Japanese freestyle

[koganbot]

Japanese freestyle — is there a lot of it? I wouldn't know. Just glad that the style, which is pretty much gone from U.S. airwaves, is still strong in Asia.

(h/t arbitrary_greay, of course)

Tomato n' Pine FAB ("Free As A Bird")

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The rhythm is simply a hopped-up electrobeat,* not freestyle's fast twists and breakneck turns, but the melody, at least in the verse, could have come out of NYC or Union City, 1987. Like this:

Maribell "Roses Are Red"

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Also, in the midst of this week's Brave Brothers discussion I discovered a freestyle riff right smack center in the debut days of After School, 2009:

After School "Play Girlz"

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*[UPDATE 2018: I didn't know it when I made this post, but the correct term for the rhythm is "Eurobeat" (a term a couple readers use in the comments); but FAB's melody resembles freestyle in a way that most — but not all — Eurobeat doesn't. (I say "not all" given that Italodisco itself was in interplay with freestyle and feeding this into Eurobeat.) The term "Eurobeat" has had several uses over the years, but the one relevant to this post is an Italodisco-derived sound in the early to mid '90s that sold almost exclusively in Japan, though some producers and performers were Italian. The beats move fast at '90s speed, though, unlike vintage Italodisco.]

Comments

[koganbot]

"Still strong in Asia" — i.e., I know the influence is strong in Korea (e.g., Kara "Jumping," 4minute "Hot Issue," H.O.T. "We Are The Future," Leader'S "Hope," Chuli & Miae "Why You," etc.), and I'm wondering if it's strong in Japan too. A question about the influence would be how much is from direct and deliberate takeoffs on American freestyle of the '80s and how much is from ongoing evolution of Korean music that's taken in this or that aspect of freestyle. Not that producers are likely to say to themselves, "I am taking this element from American freestyle and this other element from the Korean use of freestyle." It's not like genealogy. And I've never heard a Korean track that sounds like American freestyle start-to-finish.

I also don't know how prevalent this usage of the term "freestyle" is in Korea, or even if it's in use at all. By "this usage" I mean stuff that sounds like the Miami-NY style in the '80s w/ fierce intertwining beats and intertwining riffs and dolorous melodies, usually with female singers, mostly but not always Latina. Debbie Deb, Exposé, Company B, Judy Torres, Cynthia, Lisette Melendez, the Cover Girls, etc. Of course there are other, unrelated uses of the term "freestyle," e.g. for improvised rap, for improvised breakdancing, choices in rollerblading, etc. A quick glance at Google gets me all those for "Korean freestyle" but not the specific musical genre. There is a Korean group Freestyle (프리스타일), whose style on the several tracks I've heard is r&b-leaning dance-pop with lots of rap but nothing from the musical genre "freestyle."

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I would have to say that although this sound was really prevalent in all of Asia for ages, I've never heard the term "freestyle" used (either the English word or the translation). It was called disco** at first, and later probably just pop.

** The sinophone world missed 70s disco, so what Chinese ppl think of as disco is 80s disco. I think this was less the case in Japan, but Japan never went for funk in a huge way, so.

[koganbot]

"Freestyle" wasn't the only word used in America, either. In the '80s I was hearing the term "Latin Hip-Hop" a lot more than "freestyle," though, since there's rarely rapping, I understand why "freestyle" ended up as the general historical term (to distinguish the genre from the hip-hop and rap made by Latinos). The beats did kinda sorta originate in hip-hop, in that Afrika Bambaataa's two big Soul Sonic Force hits — "Planet Rock" and "Lookin' For A Perfect Beat" — had a huge impact on freestyle, much greater than their impact on New York hip-hop, even though Soul Sonic Force was based in New York. Miami hip-hop in the form of Miami Bass was what really developed the "Planet Rock" sound in hip-hop, and it moved around the country from there. (Well, the story is not so simple or neat.) Eventually New York hip-hop had to take in the electrofunk that was coming at it from everywhere else. But in the meantime, New York club music was using those beats.

The beats for "Planet Rock" and "Looking For A Perfect Beat" were provided by Arthur Baker and John Robie, who I associate with club music much much more than with hip-hop. Yet there was a reason to call the Latino variant on this particular sort of club music "Latin hip-hop," in that it had hip-hop antecedents and was something of a Latino equivalent to hip-hop.

But I'd say the term was more confusing than not. Also, when I claim that it was the term I was hearing, I actually mean that it was the term I was reading: I came to the music relatively late (1987), wasn't much of a club goer, was never in the music's prime audience.

The thing is, "freestyle," especially the New York variant, is a very narrow and specific sound. The only thing free about it is the beats. It really is a generic genre, without the vagueness and variety you get with the use of other genre terms in America. And because its sound never really diffused into American pop or r&b (Madonna never did an out-and-out freestyle track, though she's sometimes associated with the music), when I hear a freestyle riff it's now instantly recognizable to me as a freestyle riff and nothing else. But when challenged I wouldn't be able to tell you what makes it a freestyle riff. This is like recognizing a face. E.g., at first, I didn't know who was who in T-ara, then I focused on Jiyeon in the "Roly-Poly" video, hair up, then tried to match that face with how she looked with hair down and different hair colors, went from "That must be Jiyeon, I suppose," to being able to recognize her instantly. But I can't tell you on what basis I recognize her face other than that it's, you know, Jiyeon's face.* Back to freestyle: melodies aren't quite as either/or as are the riffs (either it's a freestyle riff or it's not), but I usually have a sense of what I mean when I say, "That's a freestyle melody."

But the freestyle sound did diffuse into and mingle with Italodisco etc. and now I can talk about a K-pop song having freestyle elements. Whereas in America, a freestyle track was basically freestyle through and through, and nothing else, really.

*But of course, "jiyeon plastic surgery" = "About 103,000 results (0.26 seconds)"