Hip Hop Collectives - Types

Types

There are two slightly different types of musical collectives. Although both types revolve around collaboration between member artists, the main difference is in how the music is credited.

In one type, the collective is centred around a record label which releases music by its member bands. Although musicians in the collective collaborate with each other, the resulting albums are always credited to a specific band or artist within the collective, rather than to the collective itself. For example, artists associated with the Elephant 6 record label regularly contributed to each other's albums, and sometimes launched one-off side projects featuring varying combinations of musicians from its member bands - however, Elephant 6 itself was the label, and was never credited as the band name on an associated album.

In the other type, the collective itself functions as a band, releasing both albums by its individual member artists and albums credited directly to the collective as an entity in its own right, such as Broken Social Scene. Like the label type, however, individual artists' albums still commonly feature collaborations with other members of the collective.

Also, almost as an in-between, collectives are appearing that have the look and idea of a record label but are centred around individuals. This has been fueled by the rise of the internet and home recording which has allowed a punk DIY ethic to flourish.