Hip hop’s techno influence

Hip Hop has always been experiementing with electronic music. Hip hop producers use many of the synth arpeggios used in electronica.

The legendary Afrika Bambaataa first fused electro funk and hip hop back in 1982, when he and Arthur Baker interpolated Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express to make Planet Rock.  Afrika Bambaataa would go on to influence artists such as Mantronix and World Class Wreckin Cru. Producers such as Mannie Fresh and DJ Premier claim to have been influenced by Kurtis Mantronik. J Dilla would later pay homage to Trans Europe Express on his album Welcome To Detroit.

During the mid 1990’s the sound of popular music would be heavily sculpted by Scandanavian producers. Many of the mega hits for Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys were the creation of Swedish producer Max Martin. These records embodied a sound already established in Europe as Europop – a synth heavy, pulsating rythym that shared similar chords to techno music.

Danish producers such as Soulshock & Carlin, Cutfather were making records for 2Pac, Queen Latifah, Eric B & Rakim et al since the early 90’s.

Even today, the biggest producers in pop music are from Scandanavia. Dr Luke got his break remixing Black Star’s Respiration. Other heavyweights such as RedOne and Roc Nation/StarRoc producers Stargate  helped bring that brassy, pulsating techno sound back into the mainstream.

After Timbaland and Marcella Aracia travelled to Ibiza for the summer, they were impressed by a certain Benny Benassi record, which inspired The Way I Are .

This record helped to popularize the 4 to the floor rythym (that is commonplace in dance music) – making way for more techno collaborations with the likes of David Guetta and co. Personally,  I doubt Kanye would have bothered to make Stronger (sampling Daft Punk) if the The Way I Are was never made.  Today, the biggest producers in hip hop such as Jim Jonsin and Just Blaze have reverted to sampling techno & europop records.