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OhWord Presents SpaceRap: Call For Submissions · by R.H.S.
All Aboard The MuthaShip
A few moons ago we informed you that OhWord.com is embarking on an exciting new project titled SpaceRap. Today we call upon our readers to join us in developing the project and brand, to help us brainstorm ideas and directions for the project as well as formulate, create, edit, and critique the materials that will comprise SpaceRap.
Currently, we envision SpaceRap to be similar in spirit to what we accomplished with Crack Week, when we compiled submissions from netizens across the blogosphere that examined rap’s fascination with motifs, memes, and narratives related to the culture surrounding the drug trade, and the ways in which the crack game and the rap game have begun to resemble one another, at least through the lens of popular culture. For SpaceRap the themes and imagery are a little more eccentric but just as prevalent throughout the genre’s development, namely space (both the outer space of the cosmos and the contested urban spaces that rap depicts and reinvents) and the future (dystopian and apocalyptic or connected to the revival of a Utopian past).
For SpaceRap, we seek to utilize formats tried and tested on ohword.com – essays (employing either an academic or journalistic approach or combining the two), album reviews (both concise and more in=-depth) line for line lyric analyses, and beat deconstructions. However, in the spirit of SpaceRap we also intend to exploit as many media formats as possible, and rather than settle for a week of blogging on the topic, we would like to create a dynamic presentation that incorporates graphical art, video, animation, and music and sound effects and thus we encourage participants to submit material that either stands alone or accompanies textual submissions. We are not sure yet whether or not SpaceRap will constitute another section within the existing OhWord website or if it warrants a site unto itself, but our vision is to provide a fun, educational, multimedia experience that combines the talents of the contributors in novel and intriguing ways.
Topics for SpaceRap can include (but are by no means limited to) the forerunners of SpaceRap (“spacey” musicians like Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic, Earth Wind & Fire); space themes and motifs and spaciness (lyrical, aural, visual, or otherwise) in rap’s early era (Newcleus, Soulsonic Force, Jonzun Crew, etc.), the “true school” era (MC Shan, Ultramagnetic MCs, Eric B. and Rakim), in the ’90s and beyond (X-Clan, Keith Murray, Outkast, Eightball and MJG, Lupe Fiasco, Neptunes); the relationship between outer space, paradise, Africa, and diasporic spiritual or mystic belief systems influential in hip hop culture (5%ers, Zulu Nation, Nuwaabians, certain Christian beliefs, Rammelzee’s Gothic Futurism, etc.); rap’s relationship to artistic movements such as Afro-Futurism and Surrealism; how rap treats space (public, urban, contested, discursive, narrative, cyber- or otherwise) and its physical and psychological constraints; space, rap, and psychedelica, etc.
For SpaceRap essays and articles, we prefer that you formulate original connections between seemingly disparate topics and persuasively present your findings. Reviews should be objective and incisive, and interviews of artists should be relevant to the overall theme, engaging, and insightful. Multimedia submissions can serve as an homage to past artistic endeavors but should mainly showcase a contributor’s distinct talent in the context of appreciation. We are not opposed to employing humor, satire, or eccentricity in the service of such an odd project, but we do expect contributions to be as reverent, well-intended, and comprehensible as possible.
Tentative Due Date For Submissions is 2/11/08.
If you are interested in contributing to SpaceRap, or even just following the development of the project and the submissions, please email us at ohword.spacerap@gmail.com
Onnce we know you’re interested, we’ll send you an invitation to the OhWord community at Ning.com (the social networking site of the future) which contains a SpaceRap group/forum, where the bulk of discussion, information sharing, and critique will occur. We’ll also give you the heads up on the SpaceRap blog, SpaceRap Facebook, SpaceRap Myspace, etc.
So what are you waiting for? Give us a holler and link this post wherever interested parties may be congregating.
Comments for "OhWord Presents SpaceRap: Call For Submissions"
Looking forward to seeing the fruits of this fellas: should be good.
Q Bert and the Piklz immediately come to mind. I know that Q and Mix Master Mike in particular believe there’s something cosmic about their scratching. I’m not doubting the quality of course, but can a flare scratch really be intergalactic?!
— Dan Love Dec 3, 11:09 AM
^ ^ My sentiments precisely. First crew I thought of in regards to the article. I want to call it right now, I got Q*Bert’s DemolitionPumpkinSqueezeMuzik for the review.
— Jay B Dec 3, 01:05 PM
This is damn exciting. I’m getting in my submission now.
— AaronM Dec 3, 01:28 PM
Grabs helmet and lugz space boots
ill do article and hit you up later in the month….
I am be in the house for the internet celebrity event
giving out free stuff
— Jimmy Valentime Dec 3, 04:58 PM
i believe this “spacerap” you are speaking of has been well covered and documented at www.mixtapeshow.net under the guise of the sub-genre coined “soultronica.” (the “spacey” sa ra-type rap, anyhow).
visit the site and look up “soultronica.” hit up dex digital… he has a lot of connects in the soultronica space, and i’m sure he’ll contribute.
— dj mirateck Dec 3, 09:06 PM
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— t Dec 3, 09:33 PM
no spamming t. consider this your warning.
— Rafi Dec 3, 10:11 PM
DJ Mirateck, thanks for connecting to me that website, I’ll definitely be checking out those podcasts and hitting them up to let them know about SpaceRap. While I do appreciate the cross-genre mixing they seem to have going over there, I must assert that Sa-Ra is absolutely NOT what I meant by SpaceRap. Well, Sa-Ra might very well be a worthy subject of analysis in a space rap piece, and his music may very well share some common ancestors with rap artists, or even be derived in some part from rap music itself, but “soultronica” is not the end-all, be-all of SpaceRap as we are envisioning it. I’m talking about a category that can plausibly include Newcleus, Rakim, Large Professor, Kurupt, The Clipse, and Canibus… so please do not make the mistake of assuming that we have simnply termed SpaceRap what is generally called Soultronica…
— R.H.S. Dec 3, 10:12 PM
i’m def down. sent an email and alla tings.
— khal Dec 4, 12:18 AM
yes. i’m set to get my ill lyrical metaphysical sonic booming flowetical elemental fix on.
if i don’t get bogged down in academia, i’ll definitely try to send you guys a submission.
— Ninoy Brown Dec 4, 06:50 AM
So if space-rap includes rap about “contested urban spaces”, can’t pretty much all rap be considered as space rap?
— Tray Dec 4, 10:56 PM
Tray, that’s a reasonable question/critique and I could have probably done a better job explaining myself.
Partial cop-out- part of the point of convening the ning community and gather contributors together is to discuss such issues, and to hopefully better define “space-rap.”
Partial answer – While msot rap music arises from, or addresses issues pertaining to contexted urban spaces, some rap does so by utilizing imagery and motifs related to outer space and the future, and it is those instances that are most useful to a discussion of space rap, especially if they contain echoes or even direct references to black musical traditions that have examined and commented upon the black diasporic condition (urban, inner-ring suburban, or otherwise)with a nod to the heavens and the future.
You should sign up @ www.ohword.ning.com, this is exactly the kind of discussion that needs to happen.
— R.H.S. Dec 4, 11:23 PM
bay are rap has been all about space these days…
i’ll try and throw something together for this.
— mr. pilly wonk Dec 5, 09:23 PM
Pilly Wonk – sounds great, I’m very unfamiliar with recent Bay Area music so school people like me.
— R.H.S. Dec 6, 01:17 AM
Oh – so really space rap is rap that deals with urban space by using metaphors from outer space? So would Prodigy’s mysterious claim on his latest banger (see nahright) that “we even built pyramids on Mars, they won’t tell us ‘cause then we’ll realize who we are” would fit in here? I guess the problem is that I’ve heard very little space rap so I’m unclear on what space rap would be, although someone like RZA definitely comes to mind in this context, or Killa Priest, or Canibus.
— Tray Dec 7, 12:14 AM
Tray – I have in the past suggested that despite his claims to the contrary, Prodigy is all about “space” and “spacey” rap – you can check the article i wrote on Mobb Deep in the “Features” section. The line you cite puts Prodigy close to the tradition of invoking space to describe either some kind of past afrocentric paradise or glorious black future, or both, which is a tradition that is linked to slaves spirituals that subvert old testament stories of manumission (especially Exodus) and 20th Century attempts to rework such mythologoy by the likes of Sun Ra.
— R.H.S. Dec 7, 02:51 AM
Funny I don’t see Vast, Vordul and El-P up in that NASA Challenger pic flip.
— Jay B Dec 10, 01:27 PM
SPACERAP IS THE FUTURE NOW!!!
All Love and Support from Romania!
— sunrah Apr 6, 11:53 AM