration, but to relish the potential of NOW. When DJ Spooky writes that flow has “no past, no present, no future” the present is assumed to be an arbitrary descriptor of one’s embodied position. On the other hand, flow is FIXED in time because it provides continuity in rap music. With flow, the arrangement exists in a temporal chamber of fluidity and continuity. Without the temporal rhythmic balance, or the beat, flow fails. Flow’s chronological discontinuity can create a rhetorical moment. It can also “open” a space for new ideas which I explore below. One debate that is continually rehashed in American culture is the way in which the Civil Rights Movement leaders are represented in contemporary black popular culture, especially in hip hop. In 1999, the rap duo Outkast was sued by the managers of Rosa Park’s estate because they named a song after her.

Likewise, cartoonist Aaron McGruder received scathing criticism for his use of Martin Luther King Jr in the animated series The Boondocks.

Two issues are at stake in both scenarios. On one hand, members of the Civil Rights Movement are fighting to maintain their legacy. On the other hand, a generation of artists are claiming and reimagining history on their own terms. In addition to the two scenarios described, I remixed a song by rapper Jean Grae by incorporating a clip from a Studs Terkel interview with Martin Luther King Jr. I use King’s statement on hate and haters as an introduction to Grae’s song titled “Hater’s Anthem.



Analyzing mixtape mash-ups often requires knowledge of sampling and remixing, which I have provided above. In addition to the terminology, I have found and utilized free websites and programs for this particular project. Since datpiff is structured around free access to digital materials, these same free tools should, and could be, incorporated into a classroom. It is with this “free” logic that I used the following websites and software as resources for engaging creative work using mixtapes:
the-breaks (sample info)
whosampled (sample info)
youtube
Audacity –music editing software
Windows Movie Maker

Your TURN
Prior et al’s Cultural History Activity Theory, or CHAT, emphasizes how activity is positioned within a network of systems which are both concrete and discursive, so understanding activity depends on how people, institutions, materials, and language position a person(s). Activity is central to CHAT. Prior et al state that in mediated activity “action and cognition are distributed over time and space and among people, artifacts, and environments and thus also laminated, as multiple frames or fields coexist in any situated act. In activity, people are socialized…as they appropriate cultural resources, but also individuated as their particular appropriations historically accumulate to from a particular individual…[which] opens up a space for cultural change, for a personalization of the social.”
The reader/listener’s task is to interpret, evaluate, and comment on the embedded mixtapes below. Your feedback will work like the comment section on Datpiff. The main difference between datpiff’s comment section and my comment section is you are expected to analyze each original song as well as the mixtape hybrid. So, for instance, how does “Fools Rush In” differ from “Ten Crack Commandments”? What happens when both songs are blended? The intent here is to create a pool of evaluations and try to form a general consensus. Why comment? Your engagement and feedback is part of a large endeavor called distributive cognition which uses technology to expand cognitive processes. So, by using technology to think through and evaluate this material, we are DOING new media literacy.


Blue Eyes Meets Bedstuy

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Frank Sinatra - "Fools Rush In"



goes with...

Biggie - "Ten Crack Commandments"



Hannibal King Presents American Gangsters
Starring: Jay-Z and Frank Sinatra

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Frank Sinatra - "Glad to Be Unhappy" goes with "Pray"



DJ Swindle Presents: AlMatic (Al Green and Nas)

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Author E. Lynn Harris dies at age 54

By JOSH L. DICKEY (AP)

LOS ANGELES — E. Lynn Harris, a pioneer of gay black fiction and a literary entrepreneur who rose from self-publishing to best-selling status, has died, his publicist said Friday. He was 54.

Publicist Laura Gilmore said Harris died Thursday night after being stricken at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, and a cause of death had not been determined. She said Harris, who lived in Atlanta, fell ill on a train to Los Angeles a few days ago and blacked out for a few minutes, but seemed fine after that.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said only that a man matching Harris' name and date of birth had died Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which was confirmed by hospital spokeswoman Simi Singer. Gilmore said an autopsy would be performed Monday or Tuesday.

An improbable and inspirational success story, Harris worked for a decade as an IBM executive before taking up writing, selling the novel "Invisible Life" from his car as he visited salons and beauty parlors around Atlanta. He had unprecedented success for an openly gay black author and his strength as a romance writer led some to call him the "male Terry McMillan."

He went on to mainstream success with works such as the novel "Love of My Own" and the memoir "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted."

His writing fell into several genres, including gay and lesbian fiction, African American fiction and urban fiction. But he found success in showing readers a new side of African American life: the secret world of professional, bisexual black men living as heterosexuals.

"He was a pioneering voice within the black LGBT community but also resonated with mainstream communities, regardless of race and sexual orientation," said Herndon Davis, a gay advocate and a diversity media consultant in Los Angeles. "Harris painted with eloquent prose and revealing accuracy the lives of African American men and the many complicated struggles they faced reconciling their sexuality and spirituality while rising above societal taboos within the black community."

Harris published 11 novels, 10 of which were on The New York Times best-seller list. There are over 4 million copies of his books in print, according to his publisher, Doubleday.

"We at Doubleday are deeply shocked and saddened to learn of E. Lynn Harris' death at too young an age," said Doubleday spokeswoman Alison Rich, his longtime publicist. "His pioneering novels and powerful memoir about the black gay experience touched and inspired millions of lives, and he was a gifted storyteller whose books brought delight and encouragement to readers everywhere."

In an interview last year, Harris recalled the first time he realized he was poor, when as a young boy his family was invited to the housewarming of a well-to-do family in his hometown of Fayetteville, Ark. Fresh from an afternoon of playing outside, he tried desperately to tuck his bare, dusty feet underneath the sofa after another guest remarked on his appearance.

"I didn't grow up in the kind of environment that my characters grew up in, or the kind of environment that I live in now," he said. "It was one of the things that I always aspired to."

His 1994 debut, "Invisible Life," was a coming-of-age story that dealt with the then-taboo topic.

"If you were African American and you were gay, you kept your mouth shut and you went on and did what everybody else did," he said. "You had girlfriends, you lived a life that your parents had dreamed for you."

Harris was not living as an openly gay man when "Invisible Life" was published, and could not acknowledge the parallels between himself and the book.

"People would often ask, 'Is this book about you?' I didn't want to talk about that," he said. "I wasn't comfortable talking about it. I would say that this is a work of fiction."

Harris said that the courage readers got from the book empowered him to be honest about himself. He continued to tell stories dealing with similar issues, to tell black middle class readers about people they knew, but who were living secret lives.

For years, he was alone in exposing the "down low," but the phenomenon exploded into mainstream culture in 2004, a decade after "Invisible Life." That year, J.L. King's "On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Men" hit bookstores and the author appeared on Oprah Winfrey's TV show.

His 10th novel, "Just Too Good to Be True," focused for the first time on a straight relationship, telling the story of a 21-year-old football star, his mother, and his cheerleader love interest. Harris taught writing classes at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, and leaned on his students there to gather material for the book.

The last book Harris published, "Basketball Jones," focused on a hidden relationship between a successful business professional in New Orleans and an NBA star.

Janis F. Kearney met Harris when the two were among a handful of black journalism students at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The two became fast friends and their relationship deepened as they both evolved into authors. Kearney, who now lives in Little Rock, Ark., recalled Harris' huge heart.

"I've seen him help so many people," Kearney said. "He was very open, very giving, very caring, someone you felt so fortunate to have in your life. He's just one of those people I'll never stop missing."

Associated Press Writers Bob Jablon and Solvej Schou in Los Angeles; AP Writer Michelle Locke in San Francisco; AP Writer Errin Haines in Atlanta; AP Writer Noah Trister in Little Rock, Ark.; and AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

Black Camera: An International Film Journal

Edited by Michael T. Martin

ISSN: 1536-3155
E-ISSN: 1947-4237

Black Camera is devoted to the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience and is the only scholarly film journal of its kind in the United States. It regularly features essays and interviews that engage film in social as well as political contexts and in relation to historical and economic forces that bear on the reception, distribution, and production of film in local, regional, national, and transnational settings and environments.

In addition, Black Camera includes research and archival notes, editorials, reports, interviews with emerging and prominent filmmakers, and book and film reviews and addresses a wide range of genres—including documentary, experimental film and video, diasporic cinema, animation, musicals, comedy, and so on. It challenges received and established views and assumptions about the traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, where new and longstanding cinematic formations are in play. While its scope is interdisciplinary and inclusive of all of the African diaspora, the journal devotes issues or sections of issues to national cinemas, as well as independent, marginal, or oppositional films and cinematic formations.

Volume 1, number 1 will be available fall 2009.