A predominantly African-American musical style that first gained prominence in the late 1970s. It is characterized by semi-spoken rhymes declaimed over a rhythmic musical backing, drawn from the sampling of pre-existing recordings and the use of DJ mixing techniques.
Rapping first came to public attention in 1979 with the popularity of the Sugarhill Gang's single, Rapper's Delight, although there were many African-American antecedents for the style. In the late 1960s and early 70s, militant black poetry collectives such as the Last Poets in Harlem, New York and the Watts Prophets in Watts, Los Angeles had combined their poems with jazz or African-style percussion as a way of reaching a broader audience. Their lead was followed by Gil Scott-Heron, who matched radical polemic with soulful jazz backings. Other historical sources for rap could be found in black comedians like Pigmeat Markham and Moke and Poke, the fluid patter of jazz and rhythm and blues radio disc jockeys such as Dr Hep Cat, Dr Daddy-O and Douglas ‘Jocko’ Henderson, or the spoken soul raps of Isaac Hayes, Dr. Horse, Millie Jackson and Barry White.
Vernacular traditions had grown out of the valuation of linguistic competence within black American society. These included competitive verbal games such as the ‘dozens’, which traded humorous and sometimes surreal insults back and forth until one contestant conceded defeat, or the spoken narratives known as ‘toasts’, often stories about tricksters, folk heroes and historical events. Although the verbal fluency of African-American culture could be traced back to griot, or praise singing, traditions and other lyric forms of West Africa, the style of rapping that developed out of New York Hip hop was distinctly different for its integration of words and music.
Hip hop began in the mid-1970s. A Jamaican born DJ named Kool Herc began playing the percussion or ‘break’ sections of funk records at Bronx parties in New York. As a reaction against the upmarket, exclusive appeal of disco, his choice of music made an immediate impact on young blacks in the Bronx. Other aspiring DJs realized that they owned similar records: Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash became figureheads for hip hop culture, Bambaataa for his leadership qualities and inventive selections of music, and Flash for his technical inventions of collaged mixes and percussive Scratching.
MCs, or rappers as they became known, had been added by DJs in order to present a more exciting and professional show to volatile audiences. Inevitably, as they developed their art, the rappers became a focal point of events held in school gymnasiums, clubs and parks. Although DJs, dancers and graffiti artists were considered as equal participants within hip hop culture, the release of the first rap records in 1979 shifted the balance in favour of vocalists. Few of the earliest hip hop stylists, including Grandmaster Caz, Jimmy Spicer, Spoonie Gee and Lovebug Starsky, managed to build a career that matched their unsung influence on later events. Soloists such as DJ Hollywood and Eddie Cheeba faded quickly from the scene, but their radio-DJ style of delivery inspired Kurtis Blow, the first solo rapper to be signed to a major label.
With the 1979 release of the first two rap records, the Fatback Band's King Tim III (Personality Jock) and the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, many groups and soloists released recordings. Sylvia and Joe Robinson's Sugarhill Records in New Jersey, and Bobby Robinson's Enjoy label in Harlem, dominated the first era of rap recordings with energetic singles by Funky Four Plus One More, Sequence, the Treacherous Three and the Crash Crew. The most significant changes in hiphop style came from three releases: Afrika Bambaataa's all-electronic Planet Rock (Tommy Boy, 1981), which launched the trend of electro; Grandmaster Flash's Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (Sugarhill, 1981), which demonstrated the montage techniques of the hip hop DJ; The Message (Sugarhill, 1982), an indictment of inner city life by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
The lyrics of The Message set a new agenda for rap. The majority of raps composed before 1982 had been light hearted and self-aggrandizing, but after The Message a new tone of realism was established, typified by recordings such as Run DMC's Hard Times, Criminal Minded by Boogie Down Productions and Rammelzee's Beat Bop.
In 1985 a new wave of rap artists achieved prominence far outweighing the transitory success of the so-called ‘old school’. Leading the field were those managed by entrepreneur Russell Simmons: Run DMC, L L Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Innovative producers such as Marley Marl, Full Force, Prince Paul and Rick Rubin emerged during this period, giving rap a harder, minimalistic sound. Rhymes during the mid-1980s were characterized by wars of words, whose answer-record scenario emphasized the historic significance of verbal contests like the ‘dozens’. These contests were either personal, as between UTFO, the Real Roxanne and Roxanne Shante, or L L Cool J versus Kool Moe Dee, or they were territorial battles between New York boroughs. High standards were set for aspiring newcomers by the rhythmic virtuosity and verbal compexity of rappers like Rakim, whose partnership with DJ Eric B proved to be a continuing influence on later generations.
With Run DMC's partnership with Aerosmith for Walk This Way (1986), hip hop was accepted by MTV's satellite broadcasting. Rap package tours were staged in stadiums, Hollywood films disseminated the music to cinema audiences and acts like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Kid 'N Play, the Fat Boys and Salt ‘n’ Pepa appealed to pop listeners. Despite the success of pop rap, the medium was changing from party music to a serious vehicle of expression for young blacks. This process created a diversification of subject matter and tone of lyrics, ranging from KRS-1's ‘Edutainment’ raps to the Black Muslim inspired Pure Righteousness of Lakim Shabazz.
Chuck D's writing for Public Enemy was an intense assault upon institutionalized racism, counterbalanced by the court jester of the group, Flavor Flav, who answered Chuck D's polemic with exhortations filled with obscure slang. Regional styles asserted themselves as rap spread from the New York boroughs to other American states. As a means of using language within a popular music form, rap also appealed to disaffected youths in other countries, gaining ground particularly in Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Canada and Japan, though also spreading to China, India, Thailand, Scandinavia and parts of Africa.
The collectively interlocking vocal technique of rapping pioneered in the mid-1970s by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, later by the Cold Crush Brothers, became a template for group rapping. In the late 1980s, their call-and-response could be heard in dynamic releases by UltraMagnetic MC's, Stetsasonic and NWA. NWA's first recordings, released in 1988, were inflammatory chronicles of gang life in Compton, Los Angeles. Sold on the strength of its word of mouth reputation rather than by radio play and television exposure, NWA's debut album, Straight Outta Compton (1988), proved that rap had become a multi-million dollar industry, strong enough to thrive without total dependence on the mainstream entertainment business.
The success of California based rappers such as Ice-T, Too Short, NWA and ex-NWA member Ice Cube challenged New York's pre-eminence in hip hop. As the subject matter of rap grew to be increasingly violent, materialistic and misogynistic, a reaction against this trend surfaced in New York, pioneered by the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul. Later forming the Native Tongues coalition with Queen Latifah, Monie Love and A Tribe Called Quest, these groups experimented with musical form and rapped in a thoughtful, reflective and humorous style that appealed to college radio listeners as well as the core rap audience. Long Island trio De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising album (Tommy Boy, 1989), was particularly successful in both commercial and creative terms. Conceived as a series of skits by the group and their producer, Prince Paul, the album sampled fragments from a remarkable range of musical sources, ranging from the Detroit Emeralds and Johnny Cash to Otis Redding and the Turtles.
Failure to obtain permission for the use of a fragment from a record by the Turtles led to an expensive out-of-court settlement being imposed on the record label. This highlighted the increasingly contentious issue of Sampling in rap, the practice of using digital technology to capture small sections of existing records, then looping these fragments to form the basis of a new musical track. Producers such as DJ Mark, the 45 King, had become experts in discovering obscure records from the past and transforming them into music that combined the spontaneity of the old with the technological impact of the new.
As well established and lucrative in the 1990s as heavy metal, rap courted controversy on a number of fronts. Many musicians considered sampling to be an unmusical form of theft; the violent tenor and profane language of Gangsta rap lyrics were provoking calls for restraint from within and without the hip hop community; brutal misogyny endemic within many rap rhymes was giving strength to voices of censorship that included Tipper Gore's Parents' Music Resource Centre, a variety of politicians, black church groups, music retailers and the police. The obscene lyrics of the Miami group 2 Live Crew precipitated contradictory rulings through a number of court actions in Florida, while NWA's Efil4Zaggin (1991) was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity in Britain. Even the most innocuous rap lyrics could be implicated in moral panics of the day, as when Tone Loc's Wild Thing was linked spuriously to the gang rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park.
Although few hip hop acts aligned themselves unequivocally to one camp, rap was now dividing into a number of opposing viewpoints. Alongside the MTV-friendly pop rap of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer sat the positivism of Arrested Development, Queen Latifah, Dream Warriors and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. There was also the bohemian jazz rap of Gang Starr and Digable Planets, the experimentalism of New Kingdom and Gravediggaz, and the ‘G-Funk’ and Gangsta rap of Snoop Doggy Dog, Ice-T, Tupac Shakur, Dr Dre, Warren G and Tha Dogg Pound. Of all these disparate directions, Wu Tang Clan's 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), represented a consolidation of the music's potential with Wu-Tang Clan building an impressive empire of solo artists, group efforts and related business ventures.
Despite considerable global success enjoyed by the Fugees, a group whose positivism seemed to have grown from the Afrocentric, didactic rap of Arrested Development, a more malevolent mood prevailed. Bitter rivalry had flared between the East and West coasts of America, with artists represented by rival entrepreneurs Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs' and Suge Knight trading vicious threats and insults through the lyrics of their records. This war of words culminated in the fatal shootings of two of rap's biggest stars, Tupac Shaker and the Notorious B.I.G., plunging hip hop into a mood of crisis.
While artists such as DJ Shadow discarded rapping, returning to the turntable skills of Grandmaster Flash and Grandmixer D.ST to create instrumental music based around arcane samples, others looked back nostalgically to the ‘old school’, when hip hop seemed more innocent, less mired in a labyrinth of big business, gang rivalry and actual, as opposed to fantasized, violence. The nostalgia obscured hip hop's surprising longevity, however, along with its phenomenal commercial success, its continuing capacity to reinvent itself during periods of stagnation and its role as the voice of successive generations of young African-Americans.
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DAVID TOOP