Music history, rhyming?

LL Cool J, in the PBS documentary series Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World:

“DJs intially are like bandleaders, right? They were like Count Basie. And then the same way in bebop that people started singing to those riffs, how the vocalists became front and center, and how Count Basie moved a little bit to the background, that’s kind of the same thing that happened with the DJs and the MCs. You know, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.”

It’s a passing moment, but one that caught my attention. Suffice it to say that history here is neither repeating nor rhyming. Or suffice it to say that the purported history recounted here, of Count Basie taking a back seat to singers singing bebop riffs, has no basis in history.

This series, which I learned about when watching the PBS NewsHour last night, is filled with great archival footage. There’s an awkward shift from an emphasis on the turmoil of the 1960s to hip-hop, which began as party music, for dancing, socializing, and good times. But then Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” comes in, and the documentary’s emphasis turns to music as cultural commentary and protest. What the documentary fails to mention is that the group was reluctant to record that song. Melle Mel, in 1992: “We didn’t actually want to do ‘The Message’ because we was used to doing party raps and boasting how good we are and all that.”

[Quote Investigator covers history repeating and rhyming.]