Style vs Form

I'm not much of a hip-hop fan, as some of you know, but now and then I run across an artist (like Michael Franti) or a CD (like Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak; The Beastie Boys' The Mix Up) that appeals to me at some level.

But the guy who is head and shoulders above the rest, at least for me, is a guy named k-os (pronounced chaos), a rapper from Canada. His songs are melodic, approachable, and not captive to the self-focused hedonistic blinged-up gangsta culture of popular hip-hop. I've been listening lately to three of his CDs, Joyful Rebellion, Atlantis: Hymns For Disco, and his latest, Yes!

Something in the liner notes of Joyful Rebellion caught my eye. He writes about the difference, and the interplay, between Style and Form. His comments are particular to hip-hop music, but they hearken back to concepts that philosophers from Plato to Kant have dealt with. He's given this stuff some thought, apparently, and it shows in his music (also probably why I like it!)

What he says is that there is a Form to hip-hop, and he speaks of drum patterns, vocal delivery, instrumentation, lyric content, etc. Style, on the other hand, is more about the "perpetrated lifestyles", as he calls it, the overt sexuality and flashy videos, the gimmicky effects such as auto-tune, gunshots, sirens, etc.

Form, he says, is like enjoying tea for what it is, without milk or sugar, just pure tea. Style is frothing it up into a tea fusion latte', sticking it on a poster, and running promotions for it that connect it to a certain lifestyle. (ha. That Style part I got from spending time at Caribou this week.)

Anyway, he argues that hip-hop "audiences have been over-stimulated by STYLE", and goes on to say:

STYLE is cool... it can communicate how we feel inside and be an expression of persona. However, if the STYLE of a music becomes more important than its substance, then that music becomes trendy. When the music becomes trendy its parameters then are much too narrow... too limited to express Universal Truths... and since the truth is not a trend, we lose depth of perception. In a battle between FORM and STYLE, FORM will always remain victorious in underground circles - no doubt. Unfortunately, in 'pop culture' presenting FORM without STYLE is like casting pearls before swine.

This holds true for all art forms, really, and all sub-cultures. There is a constant tension between Form and Style, with Form being pure (Style-less) in the beginning, but with Style taking over as the art form achieves wide popularity, until the point where all that remains is Style, and Form is driven underground (only to re-emerge later, with a cult following).

Hm. Universal Truths coming from a hip-hop artist. Yeah. Bring it. :)