Hip Hop Ingenuity: Cassette Tape Scratching

The foundation and beauty of the Hip Hop culture is its practical ingenuity in using limited resources. It is an art form and a science of creating something out of nothing. The spirit of Hip Hop is like when there is nothing in the cupboard to eat, but somehow your mama found a way to create a delicious dinner for four! You feel me?

I mean who would of thought of spinning two records at a time to keep a song’s sweet spot moving continuously; or switching spray can caps to convey different line forms and fades; or using the law of physics and acrobatics creating new dance forms; or even using the mouth to make drum beats and sound effects imitating a live band? How does this type of ingenuity manifest?

It is called vision. It is called seeing a way out of now way, thereby changing and redefining the circumstance. Reinvention. Sometimes even recycling something old into something new again.

When I talk to young people, I explain you can’t do anything if you do not see yourself doing it in the first place. You will never make your jump shot if you do not first visualize the ball going into the basket before it leaves your hands. It is that simple.

Once you get past the skin on that grape you will never know how juicy vision really is. Case closed.

I have just had my eyes kicked wide open thanks to a brother named ZuluSounds in Germany who emailed me this first video you are about to see which led me to search for more. I never really thought about scratching with tape cassettes before even though I have scratched enough tapes back in the days when the damn things got stuck! They make an awful screech once the wheels go to hell and everything backs up into a spaghetti mess! They sound just as bad pulling them out while the cassette is still playing.

But the point to this article is, if I had vision like these fellas in what you are about to see maybe that awful screech would have been music to my ears. Ingenuity would have come calling.

Enjoy!