The Smithsonian Institute is planning a display of rap music artifacts to include turntables from Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa clothing, MC Lyte's diary & Fab 5 Freddy's boombox.
^^ New Release '07
^^ New Release '07
Rap Music
the birthbeat of hip hop
We can say in America today (tongue in cheek) that there are only two kinds of ears roaming the soundscape. There are square ears and there are phat ears. Which kind you sport is directly related to your exposure to Rap. In 1979, a tiny rift buckled the Dancehall floor; it was the fresh sound of Hip-hop and Rapper's Delight sold a big single with spoken word performance steppin to music! This little blip on the hip-Richter scale marked the birth of a rock-shattering spoken art called Rap. Music listeners bumped & shook & separated into the two ear-y categories mentioned above.
In other words, today, anyone over 35 can be thought of as having "square" ears— there's a pun in that, meaning old-fashioned and they probably don't purchase Rap. Some Squares may not have ever changed out their square floppy disks, may have given up on keeping up with tec changes & almost certainly still have a stack of square tape cassettes. Their box-set ears always turn red when bass-boosters drive by. On the other hand (or other ear?), people under 35 are flapping big phat aural-flaps — as in sweet, large & expanded. These ears hold up strong as gun metal, are completely rap-attenuated. This audio-neurological split in human evolution occurred in the mid-80's with the injection of the largest mass marketed, spoken word form ever to hit the globe— Rap Music.
Because this performance art has become such a dynamic phenomena & hip-hop sound & culture is wafting the world now, we give Rap its own showcase on our Genre Tree. So significant it is, Rap needs a limb of its own alongside the other spoken word time periods — Telling Roots, Early Traditions, Sound Waves & all the other spoken word eras we have named!
In the beginning, who didn't think Hip-hop wasn't fresh and fun to dance to? (Hip-hop is the music, Rap is the words.) It had clever rhymes, crazy electronic scratchin', and a wonderful, faster-than-reggae, low-frequency beat. Wait, was it a music-based word form or… a word-based music form? That was only the first argument to break out around this unique genre. Rap was destined to dance with Controversy.
Things went grinding along just fine, for a while. Rumbles in the soundscape had occurred before; every time there was a budding genre— rockers, dead-heads, goths, punks… They all made waves too. Young people always create an identity that goes with a sound; their music defines their generation, no harm in that. Rap started like a sub-culture thing— sexy & fun-loving, club confined & predominantly Black. Rappers were east-coast, inner-city men of color trying to make a living. Suddenly, they were getting a lot of college play though, but ah well, another trend, the elders said, probably due to the fact that educated kids always pride themselves on being so liberal.
There were other Black forms: jive talking Bebop poets going back to the 40's and chatting DeeJays in the Dancehalls were lewdly amusing. Canadians cherished their Dub Poets, those wonderful reggae wordsmiths keeping everyone hip to social issues, the mesmerizing riddims over leisurely rhythms. Motown was cool, too, born in the 60's, owned & managed by Black Detroiters who capitalized big-time on the White audience.
So here we had yet another musical style— Hip-hop, like hip along, reminiscent of James Brown & Sly Stone. Hip-hop merely added a faster pace with a clever rhyme-master making his balmy rap. Sure looked like Detroit (only this time in New York City), another localized, Black music industry wanted to claim a sound of its own.
So the wave was smooth at first, practically whimsical, a music-based word form with funny scatchin' and playing records backwards by hand. The lyrics, chat, rap, was feel-good-ish and everyone frolicked on a sweet, sweet Sugarhill. And, who doesn't want in on a good party? Maybe it was Chicago radio, or MTV, or that song Gigolo Rapp that got the West Coast in on things, whatever— things expanded, got real phat, evolved— bye-bye, Old School.
Old School Rap got left in the wake as more intense drumbeats resounded. Electric guitars, white noise & midi samples crammed the breakbeat and whipped the whooping fans to a frothing peak. Then, the biggest boom: something shifted (here comes the quake), content changed— the rap part of the show— spoken word— brash & nasty now became a threat to the status quo.
The rapper morphed into a caricature of violence & street savvy-ness, complete with pomp & posse & a voluptuous harem. It was customary to use an alias preceded by a royal title like Master or MC (from Emcee). The image of rapper as a gold-clad, vengeful demi-god tapped into a youthful (or envious) psyche, so it sold well. But for all the pageantry, the rapper was also exposing realities of Black male urban life, complete with all the brutal talk, frustrations & desires. This change in the emotional tone of Rap is credited to the performance group called Public Enemy, who introduced bitter social & political elements into the genre. The material was angry & violent and oddly contradictory in its objectification of Black women. (Remember the square ears? They turned red and shook with nervousness & horror.)
Adding chaos to controversy, unauthorized remixes & bootlegged samples started weaseling in. By the mid 80's, this disregard for copyright, called Plunderphonics, blossomed into a thriving underground scene employing dozens of cavalier remixers. The mash up boys worked for DJ-only subscription services & the DMC (Disco Mix Club) and produced a string of white label remixes that layered samples of spoken word, sometimes entire acapellas, over the already popular music. (White label is not white race, it means unknown artist.)
In essence, the rap industry was Black created & Black controlled like Motown but, this time, sorry, no apologies & no catering to the White audience, to copyright laws, or even considering the Black sisters. It was gutsy, honest & most often profane but as we say in show biz: Shock = value.
Rap quickly found mass appeal outside the 'hood. Young people of both genders and all ethnicities were jamming to it so enthusiastically they fueled the biggest music shake-up since the birth of Rock & Roll. This development took height in the 1990's and the irreverent, street-credited style was dubbed Gangsta Rap.
Ironically, Gangsta Rap which is so flippantly free speech-y & far from peachy, today obtains the largest profits from fuzz-faced, adolescent, White male consumers. It's one reason why Gangsta Rap has ignited so much controversy. Socio-political critics ask: What is the impact of an art form that exudes violence & misogyny being absorbed into the collective consciousness of youth? Is the hip-hop attitude, possibly, counter-productive to the struggle for equality & social justice?
Members of the global hip-hop community are taking a critical look at these questions. Some Black community leaders want to educate rap industry moguls about the consequences of packaging the rapper as gansta. Is the industry responsible for how the violent realities of Black, inner-city experience have come to be misunderstood & often misrepresented? They exploit for the sake of profits, but the CEOs (now both Blacks & Whites) claim only to be in business after all— giving the public what it wants.
Today, there is a strong & growing movement to change the "bad rap" around Rap. Many artists, educators and political activists are rallying to take back what they see as their art form which they believe became tainted by blingin' greed. As Rap goes worldwide, the controversy rages on, and Hip-hop is no longer dismissed as just another passing trend.
The wonderful thing about the phat attack of Rap is that it shows how incredibly powerful art can be in shaping culture. Seemingly overnight, it can rock the foundation of business as usual. Rap is a dramatic show of the Spoken Arts elevating voices of concerned people. It shocks, it moves, it evolves. It can even take on a life of its own.
Some really fresh & creative hybrid forms have evolved from the rap genre— Hip-house, Electro-rap, R&B rap, Metal rap, Mexi-rap, even Bebop is back. There are indigenous hybrids— Native American, Chicano, Latino. There's Asian & religious rap, East Bay Muslim rap & Christian God-hop. There's a strong underground of rappers who are gay & an energetic subculture called Voguing where gay & lesbians can show off their breakbeat talents on the runway while the MC raps to the tracks. The mic is open for any marginalized person to find a stage, to meld any heritage or age-old musical style with the modern-day appeal of Spoken Word.
As we rip tracks into the 21st century, more & more youth seem to gravitate toward Conscious Rap which sprouts from the controversy around content. The coming generations may prove to be more thoughtful & aware then some would have us think. Certainly, women of the Rap Music Era are listening carefully to the changing soundscape & are hopeful for more mindful words. Maybe phat ears will tune-in to a conscious, alternative that gives voice to women, particularly Black women, to resist hate & to define themselves.
For more on the Conscious Movement see off-site links:
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| What came before Rap Music? |
