Hip
Hop Music
Rap
music originated as a cross-cultural product. Most of
its important early practitioners-including Kool Herc,
D.J. Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa-were either first-
or second-generation Americans of Caribbean ancestry.
Herc and Hollywood are both credited with introducing
the Jamaican style of cutting and mixing into the musical
culture of the South Bronx. By most accounts Herc was
the first DJ to buy two copies of the same record for
just a 15-second break (rhythmic instrumental segment)
in the middle. By mixing back and forth between the two
copies he was able to double, triple, or indefinitely
extend the break. In so doing, Herc effectively deconstructed
and reconstructed so-called found sound, using the turntable
as a musical instrument.
While
he was cutting with two turntables, Herc would also perform
with the microphone in Jamaican toasting style-joking,
boasting, and using myriad in-group references. Herc's
musical parties eventually gained notoriety and were often
documented on cassette tapes that were recorded with the
relatively new boombox, or blaster, technology. Taped
duplicates of these parties rapidly made their way through
the Bronx, Brooklyn, and uptown Manhattan, spawning a
number of similar DJ acts. Among the new breed of DJs
was Afrika Bambaataa, the first important Black Muslim
in rap. (The Muslim presence would become very influential
in the late 1980s.) Bambaataa often engaged in sound-system
battles with Herc, similar to the so-called cutting contests
in jazz a generation earlier. The sound system competitions
were held at city parks, where hot-wired street lamps
supplied electricity, or at local clubs. Bambaataa sometimes
mixed sounds from rock-music recordings and television
shows into the standard funk and disco fare that Herc
and most of his followers relied upon. By using rock records,
Bambaataa extended rap beyond the immediate reference
points of contemporary black youth culture. By the 1990s
any sound source was considered fair game and rap artists
borrowed sounds from such disparate sources as Israeli
folk music, bebop jazz records, and television news broadcasts.
In
1976 Grandmaster Flash introduced the technique In 1979
the first two rap records appeared: "King Tim III
(Personality Jock)," recorded by the Fatback Band,
and "Rapper's Delight," by Sugarhill Gang. A
series of verses recited by the three members of Sugarhill
Gang, "Rapper's Delight" became a national hit,
reaching number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music
charts. The spoken content, mostly braggadocio spiced
with fantasy, was derived largely from a pool of material
used by most of the earlier rappers. The backing track
for "Rapper's Delight" was supplied by hired
studio musicians, who replicated the basic groove of the
hit song "Good Times" (1979) by the American
disco group Chic. Perceived as novel by many white Americans,
"Rapper's Delight" quickly inspired "Rapture"
(1980) by the new-wave band Blondie, as well as a number
of other popular records. In 1982 Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet
Rock" became the first rap record to use synthesizers
and an electronic drum machine. With this recording, rap
artists began to create their own backing tracks rather
than simply offering the work of others in a new context.
A year later Bambaataa introduced the sampling capabilities
of synthesizers on "Looking for the Perfect Beat"
(1983).of quick mixing, in which sound bites as short
as one or two seconds are combined for a collage effect.
Quick mixing paralleled the rapid-editing style of television
advertising used at the time. Shortly after Flash introduced
quick mixing, his partner Grandmaster Melle Mel composed
the first extended stories in rhymed rap. Up to this point,
most of the words heard over the work of disc jockeys
such as Herc, Bambaataa, and Flash had been improvised
phrases and expressions. In 1978 DJ Grand Wizard Theodore
introduced the technique of scratching to produce rhythmic
patterns.
Sampling
brought into question the ownership of sound. Some artists
claimed that by sampling recordings of a prominent black
artist, such as funk musician James Brown, they were challenging
white corporate America and the recording industry's right
to own black cultural expression. More problematic was
the fact that rap artists were also challenging Brown's
and other musicians' right to own, control, and be compensated
for the use of their intellectual creations. By the early
1990s a system had come about whereby most artists requested
permission and negotiated some form of compensation for
the use of samples. Some commonly sampled performers,
such as funk musician George Clinton, released compact
discs (CDs) containing dozens of sound bites specifically
to facilitate sampling. One effect of sampling was a newfound
sense of musical history among black youth. Earlier artists
such as Brown and Clinton were celebrated as cultural
heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopularized.
During
the mid-1980s, rap moved from the fringes of hip-hop culture
to the mainstream of the American music industry as white
musicians began to embrace the new style. In 1986 rap
reached the top ten on the Billboard pop charts with "(You
Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" by the Beastie
Boys and "Walk This Way" by Run-DMC and Aerosmith.
Known for incorporating rock music into its raps, Run-DMC
became one of the first rap groups to be featured regularly
on MTV (Music Television). Also during the mid-1980s,
the first female rap group of consequence, Salt-N-Pepa,
released the singles "The Show Stoppa" (1985)
and "Push It" (1987); "Push It" reached
the top 20 on Billboard's pop charts. In the late 1980s
a large segment of rap became highly politicized, resulting
in the most overt social agenda in popular music since
the urban folk movement of the 1960s. The groups Public
Enemy and Boogie Down Productions epitomized this political
style of rap. Public Enemy came to prominence with their
second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us
Back (1988), and the theme song "Fight the Power"
from the motion picture Do the Right Thing (1989),by American
filmmaker Spike Lee. Proclaiming the importance of rap
in black American culture, Public Enemy's lead singer,
Chuck D., referred to it as the African American CNN (Cable
News Network).
Alongside
the rise of political rap came the introduction of gangsta
rap, which attempts to depict an outlaw lifestyle of sex,
drugs, and violence in inner-city America. In 1988 the
first major album of gangsta rap was released: Straight
Outta Compton by the rap group NWA (Niggaz With Attitude).
Songs from the album generated an extraordinary amount
of controversy for their violent attitudes and inspired
protests from a number of organizations, including the
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). However, attempts
to censor gangsta rap only served to publicize the music
and make it more attractive to both black and white youths.
NWA became a platform for launching the solo careers of
some of the most influential rappers and rap producers
in the gangsta style, including Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and
Eazy-E.
In
the 1990s rap became increasingly eclectic, demonstrating
a seemingly limitless capacity to draw samples from any
and all musical forms. A number of rap artists have borrowed
from jazz, using samples as well as live music. Some of
the most influential jazz-rap recordings include Jazzamatazz
CD (1993), an album by Boston rapper Guru, and "Cantaloop
(Flip Fantasia)" (1993), a single by the British
group US3. In the United Kingdom, jazz-rap evolved into
a genre known as trip-hop, the most prominent artists
and groups being Tricky and Massive Attack. As rap became
increasingly part of the American mainstream in the 1990s,
political rap became less prominent while gangsta rap,
as epitomized by the Geto Boys, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and
Tupac Shakur, grew in popularity.
Since
the mid-1980s rap music has greatly influenced both black
and white culture in North America. Much of the slang
of hip-hop culture, including such terms as dis, fly,
def, chill, and wack, have become standard parts of the
vocabulary of a significant number of young people of
various ethnic origins. Many rap enthusiasts assert that
rap functions as a voice for a community without access
to the mainstream media. According to advocates, rap serves
to engender self-pride, self-help, and self-improvement,
communicating a positive and fulfilling sense of black
history that is largely absent from other American institutions.
Political rap artists have spurred interest in the Black
Muslim movement as articulated by minister Louis Farrakhan,
generating much criticism from those who view Farrakhan
as a racist. Gangsta rap has also been severely criticised
for lyrics that many people interpret as glorifying the
most violent and misogynistic (woman-hating) imagery in
the history of popular music. The style's popularity with
middle-class whites has been attacked as vicarious thrill-seeking
of the most insidious sort. Defenders of gangsta rap argue
that no matter who is listening to the music, the raps
are justified because they accurately portray life in
inner-city America.
To
the untrained ear, all rap and hip-hop may sound the same,
but there's a number of different levels in even the simplest
rap song. At its core, hip-hop is a post-modern musical
genre that deconstructs familiar sounds and songs, rebuilding
them as entirely new, unpredictable songs. Early rap records,
commonly called "old school," were made by DJs
scratching records and playing drum loops, with MCs rapping
over the resulting rhythms. As the genre progressed, hard-rock
guitars and hard-hitting beats were introduced by Run-D.M.C.,
the first hardcore rap group, and the scratching techniques
were replaced by sampling. With their dense collages of
samples, beats and white noise, Public Enemy took sampling
to the extreme, and they helped introduce a social and
political conscience to hip-hop. That faded in the '90s,
as gangsta rap -- originally introduced by NWA, who used
Public Enemy's sound as a template -- became the dominant
form. By the '90s, gangsta rap, which originally was in
direct opposition to such pop-oriented rappers as MC Hammer,
had become smoothed over and stylish, and consequently
was more popular than ever, as evidenced by the success
of pop-gangsta Puff Daddy.
