While watching Style Wars and in the discussion we had afterwords, biting was one of the main issues that each artist or group had with other artists and groups. This idea of a personal style that only you have the right to use is something that is very interesting and can even be seen in modern derivations of this style of art and in the hip-hop culture.
Biting is when another person takes something that you created and copies it blatantly, but this can make some interesting cases. This can apply not only to things like tags and such, but also to color schemes, lettering and the ideas that you throw out. As always there is a very fine line with drawing inspiration from another work and just copying it, but the fact that biting is so frowned upon means that you have to be especially creative in how you portray what you want to portray. You need to make sure that no one else can take offense to what you are putting out. This also applies to break dancing in the form of copying peoples moves or sets of moves. All of this just further increases the amount of creativity that these people have as there are so many way in which they express themselves without copying other people's styles.
Another way to look at the impressiveness of these people is in how rap artist deal with biting. The complexity of the rhymes and references they use is impressive already, and if you add in the fact that they have to make sure to not copy anyone else's rhymes it makes it even more impressive.
One example of this distinctiveness of style can be seen in the songs "Around my way (freedom ain't free) by Lupe Fiasco and "They Reminisce Over You" (T.R.O.Y) by Pete Rock and CL Smooth. "Around My Way" samples the saxophone beat from T.R.O.Y, and when you listen to them they sound very similar, but if you listen closely you can tell that the way the rappers rhyme over the same beat is quite different. Both rappers pause in different places and manipulate the beat to how they want to use it.
Overall, basically the importance of not biting other artists' styles makes pretty much everything done by each of the individual artists more impressive.
Biting is when another person takes something that you created and copies it blatantly, but this can make some interesting cases. This can apply not only to things like tags and such, but also to color schemes, lettering and the ideas that you throw out. As always there is a very fine line with drawing inspiration from another work and just copying it, but the fact that biting is so frowned upon means that you have to be especially creative in how you portray what you want to portray. You need to make sure that no one else can take offense to what you are putting out. This also applies to break dancing in the form of copying peoples moves or sets of moves. All of this just further increases the amount of creativity that these people have as there are so many way in which they express themselves without copying other people's styles.
Another way to look at the impressiveness of these people is in how rap artist deal with biting. The complexity of the rhymes and references they use is impressive already, and if you add in the fact that they have to make sure to not copy anyone else's rhymes it makes it even more impressive.
One example of this distinctiveness of style can be seen in the songs "Around my way (freedom ain't free) by Lupe Fiasco and "They Reminisce Over You" (T.R.O.Y) by Pete Rock and CL Smooth. "Around My Way" samples the saxophone beat from T.R.O.Y, and when you listen to them they sound very similar, but if you listen closely you can tell that the way the rappers rhyme over the same beat is quite different. Both rappers pause in different places and manipulate the beat to how they want to use it.
Overall, basically the importance of not biting other artists' styles makes pretty much everything done by each of the individual artists more impressive.
I so agree with you that the concept of biting is really interesting -- you'd think that the phrase "copying is the highest form of flattery" might apply to the graffiti/break dance world. But I know that it can be very frustrating to have your idea taken and made [even] better. I think that this system may create better graffiti in general because, as you said, people have to be more creative. In Creative Writing class the other day, we were working on editing already-created poems. I took a poem and crossed out a few words I didn't like, and rearranged some of the phrases. My teacher told me I could publish that poem as my own now. I was appalled that I could just take something like that and make it my own. There are no implicated "graffiti laws," though (I think because many people would just prefer to not have graffiti on the streets), so the artists themselves have to create their own system. Very cool how that plays out. I am sure, though, that there are similar patterns from graffiti artist to another. Maybe it's just about not letting the two artists figure each other out ;).
ReplyDeleteI think the reason that biting is so frowned upon and copying isn't seen as the "highest form of flattery" in breakdancing and rap (at least how it was portrayed in the movie) is that you get groups like the Dynamic Rockers who just steal moves from the lesser known groups like the Rock Steady group that the interviewee was a part of, and since they are more popular they get all of the credit and Rock Steady are the ones that end up looking like they were biting.
DeleteI think the condemning of biting is a result of the competitive but highly subjective nature of graffiti art. In an objective competition, it's expected that everyone will do whatever they can within the rules to win. In art there's definitely honor attached to distinctive styles, and with graffiti always remaining an underground world, it makes sense that these artists want to ensure that they have at least some legacy in their trade.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most distinctive things about hip-hop culture is the reinterpretation of previously existing musical ideas, and I think the transfer and "stealing" of ideas with sampling and biting, etc., actually bolsters originality and ends up creating something new and even more awesome than if those building blocks hadn't been used in the first place. It's hard to even imagine hip-hop music existing without sampling.
ReplyDeleteI think it's so interesting just how much of a sense of community graffiti artists all share. It'd be so easy to just think of them as individual vandals with no respect for each other, but it's clear that they have such more than that going for them. I really like that the artists can recognize and invent new styles, and it really seems to be the creative fire that keeps the spirit of graffiti alive.
ReplyDeleteI feel as thought biting is a lot less frowned upon though in rap music as it occurs so often. If you go through any vast number of rap songs, you will find a ton of biting from prior songs, plus the entire idea of DJ-ing with two records and cutting snippets from other songs in order to make a beat is pretty much the same as biting. For this reason I definitely feel like biting is definitely a super common thing in rap, but I also feel like it isn't frowned upon as much in that environment.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that there's a significant--but maybe fuzzy--distinction between "biting" and sampling. The whole idea of sampling is that originality rests in the new *use* of the existing material--its juxtaposition with another sample, or the way it's cut to transform it into literally a different riff or beat. There's an important difference between "lazy" sampling, wherein P. Diddy will place a whole song over a repeating loop from a Police song, for example, and the kind where you don't even recognize the original source material at first, as it sounds so new in its new context.
ReplyDelete"Biting" here would mean taking a beat someone else has used and passing it off as your own. A good analogy might be between quoting a source in your own writing, and putting it to original use in the context of your essay, and plagiarizing an essay wholesale from another writer and passing it off as your own.
Biting, in hip-hop parlance, is closer to plagiarism; sampling (and allusion, within lyrics) is closer to quotation.