Ep. 5 - Hip-Hop in the Age of Spin ft. Genta Tamashiro

GUEST
Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Genta is a creative devotee
of the artistic community. He attended the specialized magnet
school Denver School of the Arts for middle and high school,
which gave him a solid foundation in musical performance and
theory as well as an introduction into audio engineering. After
spending some time at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Genta
moved to Chicago to pursue a career in audio engineering where he
received a Bachelor of Arts in Audio Design and Production from
Columbia College in 2015. Through his freelance audio work, he
has traveled around the country and the world with notable
artists such as the Becca Kaufman Orchestra, The Way Down
Wanderers, and Masego. When he is not running the sound for a
band somewhere, you can find him producing his own music or
editing podcasts for SoapBox (more on Episode 27) and other
creative organizations.


OVERVIEW
Genta Tamashiro and the gang grab a drink and dive into the
Netflix original The Get Down as a cultural tool in
understanding the roots of hip-hop and its social placement from
a historical context. From here, they critique misinterpretations
of hip-hop, noting that the genre's humble origins to now
oversaturated landscape with the growth of technology.


Dave Chappelle exposes that even at “the hallmark of [our]
generation" we live in "the most difficult time in human history.
This is the age of spin. The age where nobody knows what the fuck
they’re even looking at.” Just as comedians like Chappelle help
ground us back into reality, true hip-hop is ever-growing.
Mainstream artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole’s have managed
to keep the spotlight on the genre with recent albums like
DAMN and For Your Eyes Only in which the rappers
examine their lives, their peers’, and their respective
ecosystem. Within their discography BrownTown tries to discover
if their music is simply “conscious rap” or calling to action as
Charles Preston promotes in his article, “Trump is here: Will
Mainstream Rappers Punch Nazis?” By the end we understand that,
whether calling to action or simply reacting to their
environment, both artists seek to empower themselves and their
audience through their music by staying true to hip-hop elements,
continuously experimenting, collaborating, and, of course,
spitting fire bars.


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Follow Genta on Facebook, Instagram and listen to his music on
Spotify.


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CREDITS: Intro music - J. Cole on Kendrick
Lamar's instrumental for Alright; outro music - Kendrick
Lamar on J. Cole's A Tale of Two Citiez off of the Black
Friday releases. Audio engineered by Genta Tamashiro. Episode
photo by Andrew Merz.


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