Jimmy Page on How Led Zeppelin Is Like Hip-Hop

The rock band Led Zeppelin is considered to be one of the most influential and popular bands of all time. In a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, Jimmy Page, the guitarist of Led Zeppelin, went over the similarities between Led Zeppelin’s music and hip-hop.

Jimmy Page thinks musicians learn from their ‘musical environment’

Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham formed Led Zeppelin in 1968. Plant served as the band’s lead vocalist, Page played guitar, Bonham played drums, and Jones was the band’s bassist and keyboardist.

In 2020, Page was interviewed by Rolling Stone about Led Zeppelin and his musical career. When asked why Page gravitated toward hip-hop music, the guitarist answered that musicians are “a product of” their “musical environment.”

“You’re a product of your musical environment. I’m someone who learned the acoustic guitar and a few campfire or skiffle songs, and then bit by bit learned how to play the electric guitar and developed my own style. I wanted to investigate, like Sir Richard Burton [the 19-century British explorer], trying to find the source of the Nile. So it’s your environment,” Page said.

The guitarist was ‘fascinated’ by hip-hop

Speaking with Rolling Stone, Page shared that hip-hop as a genre “fascinated” him as a musician.

“Hip-hop fascinated me, the whole culture of what it was and breakdancing and all this whole thing coming from the street. I thought it was great. It was really good and some brave stuff,” said Page.

In the 1990s, Page collaborated with rapper Sean Combs, who at the time went by the stage name Puff Daddy. On Puff Daddy’s song “Come with Me,” Page played guitar, and the song sampled Led Zeppelin’s song “Kashmir.”

“And I tell you, when Puff Daddy, as he was at the time, got in contact and said that he wanted to do this thing, I thought, ‘Wow. Yeah, yeah. We’ve been sampled enough. Why not do it for real?’ So I thought it was great. And it was an epic thing that he did. He put two orchestras on it, for heaven’s sake,” Page told Rolling Stone.

He continued, “And when I did Saturday Night Live with him, it was phenomenal. He did a couple of run-throughs and then the take, and he was different on each one. He was somebody who was improvising, and I admired his work.”

Jimmy Page thinks Led Zeppelin’s music is like hip-hop

In the interview with Rolling Stone, Page shared that he has watched “mash-ups” of Led Zeppelin’s music with music by different hip-hop artists.

“Have you seen any of these mash-ups that’ve been on the internet, with the James Brown one and there’s Black Sabbath, and there’s this and there’s that, Snoop Doggy Dogg? There’s all these various versions with ‘Whole Lotta Love’ because it’s a great riff,” he said.

For Page, fans blending genres and finding inspiration with different artists is what inspires him “to create music.”

“There’s some super-clever stuff, but what it is for me, it’s like, ‘Great. If people think that riff is so inspiring that they want to do this with James Brown, for heaven’s sake, thank you very much. Count me in,'” Page told Rolling Stone.

He continued, “And I’ve had great fun with seeing all these things, and what it is, is something like ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ people sort of love that riff, and when they play [it], it brings a smile to their face, and that’s great. That’s why I play music. That’s why I want to create music.”