Part 3: The New School

This final part in the History of Beatboxing looks at how beatboxing has developed since the 1990s and includes three special reports on The Internet Revolution, The Human Beatbox Convention and Jamming.

A New School of Beatboxers

During the 1990s a new breed of beatboxers was getting underway. In the UK, Killa Kela, with a little help from his friend DJ Vadim, was discovering his talent for beatboxing and in 1994, at the age of 17 he started his career as a solo artist that eventually led to his signing with BMG/Sony in 2005. Also during this time, other artists across the world were keeping the beatboxing flame alive. These 'new school' artists were not only stretching the sonic boundaries of beatboxing with new sounds and techniques, but bringing new musical forms to beatboxing, such as drum and bass and dance music. It would only be a matter of time before beatboxing once again became mainstream.

In 1999, beatboxer with The Roots and self-professed 'Godfather of Noyze', Rahzel, produced, perhaps, the most influential beatboxing album of all time. Make the Music 2000 brought beatboxing back into the public arena - and boy what beatboxing! Not only did the album feature beatboxing and some great songs, but the secret track after 60 seconds of silence at the end of the album featured the often imitated Man vs Machine battle featuring the four elements including Kenny Muhammed's coveted 'Wind Technique' and Rahzel's own show-stopper 'If Your Mother Only Knew'. The album was also the first to feature vocal scratching - a technique that has since been developed globally. Beatboxing was back.

Catching the New Wave

Since the year 2000, beatboxing has become more mainstream with artists such as Justin Timberlake and Daniel Beddingfield taking up the artform as well as artists such as Bjork using beatboxing as a basis for her music. In 2001, Eliot and the www.beatboxing.de crew released the very first beatboxing compilation DVD called Beatboxing Vol.1. All the songs on the compilation were produced vocally and featured artists such as Killa Kela, Box Style Bern and Bauchklang. This was also one of the first albums to feature layered studio beatboxing. The crew then released a beatboxing LP, 2 maxi singles and a tape plus four beatboxing videos that were shown on music television. This was the very first time that music videos featuring pure beatbox tracks were shown in heavy rotation on TV. In 2002, Beatboxer Entertainment was formed - the world's first artist agency dedicated to human beatboxing. Beatboxing featured in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2004. Also in 2004, Australian beatboxer Joel Turner had 5 weeks at No.1 with his song 'These Kids' after performing on Australian Idol. The past five years has also seen the Internet become a method for networking beatboxers and defining the art form (see next page). Beatbox jamming (see next page) and battling has grown in popularity and beatbox battles and competitions are happening with more regularity thanks to the work of artists and organisers such as Shlomo (UK), Bee Low (Germany) and Kidlucky (USA).