can i kick it (1989)

A Tribe Called Quest. Hip-Hop/Rap, USA

key: C major blues
mode: C blues — C D Eb F# G Bb C
melody: M F S L d r m
form: ABCABC = chorus — verse — bridge — chorus — verse — bridge
meter: duple

English function names:     tonic     subdominant
Tagg (modified):            home      counterpoise (away)
Riemann:                    T7        S7
Scale degrees:              I7        IV7
Chords:                     C7        F7

  C    F              
|:////|////:| loop for chorus & verse

bridge:
  C    G    F    G
|:////|////|////|////:| 2x

I know, I know: technically, this isn’t merely two chords, with that pesky funky bridge in there. But this rap is too hard to resist. Even my students who were hearing this the first time (from me — not even the recording!) were absolutely smitten with it (even though it is OLD).

We have the second of what will be many, many tonic-subdominant shuttle-loops on this blog. It is very common in African-diaspora musics, not just blues. While classical music occasionally uses IV-I as a cadence — it even has a special name “plagal” (meaning oblique) cadence, it is a hallmark of blues music and blues-based music — jazz, gospel, r&b and so on. In classical music, the plagal cadence is most common in religious music — much of classical music was composed for Catholic mass and subsequently Protestant church services; the plagal cadence is often also called the “Amen” cadence. Perhaps this is why it appears in blues, having come from spirituals, having come from Protestant hymns, but I haven’t found any easily accessible research to back that up. If I do, I’ll post it here.

“Can I Kick It?” uses a sample of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” to create its primary loop. My “melody” notes come from this, as the rap melody is a spoken melody.¹ Listening closely to the loop, however, you can hear the top notes of the guitar go from E down to D. That means the pitch set for the counterpoise chord is DFAC, but with the F in the bass. From a classical music perspective, that makes this chord a ii7 chord in first inversion — which is how the ii chord commonly appears/sounds in classical pieces. In Riemannian theory, this theoretically makes a plausible type of plagal cadence (though it rarely happens, if at all, in classical music — I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head): what English-language folk call the ii chord is the Sp — Subdominantparallele, that is, the relative minor of the subdominant, which is functionally a viable substitute (or to stick with German, Ersatz) for the subdominant. From a jazz perspective, this chord would most likely be labeled F6, seen and heard as a subdominant chord with D, a sixth above the root F, as a color tone. No problem there. We will look at songs that very clearly have a ii chord as a counterpoise further down the road. For this song, we will stick with F as a subdominant. I’ve tried playing C - Dm and C - F (no added anything) and the latter fits better to my ears. When I teach this song, I sometimes use plain F — it is simpler to play and explain (if this ongoing discussion is any indication…), but more recently I’ve taught it with both chords using a dominant flavor (as opposed to function) and find it fits best.

So why blues? That was my gut reaction. If I were to improvise over this song structure, in this style, I would use a blues scale. But in investigating the loop materials, I realized there’s really nothing in the pitch materials that directly indicate or imply the blues. The song that the loop is from features some lovely blues saxophone playing, but that isn’t present here. Still, the stylistic indicators beyond just pitch sets — mostly the rhythmic feel of the song, signal to my ears that blues is where it’s at.

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1. I'm not going to argue with you if you believe spoken words cannot be a melody; I just totally disagree.