In the very early 1980s, Early New School Rap emerged. At the time, it was not named as such, only obtaining its name with the realization that it differed to previous Rap, which was to become known as Old School Rap, a binary as it were.

 

As always, music has social intention. Twenty years after progress on human rights, and in the midst of redlining policy in New York, came a young producer from Jamaica, Curtis Mantronik. Mantronik was central to human rights movements, in that his electro-structured form of Rap and Hip Hop superhumanized inner city New York communities, who would perform and do rap, as super-human beings, that is, better than robots. By becoming superhuman (alongside breakdancing, popping etc), this music afforded these communities agencies with which to develop musical and socio political capital globally. These processes drew these communities out of economically denigrative states in inner city New York, as superhumans.

 

Many know Mantronik, but very few realize the significance of his music and courage to global society, for oppressed inner city societies, and for human rights in general. This superhumanizing of the oppressed offered new agencies, that is, robotic computerized agencies, at the centre of which was Mantronik and his portable drum machine, as an ‘electro smoking gun.’ This new performance did change the world.

 

Mantronik once explained that he was once in a studio experimenting with circuit boards and wires, and an electronic sound emerged, a ‘boom’ then a ‘tsshh,’ which he repeated and announced as musical. He and the engineer had a “wow” moment and electronic music was born, and egalitarianism and anti oppression would be given musical and performative fuel. The global spread of electro-influenced Rap has liberated oppressed communities.

 

Mantronik was labelled ‘King of the Beats.’ We may do well to also label him as ‘A Triumph in Human Rights.’