A Brief History Of Beatboxing

The Roland TR-808 is an electronic drum machine released in 1980. Unlike other drum machines on the market at the time it was unique in that it allowed the user to build their own beat patterns rather than using preset patterns. Basically you could be more creative with it.

Legend has it that around 12,000 of these machines were built and released. The Roland TR-808 turned out to be a commercial failure or to use another term it ’flopped’. Why? Because the sounds this thing could produce were way ahead of it’s time, almost too futuristic. Because of it’s ’too advanced’ capabilities it received many poor reviews and the industry could not fathom the true potential of this machine. In 1984, Roland released its successor the Roland TR-909.

What happened after the discontinuation of the TR-808 was quite incredible though. The magic of the machine caught some attention, a few people had started to produce new music with them and the resulting sounds were unlike anyone had ever heard.

This turned into a real cult following and soon swarms of musicians and producers were getting their hands on the TR-808 and had started to understand the capacity that this machine allowed. It became a major Influence in hip hop culture and was also used by artists such as Marvin Gaye, Madonna, Rihanna and Britney Spears.

To top off the introduction to this mammoth musical influencer – the Roland TR-808 has been used in more hit songs than any other drum machine in the world to date. I think that’s worth saying again.. the Roland TR-808 has been used in more hit songs than any other drum machine in the world! Yep!

You can learn many sounds (including the 808 Snare Sound), rhythms and beatbox techniques in School of Beatbox’s Beatbox Pro course.

For those of you drawn to possible deeper meanings of occurrences – I think this quote from Terry Marks is fitting.. “No matter how good you are, someone is always going to be against you. But never let them be the limit of your success.” as to say, when the Roland TR-808 was released people had little faith and even published articles slating its very existence – only for it to end up being the most popular and influential drum machine on the planet. 

But why am I talking about drum machines? and what does it have to do with the history of beatboxing?

The answer to the latter question is ‘Everything’.

You see these machines were known as ‘beatboxes’. Some people started to imitate the sound of these beatboxes by using only their voices and so there was the birth of the term (and a new era in music) ‘The Human Beatbox’. This is how we got to the beatboxing we know today. The use of vocals in a way that is more rhythmical and not necessarily lyrical or melodic goes back way before this though – have you heard of ‘Ragtime’. This is an area I’d like to spend more time digging around in but for now, as the title suggests, we’ll keep it fairly brief. Maybe a future blog on the emergence of rhythmical vocals way before we called it ‘beatboxing’?

So Who Exactly Were The Early Beatboxers Of Our Time?

The Originators

The first of the three Kings of 1980s beatbox was Darren ‘Buffy’ Robinson, a member of the hip hop crew The Fat Boys.

Buffy championed the iconic bass-heavy breathing technique and due to the popularity of The Fat Boys was for many people their first exposure to beatboxing.

Doug E Fresh was another of the 3 Kings of 1980s beatboxing. The hit single ‘La Di Dah Di’ was voiced by MC Ricky D and backed for the entire duration of the song by Doug E Fresh’s beatboxing.

Doug featured in the 1984 hip-hop movie ‘Beat Street’ alongside the Treacherous Three. He was known for his distinctive style featuring the now famous click rolls.

Biz Markie was the third of the 3 Kings of 80s beatboxing. He started working as a human beatboxer with acts like Roxanne Shanté and developed fresh techniques including the inward hand clap (or C L snare) and beat-rhyming (a way of M seeing between the beats).

Biz is also often credited with being the first to incorporate singing whilst beatboxing, which opened up new creative possibilities. In 1999 Rah-zell released the most influential beatboxing album of all time: ‘Make the Music 2000’

Old School

The second phase Beatboxers included Rahzel and Kenny Muhammed. The seminal album ‘Make the Music 2000’ featured Kenny Muhammed’s much imitated ‘Wind Technique’ on ‘The Four Elements (Man vs Machine)’ as well as Rahzel’s signature tune ‘If Your Mother Only Knew’. The album was also the first to feature vocal scratching.

The coming of the internet in the 21st century has enabled beatboxers from across the globe to collaborate and develop important new techniques such as throat bass and liprolls.

2001 saw the first beatboxing forum and in 2003 the first International Human Beatbox Convention attracted beatboxers from all over Europe, North America and Australia.

New School

Now beatboxing has evolved way beyond mimicking drum machines and new school beatboxers such as SkilleR, Alem, Bellatrix, Kaila Mullady and Napom have become global champions of a new genre of music.

Beatboxing has reached new levels of popularity with Colaps’ videos on Youtube getting over a million views and TikTok beatboxer Spencer X having over 40 million followers on his account.

I don’t know about you, but the story of beatboxing and how the Roland TR-808 was instrumental in it’s growth and popularity inspires me. We’ve all experienced being misunderstood at a time or people maybe not seeing the reality of our intentions. Remember that this little drum-machine had few believers to start with but ended up taking the world of music by storm. 

Fancy joining the wave and taking up the art of beatboxing? Check out the Beatbox Pro Course from School of Beatbox.

We hope you enjoyed this post. Leave your comments below!

Keep the beat alive.

Notes:

Quote used in this article is by Terry Marks (Stuckist Artist)