Hip Hop's Voight-Kampff Test
My reactions to these 6 sounds in hip hop could be measured in a lab
My earliest memory of hip hop is watching two white kids perform Rapper’s Delight acapella in our living room. My older sister and her boyfriend had learned it by heart, and I knew I was hearing something extraordinary. There were lots of experiences that laid the groundwork for my bond with the genre. Poring over my sister’s LPs, playing them on the silver JVC turntable in her room—One Nation Under a Groove, Chic, The Man-Machine. Riding in the passenger seat of her Fastback as we scoured Portland for every last screening of Flashdance, the Rocksteady Crew scene having made a vivid imprint. And later with my crew, seeing Egyptian Lover at The Spectrum, a little-known club in Vancouver, Washington. It was about then that I got a sense of the vast sonic playground hip hop held in store.
Even early on, some sounds affected me way more strongly than others. I couldn’t get enough of Freestyle’s The Party Has Begun on a mixtape I’d been given, Kraftwerk’s Computer World, or Just Ice’s Back to the Old School with Mantronik on the controls, as complex and interesting as anything I’d heard by then. Certain sounds—especially mid- to late-80s electro–were giving me a unique charge. And nothing else compared, really. Hanging out with friends, favorite TV shows, and skating were fun but didn’t give me this charge, at least not as reliably. I could play a song again and again and the charge would keep happening. Like a zing.
Al-Naafyish (The Soul) by Hashim, cuts by DJ Jazzy Jeff, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON, dir. F. Gary Gray, 2015 Universal
Voight-Kampff is a made-up empathy test in the 1982 film BLADE RUNNER, used by a futuristic LAPD to differentiate humans from Replicants, an outlawed type of robot that perfectly resembles a human but has supercharged intellectual and physical powers. The test uses provocative questions and monitors the physiological reactions of the subject. I saw Blade Runner for the first time in 2023 for Film Club and had an instant affinity with the heroine Rachael, whose emotionally unaffected nature took me back to Star Trek’s Spock and the equanimity of Caine in the Kung Fu reruns I’d been drawn to as a kid.
Watch, as Rachael’s creator in the film, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, summarizes the dependent variables of Voight-Kampff:
Blush Response by Vangelis, from BLADE RUNNER, dir. Ridley Scott, 1982 Warner Bros.
In line with how the physiological responses to Voight-Kampff questions reveal a subject’s humanness, certain sounds in underground hip hop elicit measurable reactions in me.
Certain sounds–especially mid- to late-80s electro–were giving me a unique charge. I could play a song again and again and the charge would keep happening.
My finely tuned nervous system is just wired to be extra receptive to certain things. I don’t always have a sense of calm poise like Rachael. The effects of music can placate or play on this wiring. But what makes that happen? Like, how and why do some vocal and electronic effects bring physical chills? And what exactly is behind the sensation I get when I hear panning, listening to a track through my headphones, like a train rushing past? My questions led me to the work of a few neuroscientists, like Larry Sherman, who runs a research lab at Oregon Health and Science University here in Portland; and Elvira Brattico, originally from Bari, the so-called Bronx of Italy, at the top of the boot’s heel, who, with a background in philosophy and psychology, has published lots of research on the neuroscience of music.
It isn’t just my personality or mood that cause these sensations. All of these areas in my brain are at work when I’m listening to Planet Asia’s Gold Mind: the auditory cortex, the prefrontal cortex associated with reasoning, the limbic system, responsible for my emotions. But Elvira Brattico’s paper, Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? emphasizes that the reward system—which decides whether something is positive or negative, whether I should run away or embrace something—is an important factor in listening to music. Over and over in the research, the idea of aesthetic listening came up, a special way of engaging with the music—a combination of awareness of how much a track gives me pleasure; my emotional responses; and making assessments, like about the structure or features of a track and whether I like it overall. The paper convinced me I couldn’t be classified as a passive listener. I love how Elvira Brattico defines it:
Listening to music is above all a human experience, which becomes an aesthetic experience when an individual immerses himself/herself in the music, dedicating attention to perceptual, cognitive, and affective interpretation based on the formal properties of the perceptual experience.1
It’s this type of engaged listening, the findings say, that allows for neuroplastic changes in the brain. And what’s more, listening is a skill that can be learned and improved, the paper says. But that’s just the beginning of what I found.
I sent an email to Larry Sherman telling him about my essay topic and LIINES—that it’s a cross-disciplinary journal about underground hip hop—and asked him for a brief interview. “I’m CC’ing my intern,” I imagined the reply would say. “We’d like to schedule you for an fMRI so you can see for yourself how your brain and nervous system respond to underground hip hop.” Several days passed and I didn’t hear anything, so I pressed on reading the literature.
…certain sounds in underground hip hop elicit measurable reactions in me.
I applied some of their findings to six salient qualities in underground hip hop and learned some surprising things about what makes me react to music the way I do. A fundamental idea in the paper is that when I am actively listening to and engaging with tracks, it’s a doorway to both pleasure and a fulfilling, meaningful life, or eudaimonia, a word I couldn’t recall hearing before. I learned that ancient philosophers considered eudaimonia humans’ highest potential—well-being and flourishing for its own sake, independent of external gain—like intrinsic motivations. It was exciting to read, because this ideal reflects, and even deepens, my personal experience with hip hop, through which I constantly encounter new doors of discovery, within the music and with regard to fulfilling my purpose. I loved the idea of close listening to these six underground sounds as a gateway to deeper experiences.
#1 - Directional sound
I think it was when I first heard Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and its chill-inducing Doppler shift that I became hooked on directional sound. There’s lots of research on how creating and playing music has neuroprotective effects, but Dr. Brattico’s paper claims that listening to music, too—a track, a concert, over a lifetime—can modify brain functioning. Listening to Check Up by Khrysis and KEL, the stage was set for these neuroplastic changes through the process of predictive coding. When I’m listening to music, my brain is continually making predictions, updating them based on new sensory information2. Larry Sherman reveals in his book, Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music, that while predictive coding’s a never-ending process, when I hear something new that my brain didn’t anticipate, independent of whether I like the sound, it increases my curiosity and desire to hear more3. So listening to Khrysis’s skillful, 8D-sounding directional effects delivers way more than just cool surprises:
Check Up by Khrysis and KEL, 2023 BoardRoom Music
In Blade Runner, Rachael had been implanted with the memory of her creator’s niece. I couldn’t help but think that the familiar bassline in Endgame’s Another World activated my memory circuits, and that music, in a way, implants memories in me—only I’m a willing subject. Science says that my emotional responses to a song, or to an event around which I was hearing a particular song, will likely download the song to my long-term memory through the limbic system4. It seemed reasonable that Endgame’s track also activated the visual and spatial centers of my brain, because the directional sounds echoed lyrics about going places, and just like the Doppler shift in Trans-Europe Express, the panning tricked my brain into perceiving a larger space. Listen to Pitch 92’s use of sonic space:
Another World by Endgame, feat. YagoMeans, prod. Pitch 92, 2023 HHV Records
#2 - Vocal distortion
Some of the most exciting research I uncovered concerned music listening’s evolutionary ties. Elvira Brattico’s paper says that so-called hedonic hotspots in the brain’s reward center that generate pleasure during music listening can prompt me to want, like, and learn about stimulus that might help ensure survival. And researchers are beginning to look at how acoustic roughness in music might cue the fight, flight, freeze survival response5. These ideas help explain why in June of 2023 I was transfixed hearing the deepest, darkest vocals in Timeout by Fazeonerok and Ayoo Bigz. Just like my brain evolved to distinguish music from other sounds, neuroscience associates the salience of acoustic roughness in music with that of alarm signals, like air raid sirens or smoke detectors, easily discernible from other sounds. Their prominence activates my auditory cortex and amygdala, responsible for the quick assessment of danger and a response that ensures survival6. It’s known that stress results from a failure to adapt to circumstances, so aside from being a cathartic experience, how fascinating that listening to Timeout could touch on adaptability and survival instincts. My memory and visual centers were also activated hearing the words in Ayoo Bigz’s verse, executed just slightly behind the beat: “in the shadow of the dark they call me night owl, foul on the prowl…”, as I pictured the creepy, Norman Bates-like perpetrator jimmy a diner jukebox to hear Foul Owl on the Prowl7 in the Sidney Poitier film, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. Timeout’s vocals are set against diverse background sounds producing an effect a little like the atmospheric computer sounds so seamlessly integrated in the Blade Runner score. Listen for the effect of Fazeonerok’s voice coming in toward the end of that formidable chorus, before his verse:
Timeout by Ayoo Bigz and Fazeonerok, prod. Nar, 2023 730PRODUCTS
A super intriguing thing in Larry Sherman’s book was that research ties my processing of songs with a more negative valence with the pleasure network in my brain, in something called pleasurable compassion theory8. And it turns out this, too, is tied to evolution. My nervous system is wired for compassion and empathy. Hearing sad lyrics or music in a minor key, the research says, can light up my brain’s pleasure network because it associates empathy with altruism—and from an evolutionary standpoint, altruism is tied to the survival of people I care about9. And altruism is part of the philosophy of eudaimonia. This began to explain my attraction to very dark themes and sounds. I wondered if the same applied for the artists who create them. I thought of my affinity for gangsta rap, which provided plenty of catharsis, but also my life circumstances enabled me to relate on some level to the oppressive experiences the rappers conveyed. Then I understood it wasn’t just lyrics I was relating to, but the aesthetic listening experience at play, because I only find certain types of sad or minor sounds attractive. The hedonic hotspots were helping me all along. The sounds of Eazy-E’s voice and Dr. Dre’s production that I found so compelling were activating the pleasure network, helping me to want, like, and be drawn to things that would help me survive. I didn’t know it, but they were a gateway to living a fuller life.
#3 - Whisper tracks
Larry Sherman relays in his book that my brain is wired to find music almost as important as other life-sustaining pleasures. Music is a higher-order pleasure, he says, like spirituality or self-sacrifice. Aesthetic listening can include assessing the beauty of a track’s elements and deciding whether or not I like the track overall. It turns out that “liking” is a technical term in neuroscience10. But the so-called aesthetic trinity of music listening is thrills (warm, cold, and moving chills), aesthetic awe, and just being moved by a track11. It helped me frame my responses to these six sounds and brought me back to the Voight-Kampff variables, like the blush response and dilated pupils. While I am listening actively, other influences, like my personality, shape my perceptions and reactions. Lately I’ve been extremely caught up in my work, so it was good recognizing myself in the paper’s description of openness to experience—being comfortable with new things and loving to learn—which studies suggest might be associated with so-called chill responders. Dr. Brattico and her team say that some listeners are chill responders and others, non-responders. I’m a chill responder through and through.
If Timeout brought cold chills, hearing the whisper track in Go by M.A.V. and Pete Twist brought warm, even moving chills. It isn’t only vocal roughness that activates a survival response. The paper conveys that as a biological being I’m not just wired to scan my environment for threats, but also to search for possible benefits for survival, including in music12. If low-pitched, growly vocals are on one end of that spectrum, whisper tracks hold similar power on the other end. The contrast between the beautiful whisper and M.A.V.’s vocals in Go has huge allure. The whisper track, thoughtful lyricism, and interesting atmospheric vocals, set to piano and percussion, put this track into both the warm and moving chills columns for me. It also brought empathy with refrains like, “dark clouds so low, the people saying they can’t breathe”. Listen:
Go by M.A.V., prod. Pete Twist, 2023 Copenhagen Crates
#4 - Distorted synth
Roller skate scene, Barry De Vorzon THE WARRIORS, dir. Walter Hill, 1979 Paramount Pictures
Vangelis’s masterful use of synthesizers blended with other ambient sounds in the Blade Runner score was one reason I fell for the film. And The Warriors wouldn’t affect me as strongly without the synth work. Sometimes futuristic and nostalgic at the same time, distorted synth—besides bringing warm chills—can even activate the visual center in my brain, like when I pictured elements of the 1982 version of Scarface just hearing the intro of Fiend Mode from A CloakWork Orange by The Cloaks. And it brought moving chills when I heard how The One Lavic’s voice played strongly off of the warm synth on We Are Rulerz from the Benny Slumz album, From The Slumz. Wun Two’s boozy treatment of the beat in Cosca by Conway the Machine is hypnotic, threaded all throughout the LP:
Cosca by Conway the Machine, Prod. Wun Two, 2023 Vinyl Digital
Hearing sad lyrics or music in a minor key, the research says, can light up my brain’s pleasure network …This began to explain my attraction to very dark themes and sounds.
#5 - Double-track vocals
Suspend your concept of drill for a minute. A random internet search for Ukranian hip hop in the summer of 2022 brought me Jason by 06 Kiev Drill. I didn’t know anything about drill at the time—I just knew the track felt like a conduit to both the rage and strength of Ukrainians torn by the horrific events going on even as I write this, almost 700 days since Russian forces invaded their country. Without understanding the words, I learned more from the video than watching thirty hours of news. I could relate, having long relied on music to abate personal and collective trials. I later learned that drill was born out of a need—like hip hop and jazz and underground. This track came from living under volatile and oppressive forces.
Visually underscored by mafia symbolism, Kazhanklan graffiti, and the city of Kiev in all its fortitude, it’s the sparing and powerful dissonant double-track vocals supported by heady bass and contrasting hi-hat that make Jason realer than real, gut-wrenching. Sadness, rage, and a haunting helplessness surfaced from the deep as I listened. Cold and moving chills, Elvira Brattico would probably say. A lump in the throat and butterflies, even now as I write this.
Jason by 06 Kiev Drill, Кажанклан, 2020 Kazhanklan (Bats Clan)
Even if it’s an automatic response, the idea that my brain’s reward center would be lit up by Jason gave me a very uneasy feeling—even if the “reward” comes down to me wanting the artists in Kiev Drill to survive. The other parts of the listening process the paper talked about—the conscious appraisal and moral reasoning—those bring me back to center. It’s a combination of cognitive and affective empathy, science says13; my brain can process Kiev Drill’s plight, but I can also feel what they may be feeling.
Last summer, I contacted Kiev Drill’s lyricist through Instagram to relay my initial experience with the track, that it had been helpful, and he replied that my reaction made him happy. His profile has photos and videos of a white kitten, some graff, some street journalism—I got the feeling he’s an empathetic person himself. A few weeks back, I wrote him again to let him know I was featuring Jason in this essay, but the only reply was IG’s indifferent intervention: a perpetual “just a moment…”. When the fear crept in that something terrible had happened, the idea that maybe he’d somehow retreated further into the underground provided a type of fleeting consolation that I really wanted to be hope.
The experience brought me back to the fact that I’m not a Replicant; I have compassion. I’m stuck with it. I thought about the idea that love in its truest sense can mean letting go, with the knowledge that things will evolve as they’re supposed to. Wishing egos could be disarmed and peace could prevail helps no one. Despite strong empathy, the senselessness of wars leaves me with the reality that I can take action by giving all that I can of my resources, and then—given perpetual US foreign meddling, given the giant thumb on Ukraine, Palestine, and too many others—keeping hands off may be the ultimate individual gesture of peace and amends—that others may know the autonomy I know. And this doesn’t involve forgetting.
I thought of Larry Sherman’s idea about music allowing me to experience challenging emotions in a manageable, time-bound format, and Elvira Brattico’s definition of aesthetic listening. I wondered if maybe my attraction and physiological response to double-track vocals stopped me in my tracks long enough to facilitate perspective. I felt extremely uncomfortable and helpless knowing that perspective is not enough when people are suffering, just trying to make it through another day. Even if my reward system was responsible, it wasn’t a bad thing that Jason allowed deep empathy with those whose everyday lives make mine seem like child’s play. I see you, and in the music, we are allies in arms.
My evolutionary response from listening to Jason: TIMEOUT, PUTIN.
#6 - Complex beats
The first time I heard Savage Symphony by Abyss, featuring Ruste Juxx, I was driving in L.A. and had to pull off the highway. I determined from the research that I’m part of a group of balanced listeners who, along with empathizing, also systematize music, listening for structures and patterns14. Savage Symphony was a fun, predictive coding obstacle course and really highlighted my love for new experiences. The narrative intro, agile scratching by DJ Slipwax, militant percussion, fantastic lyricism, and Warriors-like synth proved to be sensory overload in the very best sense. My brain was analyzing the sounds while at the same time evaluating how much I loved what I was hearing, all while experiencing a sense of awe, in both cognitive and affective listening modes. I had to stop and take it all in. Check it out:
Savage Symphony by Abyss feat. Ruste Juxx, Prod. Applied Dynamics, Cuts by DJ Slipwax, 2023
Experiencing music live and creating music have even further effects on the brain, intensified when the physical gesture looks like the sound of the music15, as with scratching. Larry Sherman distills live music down to a group of brains in a room. At about 2 AM in a downtown L.A. warehouse last June, I watched as DJ Shortkut used a complex set of brain processes to improvise and recreate tracks, making changes based on auditory and visual input, responding to feedback from the brain processes of Qbert and D-Styles, as they did the same. And while this was going on, each of our brains in the crowded room was facilitating our reactions to the artists, who made continual adjustments based on our feedback. It’s a wonder I was able to steady my camera for even a moment. Such a thrill.
… I wondered if maybe my attraction and physiological response to double-track vocals stopped me in my tracks long enough to facilitate perspective.
I was struck by Elvira Brattico’s statement that aesthetic rewards of music listening can take on different forms and involve culture, learning, thinking, and social influences, using higher-order, more complex areas of the brain—and ongoing listening through an aesthetic lens has the potential for short- and long-term changes in the brain16. What she described is my experience of hip hop. I know hip hop’s power—and now I’m learning more of its scope. I love that listening to hip hop is made up of dynamic cognitive and physiological processes that can give me pleasure, change my thinking, balance humanness and spirituality, and lead me to new heights of wellbeing and living purposefully. I had no idea that the charge I got listening to Freestyle—or Ruthless Records bringing me to want and like things that helped me survive—would ultimately allow me to operate in the world with more reason, effectuality, and contentment—a little more like Rachael.
A very special thanks to all of this month’s artists. Thank you for reading LIINES.
This month’s UNDERSCORE
Street Chemistry by Royal Flush and Sean Price feat. Grafh, prod. Little Vic, 2023 Digital Vintage
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci1112155
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Sherman, Lawrence, and Dennis Plies. 2023. Every Brain Needs Music. Columbia University Press.
Sherman, Lawrence, and Dennis Plies. 2023. Every Brain Needs Music. Columbia University Press.
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Foul Owl on the Prowl. Boomer & Travis. In the Heat of the Night (1967). Norman Jewison, YouTube, June 24, 2007.
Sherman, Lawrence, and Dennis Plies. 2023. Every Brain Needs Music. Columbia University Press.
Sherman, Lawrence, and Dennis Plies. 2023. Every Brain Needs Music. Columbia University Press.
“Podcast | Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs….” n.d. New Books Network. Accessed January 13, 2024. https://newbooksnetwork.com/every-brain-needs-music.
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553
“Podcast | Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs….” n.d. New Books Network. Accessed January 13, 2024. https://newbooksnetwork.com/every-brain-needs-music.
Reybrouck, M., Vuust, P., & Brattico, E. (2021). Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter? Brain Sciences, 11(12), 1553. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121553