Industrial hip-hop
Encyclopedia
Industrial hip hop is a fusion of the dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...

 and dystopian subject matter of industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

 with the rhythms or vocals
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

 of hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

.

1980s

The origins of industrial hip hop are in the work of Mark Stewart
Mark Stewart (musician)
Mark Stewart is a British musician and founding member of The Pop Group. A pioneer of industrial hip-hop, he has recorded for On-U Sound Records and Mute Records.-Career:...

, Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....

, and Adrian Sherwood
Adrian Sherwood
Adrian Sherwood is an English record producer best known for his work with dub music as well as for remixing a number of popular acts such as Coldcut, Depeche Mode, The Woodentops, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Sinéad O'Connor, and Skinny Puppy...

. In 1985, former Pop Group
Pop group
Pop group may refer to:* a band that plays some genre of popular music* a band that plays pop music * The Pop Group, a British post-punk band* Pop! , a 2000s UK pop group...

 singer Mark Stewart released As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, an application of the cut-up style of industrial music, with the house band of Sugar Hill Records
Sugar Hill Records (rap)
Sugar Hill Records was the name of a rap music record label that was founded in 1979 by husband and wife Joe and Sylvia Robinson with Milton Malden and financial funding of Morris Levy, the owner of Roulette Records.-History:...

 (Doug Wimbish
Doug Wimbish
Doug Wimbish is a bass player, primarily known for his studio work for the rap/hip hop label Sugarhill Records and his membership of the funk metal band Living Colour. He has played for a vast range of artists, including Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger, Madonna, George Clinton, Paula Cole, Bomb the Bass,...

, Keith Leblanc, and Skip McDonald). In the late 1980s, Laswell's Material
Material (band)
For the rock band of the same name, see The MaterialMaterial is a musical group formed in 1979 and led by bass guitarist Bill Laswell.-1978-82: The band:...

 project began to take increasing influence from hip hop. Adrian Sherwood was a major figure in British dub, as well as working with industrial
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

 groups such as Cabaret Voltaire
Cabaret Voltaire (band)
Cabaret Voltaire were a British music group from Sheffield, England.Initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group was named after the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland that was a centre for the early Dada movement.Their earliest performances...

, Einstürzende Neubauten
Einstürzende Neubauten
Einstürzende Neubauten is a German post-industrial band, originally from West Berlin, formed in 1980. The group currently comprises Blixa Bargeld , Alexander Hacke , N.U...

, Ministry
Ministry (band)
Ministry is an American industrial metal band founded by lead singer Al Jourgensen in 1981. Originally a synthpop outfit, Ministry changed its style to industrial metal in the late 1980s. Ministry found mainstream success in the early 1990s with its most successful album Psalm 69: The Way to...

, KMFDM
KMFDM
KMFDM is an industrial band led by German multi-instrumentalist Sascha Konietzko, who founded the group in 1984 as a performance art project...

, and Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...

.

Tackhead
Tackhead
Tackhead are an industrial hip-hop group that were most active during the 1980s and early 1990s, and briefly reformed in 2004 for a tour. Their music occupies the territory where funk, dub, industrial music and electronica intersect...

, a collaboration between Sherwood and the Sugar Hill
Sugar Hill Records (rap)
Sugar Hill Records was the name of a rap music record label that was founded in 1979 by husband and wife Joe and Sylvia Robinson with Milton Malden and financial funding of Morris Levy, the owner of Roulette Records.-History:...

 band, picked up where Mark Stewart left off. Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, from San Francisco, and Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto, often shortened to Meat Beat or MBM, is an electronic music group originally consisting of Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens formed in 1987 in Swindon, UK...

, from the UK, are also early representatives of the style. Industrial hip hop groups tend to take a great deal of influence from Public Enemy's intensity, volume, and emphasis on noise. The industrial group 23 Skidoo and Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

's album On the Corner
On the Corner
On the Corner is a studio album by jazz musician Miles Davis, recorded in June and July 1972 and released later that year on Columbia Records. It was scorned by critics at the time of its release and was one of Davis's worst-selling recordings...

are also important precedents for the style.

1990s

Industrial hip hop was carried forward by figures from a diverse number of scenes. Perhaps the most unlikely adopters were Justin Broadrick
Justin Broadrick
Justin Karl Michael Broadrick is a British singer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer. He is best known as a founding member of the band Godflesh, one of the first bands to combine elements of extreme metal and industrial music.-Biography:Broadrick was born in the council estates of inner...

 and Mick Harris
Mick Harris
Mick Harris commonly known and credited both as Mick Harris or occasionally M.J. Harris, is an English musician....

, previously known for their invention of the grindcore
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that started in the early- to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive music genres – including death metal, industrial music, noise and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk....

 style of extreme metal
Extreme metal
Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. The term usually refers to a more abrasive, harsher, underground, non-commercialized style or sound nearly always associated with genres like black metal,...

, while in Napalm Death
Napalm Death
Napalm Death are a death metal band formed in Birmingham, England in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent for most of the band's ...

. After participating in the jazzcore group Pain Killer
Painkiller (band)
Painkiller is a band originally formed in 1991. Their style can be described as a mix of avant-garde jazz and grindcore; later albums also incorporated elements of ambient and dub....

 with Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....

, Harris's Scorn
Scorn (band)
Scorn was an English electronic music project. The group was formed in the early 1990s as a side project of former Napalm Death members Mick Harris and Nic Bullen...

 project delved into dark ambient
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology...

 and industrial hip hop. Subsequently, Broadrick began to work with Kevin Martin, previously of God (also a jazzcore group). The later work of Broadrick's Godflesh
Godflesh
Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham, England. Originally known as Fall of Because, they formed in 1988 by Justin K. Broadrick and G.C. Green and disbanded in 2002. Godflesh's innovative music is widely regarded as a foundational influence on industrial metal and post-metal...

, as well as his collaborations with Martin, Ice, Techno Animal, and Curse of the Golden Vampire
Curse of the Golden Vampire
The Curse of the Golden Vampire is an album by electronic artists Alec Empire and Techno Animal, released in 1998. A second Curse Of the Golden Vampire album, entitled Mass Destruction, was released in June 2003 on Mike Patton's Ipecac Recordings label, but for unknown reasons Empire was not...

, are prime examples of industrial hip hop. The last of these was also a collaboration with Alec Empire
Alec Empire
Alec Empire is a German musician who is best known as a founding member of the band Atari Teenage Riot. Also a prolific and distinguished solo artist, producer and DJ, he has released well over a hundred albums, EPs and singles and remixed over seventy tracks for various artists including Björk...

, from Berlin, who also participated in the style in a number of his albums. The German label Mille Plateaux
Mille Plateaux
Mille Plateaux is an influential electronica record label founded 1993 by Achim Szepanski in Frankfurt, Germany. It is known for mostly releasing minimal techno, glitch music and other experimental electronic music.-History:...

 developed the sound throughout their series of Electric Ladyland compilations. Ice and Techno Animal also collaborated at times with El-P and other representatives of the Def Jux label. DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...

's illbient
Illbient
Illbient is a term allegedly coined by DJ Olive to describe the iconoclastic music being produced by a community of artists based in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York in 1994...

 style is closely related to these developments in industrial hip hop; Mutamassik takes influence from both, as well as from breakcore
Breakcore
Breakcore is a style of electronic music largely influenced by hardcore techno, drum and bass and Intelligent dance music. Its sound is largely characterized by a high-tempo, well-timed mingling of distorted kick drums , break beats arranged from samples of the Amen break, and audio samples from a...

.

Industrial rock
Industrial rock
Industrial rock is a musical genre that fuses industrial music and specific rock subgenres. Industrial rock spawned industrial metal, with which it is often confused...

 band Acumen Nation
Acumen Nation
Acumen Nation is an industrial rock band based in Chicago, Illinois.-History:Formed in the late 1980s as Acumen by Jason Novak and Ethan Novak , the band released several cassette demos before self-releasing the CD demo "Transmissions from Eville" in 1994. The two along with bassist Greg Lopez put...

 adopts hip hop influences, as does the band's side project DJ? Acucrack
DJ? Acucrack
DJ? Acucrack is an electronic music duo based in Chicago, Illinois. It is a side project of Acumen Nation and is also on the Crack Nation record label...

. A few other industrial bands that combine hip hop elements in their music are Rabbit Junk
Rabbit Junk
Rabbit Junk is a Seattle based digital hardcore band, that formed in 2004 by former Shizit frontman JP Anderson. Taking influences from such diverse music genres such as hip hop, black metal and new wave, JP has called this sound "Hardclash" -History:...

, The Mad Capsule Markets
The Mad Capsule Markets
The Mad Capsule Markets were a Japanese band that formed in 1990 and were active until 2006...

, and The Shizit
The Shizit
The Shizit was a digital hardcore act from Seattle, Washington, USA, initially formed by J.P. Anderson and Brian Shrader in 1999. The music was an intense mix of gabber, breakbeat, drum and bass, hardcore techno, hardcore and heavy metal guitars, amped up with aggressive political lyrics...

, who are industrial metal
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...

 and digital hardcore
Digital hardcore
Digital hardcore is a subgenre of hardcore punk incorporating influences from electronic music. Digital hardcore fuses elements of hardcore punk with various forms of electronic music...

 bands. Atari Teenage Riot
Atari Teenage Riot
'Atari Teenage Riot' is a German digital hardcore group formed in Berlin in 1992. The name was taken from a Portuguese Joe song 'Teenage Riot' from the 'Teen-age Riot' album, with the word 'Atari' added as an Atari ST computer was used to create compositions...

 have also been known to incorporate hip hop elements in some of their songs, with Carl Crack
Carl Crack
Carl Crack was a Berlin-based techno artist best known for his membership in the digital hardcore band Atari Teenage Riot from 1992 to 2000....

 developing a distinctive MC style. In the electro-industrial
Electro-industrial
Electro-industrial is a music genre drawing on EBM and post-industrial that developed in the mid-1980s. While EBM has a minimal structure and clean production, electro-industrial has a deep, complex and layered sound. The style was pioneered by Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and other groups,...

/industrial metal
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...

 genre there is Steril
Steril (band)
Steril is a German electro-industrial/alternative electronic band founded in 1990 in Oldenburg.Together with bands like Front Line Assembly, Project Pitchfork and Download Steril made the Off Beat Label the biggest independent label for electronic music in Germany.Besides a many appearances on...

, notable for combining hip hop beats, dj scratches, and rap verses with industrial elements. The Kompressor, often uses vocal distortion in the style of many Aggrotech artists. The industrial super group
Supergroup (music)
In the late 1960s, the term supergroup was coined to describe "a rock music group whose performers are already famous from having performed individually or in other groups"....

 The Damage Manual
The Damage Manual
The Damage Manual is an industrial supergroup that originally formed in 2000. It featured Martin Atkins on drums and loops, Chris Connelly on vocals, Geordie Walker on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass.-History:...

 is known to regularly incorporate hip hop with their music, in beats and MCing. Corporate Avenger
Corporate Avenger
Corporate Avenger is a Native American band from Southern California. The style of their music has varied over time, ranging from electronica and industrial to rap to rock...

 the Rap metal
Rap metal
Rap metal is a subgenre of rap rock which fuses vocal and instrumental elements of hip hop music with heavy metal.-History:Rap metal originated from rap rock, a genre fusing vocal and instrumental elements of hip hop with rock...

/Industrial metal
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...

 band, often does industrial hip hop in their music. Stromkern
Stromkern
Stromkern is a band that blends electronic music and hip-hop. The band was formed in 1994 by James "Ned" Kirby.Kirby was originally a DJ in Madison, Wisconsin as a teenager, experimenting under the moniker "Flowers for Ravers" before founding Stromkern. Disenchanted with the music he was receiving...

 combine hip hop beats with EBM-style synths and vocals. Rapcore
Rapcore
Rapcore is a subgenre of rap rock fusing vocal and sometimes instrumental elements of hip hop with punk rock .-History:...

 groups Senser
Senser
Senser, a politically-charged UK band, originally formed in South West London from a group of friends in the late 1980s, Nick Michaelson , Heitham Al-Sayed , Kerstin Haigh , John Morgan , James Barrett and Alan "Hagos/Haggis" Haggarty and in 1992 they were joined by Spiral Tribe D.J, Andy Clinton...

 and Clawfinger
Clawfinger
Clawfinger is a rap metal band from Sweden and was one of the earliest bands to adopt this sound. Clawfinger is known for aggressive but melodic music and tackling political and anti-racist themes in their songs.-Band history:...

 are often grouped as industrial hip hop, due to their use of electronica with aggressive rap rock
Rap rock
Rap rock is a cross-genre fusing vocal and instrumental elements of hip hop with various forms of rock. Rap rock is often confused with rap metal and rapcore, subgenres that include heavy metal-oriented and hardcore punk-oriented bands, respectively....

. Other acts of note would be Nettwerk Records' Consolidated, and P.O.W.E.R, as well as the Swamp Terrorists, SMP aka Sounds of Mass Production
Sounds of Mass Production
Sounds of Mass Production is a cyberpunk/rap/nu metal/Industrial music band from Seattle, WA . The band name is often referred to by the acronym SMP...

, Non-Aggression Pact, and Noisebox.

Croatian-American rapper Marz emerged from Chicago's industrial metal scene, working as an engineer on Ministry's Filth Pig
Filth Pig
Filth Pig is the sixth studio album by industrial metal band Ministry, released in 1996 on Warner Bros. Records. The title was allegedly derived from a statement made in the British Houses of Parliament, where bandleader Jourgensen was described as a filthy pig by MP Teddy Taylor...

(1996) and playing guitar on Dark Side of the Spoon
Dark Side of the Spoon
Dark Side of the Spoon is the seventh studio album by industrial metal band Ministry, released in 1999 through Warner Bros. Records. "Bad Blood" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2000....

(1999). He later pursued his own project, which featured Ministry acolytes Rey Washam
Rey Washam
Rey Washam is a drummer who has been performing for more than 20 years. He has collaborated with many bands, the most notable of which include: Scratch Acid, Rapeman, Ministry, the Big Boys, Helios Creed, the Didjits, Lard, and Tad and Butthole Surfers offshoot Daddy Longhead...

 and Louis Svitek
Louis Svitek
Louis Svitek is a musician and former guitarist for a number of bands including M.O.D., Ministry, Pigface, Mind Funk, The Hollow steps and Project .44...

.

While Broadrick chose to devote his attentions primarily to post-metal
Post-metal
Post-metal is a music genre, a mixture between the genres of post-rock and heavy metal.Hydra Head Records owner and Isis frontman Aaron Turner originally termed the genre "thinking man's metal", demonstrating that his band was trying to move away from common metal conventions...

, Martin continued to apply industrial hip hop to dancehall
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...

 and grime
Grime (music)
Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily as a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop...

 with The Bug. Jace Clayton, a Brooklyn native who expatriated to Barcelona and records under the names DJ /rupture
DJ /rupture
DJ /rupture is the pseudonym of Jace Clayton, a New York-based American DJ and producer. He used to play in the drum and bass collective Toneburst, and DJ'ed in Boston during the late 1990s...

 and Nettle, is also devoted to the style, as well as to breakcore
Breakcore
Breakcore is a style of electronic music largely influenced by hardcore techno, drum and bass and Intelligent dance music. Its sound is largely characterized by a high-tempo, well-timed mingling of distorted kick drums , break beats arranged from samples of the Amen break, and audio samples from a...

. Filastine
Filastine
Grey Filastine is a musician based in Barcelona. He is a former member of ¡Tchkung! and the Infernal Noise Brigade. His album Burn It was released on DJ/Rupture's Soot Records. He has also been associated with the CrimethInc. collective. His album Dirty Bomb was released in 2009.-References:...

, a former member of ¡Tchkung!
¡Tchkung!
¡Tchkung! was a band from Seattle, Washington who blended guerrilla theater, "tribal" drumming, and punk ethics. Their live performances included multiple drummers, violin, didgeridoo, and electric bass, all played to fire breathers and fire eaters, body piercing, and other theatrical scenes...

 who records for Clayton's Soot label, also practices a politicized variety of industrial hip hop. The French label Cavage eventually devoted itself to the style, along with the Toulouse-based group les Trolls. Antipop Consortium
Antipop Consortium
Antipop Consortium are an American alternative hip hop group. The group formed in 1997, when Beans, High Priest, M. Sayyid and producer Earl Blaize met at a poetry slam in New York City...

 and Dälek
Dälek
dälek is an American experimental hip hop duo from Newark, New Jersey. The group is composed of MC dälek and the Oktopus...

 are also successful examples of contemporary industrial hip hop, as is Blades Of Hades
Blades Of Hades
Blades formerly known as Blades of Hades, are an Australian hip hop group from Newcastle. Since forming in the late 1990s they have released three albums, Blades Of Hades, This Installment, and Shadow Art in 2008. The group took its name from Greek mythology, where Hades was the Gatekeeper of the...

, Allflaws
Allflaws
Allflaws is an English electronic, industrial and trip hop project, created in 2004 by Gabriel Curran in Bristol, United Kingdom. As its main producer, vocalist and songwriter, Curran is the only official member of Allflaws and is completely responsible for its direction...

 and Saul Williams
Saul Williams
Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...

.

Related genres

Industrial hip hop is connected to (and sometimes confused with) the more experimental variants of trip hop
Trip hop
Trip hop is a music genre consisting of downtempo electronic music which originated in the early 1990s in England, especially Bristol. Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which...

. It also anticipates many of the developments of dubstep
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, England. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"....

. Illbient
Illbient
Illbient is a term allegedly coined by DJ Olive to describe the iconoclastic music being produced by a community of artists based in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York in 1994...

 is also adjacent to, and possibly a subgenre of, industrial hip hop. Contemporary industrial hip hop is also closely connected to digital hardcore
Digital hardcore
Digital hardcore is a subgenre of hardcore punk incorporating influences from electronic music. Digital hardcore fuses elements of hardcore punk with various forms of electronic music...

 and breakcore
Breakcore
Breakcore is a style of electronic music largely influenced by hardcore techno, drum and bass and Intelligent dance music. Its sound is largely characterized by a high-tempo, well-timed mingling of distorted kick drums , break beats arranged from samples of the Amen break, and audio samples from a...

.
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