Music
How hip-hop found an unlikely home on NPR's Tiny Desk
What happens when the biggest genre in the world gets intimate and organic? Pure joy.
In the early years of YouTube we looked to Later… with Jools Holland and Dave Letterman’s Late Show for quality live performance footage. Nowadays, however, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series is the premier portal for seeing musicians in action and making new discoveries.
The series’ most viewed instalment, featuring Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, has attracted 31 million views. You’ve probably seen it or else heard someone rave about it – the footage of .Paak and co. laying it down in NPR’s Washington D.C. office has a bewitching affect on viewers.
It’s not alone in doing so, either. Mac Miller’s appearance (which Vince Staples has used to close out his concerts in tribute to the late rapper) has 16 million views and T-Pain’s 14 million. This is significant considering series founder Bob Boilen was perceived to be indifferent to hip-hop and mad about indie rock and folk.
But Boilen and his NPR colleagues made an effort to rectify the series’ perceived lack of diversity in recent years, bringing about a mutually beneficial relationship with hip-hop.
Genre icons Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Big Boi, and Wu-Tang Clan have all performed behind Boilen’s desk. Likewise rising artists Aminé, Saba, Little Simz, and DRAM. The series’ blossoming popularity has also attracted contemporary high flyers such as Tyler, the Creator, Run The Jewels, Gucci Mane, and Chance the Rapper.
The key to its allure is difficult to pin down. It’s exactly what it portends to be: a live performance series staged in the few square metres behind a cluttered desk. There’s always a crowd in attendance, but they’re rarely in a boisterous mood – the concerts take place in the middle of the working day, after all.
These variables could easily breed awkward and sonically limited performances. Hip hop artists have historically struggled to convey the potency of their studio recordings in a live concert setting. But given the genre’s central emphasis on lyrics and genealogical links to jazz, funk and R&B, it makes perfect sense for it to thrive in the intimate confines of the Tiny Desk setup.
Here are five standout hip-hop Tiny Desk performances from throughout the series' history (so far):
Tyler, the Creator
“I’ve always hated rap music with bands,” says Tyler, the Creator during this late-2017 appearance. “I want to hear 808s and not an Incubus fucking kick drum.”
Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy LP introduced a psychedelic neo-soul flavour to the LA hip hop provocateur’s arsenal. An avowed Tame Impala fan, Tyler employed a range of vintage synthesisers and recruited vocalists Kali Uchis, Anna of the North, and Rex Orange County to execute a melodically immersive left turn.
The famous guests are absent from Tyler’s Tiny Desk debut, but a five-piece band joins for a relaxed and playful performance. “I found these guys and they’re really really talented and we just meshed together and it actually just sounded really cool,” Tyler boasts at the performance’s conclusion.
Not only was it Tiny Desk's first night time performance, but Tyler relit the space in radiant fuchsia, orange and blue.
Tank and the Bangas
NPR launched the Tiny Desk Contest in 2015, inviting video submissions from unsigned artists across America. Spiritual bluesman Fantastic Negrito won the inaugural event, but the most famed beneficiaries are 2017’s winners, Tank and the Bangas.
Group leader Tarriona "Tank" Ball and backing vocalist Anjelika "Jelly" Joseph trade bars with mind bending fluidity in this victory lap performance, while the New Orleans band also shows off its affinity for R&B, funk and soul.
Slapping a genre label on Tank and the Bangas isn’t all that important. Their shape-shifting expertise forms a core part of their identity, as does their patent emphasis on having a good time.
Noname
Noname’s rap face is beguiling. The Chicago MC frequently dons a smile during her Tiny Desk showing, even when rapping about police brutality (Casket Pretty) and abortion (Bye Bye Baby).
A paragon of the new sound of Chicago, Noname visited NPR off the back of her breakthrough Telefone mixtape. She couldn’t hide how chuffed she was to be there: “I’ve watched so many of these so I’m like, man, I just want to be as good as T-Pain.”
Backed by a group of multifaceted Midwestern musicians – including bassist and frequent collaborator Phoelix – Noname ensconces herself in the informal setting and demonstrates her burgeoning greatness.
Big Daddy Kane
“I’m enjoying myself. I might fill out an application for a job here,” jokes Big Daddy Kane after laying down his 1988 hit, Ain't No Half-Steppin’. He’d probably get the gig too. Kane has always been a committed professional and the sharply dressed Queens MC nimbly relives every rhyme and cadence of the songs that put him at the forefront of hip hop’s late-1980s Golden age.
He remains as passionate as ever, too. “I love [hip-hop],” he says midway through this performance. “I love to see it grow and continue on.”
Kane’s been in the game for more than 30 years and probably finds hip hop’s takeover of NPR’s flagship music program to be somewhat surreal. He tips his hat to the organisation’s support of the genre he helped evolve: “If you love hip-hop, just stay focused and keep on supporting it.”
DJ Premier
Hip hop at its outset was as much about the DJ as the MC. These days there’s no contest when it comes to who receives the majority of the plaudits. But in a further display of NPR’s embrace of hip hop culture, DJ Premier delivered the first DJ-helmed Tiny Desk in mid-2017.
The producer and turntablist extraordinaire regularly tours with a live band including trumpet and trombone players and Joey Bada$$’s drummer, Lenny "The Ox" Reece. Here the group applies improvisational flair to some of Premo’s foremost productions.
Not a born MC, Premo provides hype-man style back-up over the recorded vocals of KRS One, Nas, Das Efx and Gang Starr’s MC Guru. It’s loose and saturated with excitable energy, proving you don’t need club lighting and subwoofers to get the party going.