FREE ESSAY ON HISTORY OF RAP

HISTORY OF RAP

History of Rap 
Rap music as a musical form began among the youth of South Bronx, New York in the mid
1970's. Individuals such Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash were some of the early pioneers
of this art form. Through their performances at clubs and promotion of the music, rap
consistently gained in popularity throughout the rest of the 1970's. The first commercial
success of the rap song "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979 helped bring
rap music into the national spotlight. The 1980's saw the continued success of rap music
with many artists such as Run DMC (who had the first rap album to go gold in 1984), L.L.
Cool J, Fat Boys, and west coast rappers Ice-T and N.W.A becoming popular. Today, in the
late 1990's rap music continues to be a prominent and important aspect of African-
American culture. Rap music was a way for youths in black inner city neighborhoods to
express what they were feeling, seeing, and living and it became a form of entertainment.
Hanging out with friends and rapping or listening to others rap kept black youths out of
trouble in the dangerous neighborhoods in which they lived. The dominant culture did not
have a type of music that filled the needs of these youth, so they created their own. So,
rap music originally emerged as a way for [black] inner city youth to express their
everyday life and struggles (Shaomari, 1995, 17). Rap is now seen as a subculture that,
includes a large number of middle to upper white class youths, has grown to support and
appreciate rap music. Many youth in America today are considered part of the rap
subculture because they share a common love for a type of music that combines catchy
beats with rhythmic music and thoughtful lyrics to create songs with a distinct political
stance. Rap lyrics are about the problems rappers have seen, such as poverty, crime,
violence, racism, poor living conditions, drugs, alcoholism, corruption, and
prostitution. These are serious problems that many within the rap subculture believe are
being ignored by mainstream America. Those within the rap subculture recognize and
acknowledge that these problems exist. Those within this subculture consider the other
group to be those people who do not understand rap music and the message rap artists are
trying to send. The suppresser, or opposition, is the dominant culture, because it
ignores these problems and perhaps even acts as a catalyst for some of them. "The beats
of rap music has people bopping and the words have them thinking, from the tenement-lined
streets of Harlem, New York, to the mansion parties of Beverly Hills, California"
(Shomari, 1995, 45). Rap music, once only popular with blacks in New York City,
Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, has grown to become America's freshest form of music,
giving off energy found nowhere else. While the vocalist(s) tell a story, the sic jockey
provides the rhythm, operating the drum machine and scratching. Scratching is defined as
"rapidly moving the record back and forth under the needle to create rap's famous
swishing sound" (Small, 1992, 12). The beat can be traditional funk or heavy metal,
anything goes. The most important part of rap is rapping, fans want to hear the lyrics.
During every generation, some old-fashioned, ill-humored people have become frightened by
the sight of kids having a good time and have attacked the source of their pleasure. In
the 1950s, the target was rock 'n' roll. Some claimed that the new type of music
encouraged wild behavior and evil thoughts. Today, rap faces the same charges. Those who
condemn this exciting entertainment have never closely examined it. If they had, they
would have discovered that rap permits kids to appreciate the English language by
producing comical and meaningful poems set to music. Rappers don't just walk on stage and
talk off the top of their heads. They write their songs, and they put a lot of though
into them. Part of rapping is quick wit. "Rappers like L.L. Cool J grew up rapping in
their neighborhood, and they learned to throw down a quick rhyme when they were
challenged" (Nelson,Gonzales, 1991, 135). But part of it is thoughtful work over many
hours, getting the words to sound just right so that the ideas come across with style. As
L.L. Cool J describes it, I write all my songs down by hand. Each song starts with a
word, like any other sentence, and becomes a manuscript. (Nelson, Gonzales, 1991, 137).
Many performers set a positive example for their followers. Kurtis Blow rapped in a video
for the March of Dimes' fundraising drive to battle birth defects and he has campaigned
against teenage drinking as a spokesperson for the National Council on Alcoholism. On the
television show Reading Rainbow, Run-D.M.C. told viewers how books enabled them to become
kings of rock. On another occasion, group member Darryl D.M.C. McDaniels said, Little
kids like to follow me around the neighborhood. I tell them to stay in school. Then I
give them money to get something in the deli. Run-D.M.C. is one of the numerous rap
combos advising kids to keep off drugs. Doug E. Fresh and Grandmaster Flash have each
made records telling of the horrors of cocaine. On Grandmaster Flash's hit White Lines,
he details how the drug can ruin a life, and shouts, Don't do it! From it's inception,
rap indured a lot of hostility from listeners--many, but not all, White--who found the
music too harsh, monotonous, and lacking in traditional melodic values. However, millions
of others - often, though not always, young African-Americans from underprivileged inner
city backgrounds - found an immediate connection with the style. Here was poetry of the
street, directly reflecting and addressing the day to day reality of the ghetto in a
confrontational fashion not found in any other music or medium. "You could dance to it,
rhyme to it, bring it most anywhere on portable cassette players, and, in the best rock
'n' roll tradition, form your own band without much in the way of formal training"
(Small, 1992, 177). The basic workouts of early rappers like Kurtis Blow and the Fat Boys
can sound a bit tame today. Many were still expecting the music to peter out before Run
D.M.C. came along. Rap was, and to a large degree still is, a singles oriented medium,
but these men from Queens proved that rappers could maintain interest and diversity over
the course of entire full-length albums. Combining hard beats and innovative production
with material that emphasized positive social activism without ignoring the cruel
realities of urban life, they found as much favor with the critics as the street. Among
the first rap groups to climb the pop charts in a big way, they also were among the first
to make big inroads into the White and Middle-American audiences when they teamed up with
Aerosmiths's Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry for the hit single Walk This Way. The mid- and
late '80s saw rap continue to explode in popularity, with the "birth" of superstars like
LL Cool J and Hammer (the latter is often accused of providing a safe rap- pop
alternative). Although most early rap productions originated in New York City and its
environs, the music took hold as a national phenomenon, with strong scenes developing in
other East Coast cities like Philadelphia, as well as West Coast strongholds in Los
Angeles and Oakland. Production techniques became increasingly sophisticated;
electronics, stop-on-a-dime-editing, and sampling from previously recorded sources became
prominent. The increased emphasis on electronic beats led to the popularization of the
term hip-hop, a designation which is by now used more or less interchangeably with rap.
The Beastie Boys, obnoxious white ex-punks from New York, brought rap further into the
Middle American mainstream with their "vastly popular hybrids of hip-hop, hard rock, and
in your face braggadocio" (Nelson, Gonzales, 1991, 12). While rap had always forthrightly
dealt with urban struggle, the late '80s saw the emergence of a more militant strain of
the music. Sometimes advantaged neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles, although
performers like Philadelphia's Schoolly D probed that the genre was not specific to the
area. Boogie Down Productions laid down a prototype that was taken to more extreme
measures by N.W.A., who reported on the crime, sex and violence of the ghetto with an
explicit verve that some viewed as verging on celebration rather than journalism.
Enormously controversial, and enormously popular with record buyers, several N.W.A.
members went on to stardom as solo acts, including Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. The
most popular and controversial of the militant rappers, the New York based Public Enemy,
were perhaps the most political as well. Their brand of activism, like that of Malcolm
X's two decades earlier, made a lot of people, including liberals, pretty uncomfortable,
with their emphasis upon Black Nationalism and careless anti-Sematic, homophobic, and
sexist references. Groups such as Public Enemy ignited an ongoing debate in the media.
Activist-oriented critics and audiences found a lot to praise in their music. At the same
time, they could not let the xenophobic tendencies of these acts pass unnoticed, or
ignore the frequent quasi-celebration in much rap music of misogyny, drugs, and violence,
and the status to be gained in the urban community by the practice thereof. Passionate
advocates of civil liberties and free speech wondered, sometimes aloud, whether rappers
were taking those privileges too far. Newly emerging gangsta rappers like Snoop Doggy
Dogg, Slick Rick, and 2Pac not only take the violent subject matter of their lyrics to
new extremes (and to the top of the charts), but have been accused of enacting their
scenarios in real life, landing in jail for manslaughter or fighting similarly grave
charges. These performers often unrepentantly contend they are only reporting things as
they happen in the 'hood, of a culture that not only shoots people, but is being shot at.
Many critics find their line between art and reality too thin, and hate to see them
spreading their gospel from the top of the charts (2Pac's 1995 album Me Against the World
debuted at No. 1 even as he was serving a prison sentence), or serve as role models for
international youth. Gangsta rap may have gotten a lot of the headlines in recent years,
but the field of rap as a whole remains diverse and not as dominated by the shoot-'em-out
minidramas of gangsta rap, as many would have you believe. De La Soul took rap and
hip-hop productions to new heights with their 1989 debut Three Feet High & Rising, an
almost psychedelic sampling and editing of a wildly eclectic pool of sources that would
do Frank Zappa proud. Their humorous and cheerful vibe inspired a mini-school of
Afrocentric acts most notably the Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest. Arrested
Development, Digable Planets, and Digital Underground also pursued playful, heavily jazz-
and funk-oriented paths to immense success and high critical praise. The work of rap is a
highly macho (some would say sexist) environment, but some female performers arose to
provide a much needed counterpoint from various perspectives: the saucy (the various
Roxannes), the pop (Salt-N-Pepa), and the feminist (Queen Latifah). It is a measure of
rap's huge influence that the style has infiltrated mainstream soul and rock as well.
Producer Teddy Riley gave urban-contemporary performers like Bobby Brown a vaguely hip
edge with his brand of New Jack Swing, White alternative rockers like G. Love and most
notably Beck devised a strange hybrid of rap, blues, and rock. Vanilla Ice probed that
Whitbread pop-rap could top the charts, though he was unable to sustain his success. More
than most genres' rap/hip-hop has become a culture with its own sub-genres and buzzwords
what can seem almost impenetrable to the novice. Despite this proliferation of schools of
production and performance, many rap records can appear virtually indistinguishable from
each other to a new listener. And there's no getting around the fact that a lot of them
are. "The market is saturated with repetitive beats and monotonously uncompromising
slices of urban street life, to the point that they've lost a lot of both their musical
novelty and shock value" (Rose, 1994, 56). Rap music has lost none of its momentum as we
head into the last half of the 1990's. Scenes continue to proliferate, not just on the
coasts, but in Atlanta, Houston, and such unlikely locales as Paris. It may appeal more
to inner-city adolescents than anyone else may, but gangsta rap may be bigger than
anything else in R&B music may commercially, and there are more multiplatinum rap/hip-hip
acts than you can count. Shinehead, Shabba Ranks, and less heralded performers like
Sister Carol have fused reggae and rap. And the jazz and rap worlds are being brought
closer together than ever through the efforts of "Gang Starr and their lead Guru, US3,
and the landmark Stolen Moments: Red, Hot + Cool compilation, which united many of the
top names of hip-hop and jazz" (Rose, 1994, 67). Rap is still a new music form. It is
expanding every day, and the sound has grown wide enough to include scores of future
stars. Some rap is rock-based, some is funk, and some is very close to the original
street sound. A few of the present stars will definitely have a noticeable impact on the
future of rap. Themes that are found more and more in rap lyrics are: pride in an African
heritage and the call for harmony between men and women. Queen Latifah and MC Lyte are
working hard to open doors to women in the music business. Rap fans are also starting to
accept more white artists. 3rd Bass and Vanilla Ice are new white rap acts with promise.
The time is near when all of America will be bopping to rap. Rap has already shown signs
of crossing over to a new audience. A Grammy category was added for rap music in 1989.
D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were the first winners for their single, Parents
Just Don't Understand. In 1990 Young MC took home the prize for Bust a Move. And with
real proof that rap is reaching more people, Tone Loc became the first rapper ever to
reach number one on the pop charts. He did it with his hit single Wild Thing in 1989. Of
course, there are still plenty who are afraid of rap and won't listen to it's message.
Along with the birth and growth of rap comes censorship. This has become a big issue
within the music industry, and rap music is at the center of the controversy. Some people
want to put warning labels on certain rappers' albums and newspapers and magazines have
been printing articles about the bad influence that some rappers have on kids. What is it
about the music that people find so troubling? Some rappers use strong language. Others
are accused of writing racist lyrics, or lyrics that are insulting to women. As with all
kinds of music, the more popular it becomes, the more likely you are to find both good
and bad sides. But the positive side of rap greatly outweighs the negative. And its
positive messages seem to be spreading. The number of new rappers that grows everyday
will bring about new forms of rap and constant changes on the "old school" versions of
the music. With these new versions and variations comes new fans and renewed faith from
old fans. Regardless of how many rap artists land in jail or end up dead, this music will
live on. The fans will make sure of it. 
Bibliography 
Work Cited Nelson, Havelock and Michael A. Gonzales. Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap
Music and Hip-Hip Culture. New York: Harmony Books, 1991. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap
Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, Wesley University Press, 1994.
Shomari, Hashim A. (William A. Lee, III). From the Underground: Hip-Hop Culture as an
Agent of Social Change. Mt. Vernon, NY: X-Factor Publications, 1995. Small, Michael.
Break It Down: The Inside Story from the New Leaders of Rap. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol
Publishers, 1992. www.aolnetsearch.com. Rap Music 
Bibliography 
Work Cited Nelson, Havelock and Michael A. Gonzales. Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap
Music and Hip-Hip Culture. New York: Harmony Books, 1991. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap
Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, Wesley University Press, 1994.
Shomari, Hashim A. (William A. Lee, III). From the Underground: Hip-Hop Culture as an
Agent of Social Change. Mt. Vernon, NY: X-Factor Publications, 1995. Small, Michael.
Break It Down: The Inside Story from the New Leaders of Rap. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol
Publishers, 1992. www.aolnetsearch.com. Rap Music