Rap/Hip-Hop

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Rap/Hip-Hop

Hip-Hop music, or to use the more popular marketing term, Rap music, was the most popular, influential, and controversial form of black and Latino urban popular music throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It emerged in the early to mid-1970s in the Bronx, though in later years, distinctive East Coast and West Coast styles would emerge and clash, sometimes with fatal results for its performers. Rap and Hip-Hop culture entered mainstream America's collective consciousness as a novelty, resulting from the massive success of the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight." "Rapper's Delight" contained all the elements that would characterize Hip-Hop's essence: spare instrumentation, rhythmically spoken rhymes, and the borrowing of previously existing musical elements to construct a new song ("Rapper's Delight" borrowed heavily from Chic's then-current hit, "Good Times").

Music is only one part of Hip-Hop culture, which encompasses four major elements: rapping, deejaying, breakdancing, and graffiti-writing. Beyond the rhyming style known as rapping or MC-ing, deejaying uses the turntable as an instrument that the MC raps over while listeners engage in the quasi-acrobatic gyrations of breakdancing. Rapping can take many forms—from the rhythmic vocal delivery of blues artists and the artsy jazz-influenced delivery of the Last Poets to the almost spoken-word delivery of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Graffiti ranges from the illegal stylized form of public art often spray-painted on walls to the signature design motifs on clothing, album covers, and posters. As an extension of graffiti, the creative spellings used by many "aerosol artists" ("Str8" for "straight" or "boyz" for "boys," for example) has constituted a unique vocabulary that has itself become a stylistic signature of the Hip-Hop movement and has spilled over as a shorthand in computer chat rooms.

Hip-Hop's deceivingly simplistic nature and appropriation of other music drew early criticisms about its merits as a musical form, and its graphic and often controversial lyrics delivered mostly from the perspective of African-American urban youth fanned the flames of criticism concerning its social merits. The practice of borrowing fragments from other songs, often with a digital sampler, greatly influenced other forms of music to the point that, by the late 1990s, sampling-based sound collage became recognized as a legitimate musical art form. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hip-Hop music remained one of the only outlets where an inner-city youth's opinion could be heard unfiltered by mass media censors, prompting artist Chuck D to proclaim that form of music "Black America's CNN." By the late-1990s, Hip-Hop has become virtually synonymous with youth culture (black or white), and its music and associated styles have been appropriated for TV ads, music videos, Pop and R&B songs, fashion magazines, and in malls throughout the United States.

The significance of breakdancing and graffiti should not be downplayed, but it is obvious that the music has become Hip-Hop culture's most noticeable and persistent component. The key figure in the development of Hip-Hop music was the DJ (disc jockey). The role of the DJ during the earliest phases of the style was to spin popular records that kept the party alive and people dancing. In the early 1970s a number of DJs had strong followings in their respective areas. Few of them ever had access to large clubs, so their primary venues were block parties, schools, and parks (where, during the summer, they would plug their sound systems into lampposts and play until the police broke up the gathering).

The most popular of these early DJs was Jamaican immigrant Kool DJ Herc, who is credited with two innovations that, Tricia Rose argues in Black Noise, "separated rap music from other popular musics and set the stage for further innovation." The first was Herc's habit of isolating the fragments of songs that were the most popular with dancers and segueing them into one long musical collage. These song fragments were composed of the percussion breaks within the songs and came to be known as "breakbeats." In David Toop's book Rap Attack 2, early DJ pioneer Afrika Bambaataa recalls Kool DJ Herc's DJ style: "Now he took the music of Mandrill like 'Fencewalk,' certain disco records that had funky percussion breaks like the Incredible Bongo Band when they came out with 'Apache' and he just kept that beat going. "

Other DJs took this concept and began expanding on the possibilities that two turntables could offer. The endless collages of breakbeats that were an integral part of breakdancing required DJs to draw from massive libraries of obscure records, giving the most popular DJs the title of "masters of records." One of the first DJs to pick up on the breakbeat technique was Grandmaster Flash, who went further than Kool DJ Herc in his turntable wizardry. With two turntables Flash was able to, as told to David Toop, "take small parts of records and, at first, keep it on time, no tricks, keep it on time. I'm talking about very short beats, maybe 40 seconds, keeping it going for about five minutes, depending on how popular that particular record was." Flash continued, "After that, I mastered punch phasing—taking certain parts of a record where there's a vocal or drum slap or a horn. I would throw it out and bring it back, keeping the other turntable playing. If this record had a horn in it before the break came down I would go—BAM, BAM, BAM-BAM—just to try this on the crowd." Another technique that is credited to Grandmaster Flash is "scratching." Scratching consists of moving a record back and forth with one's hand while the needle rests in the groove to produce a rhythmic noise that is completely divorced from the sound the record makes when played at a normal speed. This sound is often used to accent parts of another record playing on the second turntable. These basic Hip-Hop DJ techniques laid the foundation for all Hip-Hop music to come.

Kool DJ Herc is credited with a second important innovation—the development of rapping, or MC-ing. During the parties he began "dropping rhymes" or shouting simple phrases that were popular in the streets like "rock on my mellow," "to the beat y'all," or "you don't stop" on top of the break beats he played. Herc borrowed this rhythmic form of talking (called "toasting") from the microphone personalities who deejayed in his native Jamaica, and he is recognized as the person who brought this style to New York. Early on, when he began concentrating more on mixing break beats, he enlisted the help of his friend Coke La Rock to take over MC duties. The MC was responsible for exciting the dancers and giving the party a live feel; the MC also functioned as a type of crowd control—diffusing tensions that might arise from rival groups in the audience.

Grandmaster Flash, an acrobatic DJ whose showmanship resembled a circus act, saw the importance of having a live MC to keep the crowd dancing and not looking at the DJ. Together with Melle Mel, Scorpio, Kidd Creole, and Raheem & Cowboy, Flash formed Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. This trend-setting group inspired numerous rhyme battles throughout the South Bronx, and many "crews" such as Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five, the Funky Four Plus One, the Cold Crush Brothers, and the Treacherous Three fought for microphone supremacy.

In the early days of rap, since other venues were unavailable, DJs like Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa often played for free in outdoor parks, abandoned buildings, and community centers. Soon Grandmaster Flash's popularity surpassed Kool DJ Herc's and Flash began to play for paying customers at numerous high schools and clubs. By 1977 Flash's following had grown to the point where he was playing in clubs to crowds numbering more than 3,000. Until July, 1979, when the Sugarhill Gang released "Rapper's Delight," Hip-Hop was strictly an underground phenomenon that had not been documented beyond the numerous bootleg tapes of live performances that circulated throughout New York City, played on portable radios called "ghetto blasters." The Sugarhill Gang was not a part of the South Bronx Hip-Hop scene that had been developing in the late 1970s; the group was instead put together by Sugarhill Records owners Sylvia and Joe Robinson. They had no street credibility and were not known to anyone involved in the Hip-Hop scene, but this did not stop them from having a huge hit in "Rapper's Delight," which sold more than two million records worldwide.

After the commercial success of "Rapper's Delight" many of the MCs and DJs who were popular on the club circuit began to sign with record labels. By 1982, Afrika Bambaataa was playing for increasingly hip white audiences in downtown Manhattan clubs such as The Ritz, The Mudd Club, and Negril, as well as producing his own hit singles ("Planet Rock" was his biggest). This helped provoke an intense media infatuation with Hip-Hop culture, which singled out and highlighted the elements of Hip-Hop and breakdancing during the early 1980s. Soon after, a deluge of movies began featuring breakdancing and rapping, such as Wild Style, Beat Street, Breakin', and Krush Groove. Many journalists and music consumers in the mainstream treated Hip-Hop as a passing fad, but Hip-Hop's popularity continued to increase.

Some Hip-Hop artists from its early days—like Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, Kool Moe Dee, and Doug E. Fresh—found themselves becoming minor stars while others such as Busy Bee, Spoonie Gee, Debbie Dee, Cold Crush Brothers, and Funky Four Plus One achieved little commercial success. One of the characteristics of what became known as the "old school" of Hip-Hop artists was an avoidance of using DJs and a reliance on live funk bands laying down instrumentals over which the MCs rapped. Also, Hip-Hop artists like Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five wore flashy outfits that in no way reflected the styles worn by Hip-Hop fans on the street.

By the early 1980s, Hip-Hop music went through its first major stylistic change, ushered in by Run-DMC, which practically invented the "new school." Eschewing the showbizzy outfits and more lightweight backing instrumentals of old school acts, Run-DMC wore the same clothes worn by urban youths on the street. Further, they stripped the music down to raw basic beats and rhymes, which was more true to Hip-Hop's sound as it was originally heard in Bronx block parties and nightclubs. Run-DMC's influence was enormous, paving the way for the success of more hardcore-sounding Hip-Hop artists like Public Enemy, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and other Def Jam recording acts.

Soon to be a major player in the Hip-Hop music industry, Def Jam Records was co-founded in 1984 by Russell Simmons, the brother of Run from Run-DMC. By 1985, Simmons' label had released a string of seven 12-inch singles that sold over 250,000 each (an unprecedented number at the time), launching the careers of LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Simmons' business partner, Rick Rubin, produced their debut albums as well as that of Public Enemy, and also had a hand in producing Run-DMC's Raising Hell (the first Hip-Hop album to go platinum). After starting the company with a $5,000 investment, Simmons and Rubin signed a $1 million distribution deal in 1985 with the corporate record label CBS.

While Run-DMC was considered the first Hip-Hop group to attract a predominantly white rock audience (with its cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way"), the Beastie Boys, the first white Hip-Hop group, were the first rappers to top the Billboard Pop Album charts, a sign that Hip-Hop had finally infiltrated the white suburbs of America. This was another watershed moment in the evolution of Hip-Hop and a wake-up call to major record labels that Hip-Hop was becoming a very profitable genre. These major labels, which had access to large amounts of capital, moved quickly to sign new artists, and began to absorb many of the small independent labels either through distribution deals (such as CBS's relationship with Def Jam Records or RCA's relationship with Jive Records) or by purchasing the independents outright (like Warner Brothers did with the small but profitable Tommy Boy and Sleeping Bag labels).

During the genre's first major commercial explosion (following a number of minor explosions), Hip-Hop entered what is considered to be its golden age during the late 1980s. It was a period of exciting creativity and diversity, with Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy introducing the Hip-Hop world to overtly political messages with their albums By All Means Necessary and It Takes a Nation of Millions…, respectively. Rakim radically advanced the art of rhyming on Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full and Follow the Leader, and the likes of Schoolly D, Ice T, and Niggaz with Attitude introduced the harsh, reality-based street rhymes of what would become known as "gangsta rap." Afrocentric groups such as the Jungle Brothers and X-Clan proliferated, and party records by Kid 'n' Play and Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock were just as popular as Hip-Hop's clown prince Biz Markie and the longest lasting ladies of Hip-Hop, Salt-n-Pepa.

Salt-n-Pepa were not the first female rappers, but they were the first to become extremely popular. Women's participation in Hip-Hop has largely been obscured, primarily because there were few female MCs who were able to release albums during the early 1980s, when Hip-Hop was getting underway. Despite this shortage of female artists, women did participate in the scene. Grandmaster Flash recounted in David Toop's Rap Attack 2 that there was a greater female presence during the early days, with crews like the Bronx-based Mercedes Ladies playing to large crowds. Other artists like the Funky Four Plus One's Sha-Rock, Dimples D, and the Sequence were among the only recorded female rapper role models that Salt-n-Pepa could look to during the early 1980s.

By the late 1980s, Hip-Hop music was proving itself a big money maker. In 1988, Hip-Hop's annual record sales reached $100 million, which accounted for two percent of the total music industry's sales. The next year Billboard added "Rap" charts to its magazine and MTV debuted Yo! MTV Raps, which quickly became the network's highest-rated show. By 1992, it was estimated that Hip-Hop was generating $400 million annually, roughly five percent of the music industry's yearly income. These estimates nearly doubled to $700 million in 1993. In 1995 CNN reported that Hip-Hop's annual sales had risen to eight percent of the music industry's annual income. After a brief slump mid-decade, by the late 1990s, Hip-Hop was still going strong, with the majority of gold and platinum albums being awarded not to new pop and rock acts, but to new R&B and Hip-Hop artists. During the first half of 1998, Hip-Hop sales were up twenty-eight percent over 1997.

With the financial success of Hip-Hop came a proliferation of lawsuits involving copyright infringements, owing to the genre's established style of borrowing from previously existing music—a key practice since Hip-Hop's inception, whether by DJs playing fragments of records at Bronx block parties or via the technologically savvy method of collaging found sounds with digital samplers. This method of creation became extremely influential, becoming an accepted and legitimate form of music making by the late 1990s, with many mainstream Pop acts incorporating sampling into their recordings. But for a time during the mid-to-late 1980s, the practice of sampling appeared to be in danger. The deluge of lawsuits began in 1986 when funk artist Jimmy Castor, popular in the 1960s and 1970s, sued Def Jam and the Beastie Boys for their appropriation of the phrase "Yo, Leroy" from Castor's 1977 recording "The Return of Leroy (Part I)." Even though the legal atmosphere surrounding sampling became highly charged, the practice continued. By the early 1990s, businesses called "sample clearing houses" had been established, allowing labels and artists to use them in order to avoid any legal problems that may arise from sampling.

Hip-Hop continued to grow more diverse after its late-1980s golden age, though the mainstream media representations of Hip-Hop were dominated by coverage of gangsta rap during the first half of the 1990s. During this time, artists such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Tupac Shakur sold millions of albums, many to white suburban teens. The violent and sometimes misogynist imagery contained in gangsta rap lyrics, and the fact that white teenagers were listening to it, drew protests from many conservative groups, prompting Time-Warner to drop "original gangsta" Ice T from its roster after a much publicized controversy surrounding the lyrics of his song, "Cop Killer." Under pressure, Time-Warner also sold off its investment in Interscope, the distributor of Death Row Records, which was the preeminent gangsta rap label during the first half of the decade. Although gangsta rap sales had been in decline for a year, the violent deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. in 1996 and 1997, respectively, marked the symbolic death of that genre.

Even though the West Coast-based gangsta rap genre was in decline by the mid-1990s, many more sub-genres and artists took its place. For instance, the Wu-Tang Clan, a New York City crew of nine talented MCs, bubbled up from the underground in 1993 to become one of the major forces in Hip-Hop by the late 1990s. By 1998, the Wu-Tang Clan had two multi-platinum records. Puff Daddy sold millions of records making popular party raps, and the multicultural Fugees became one of the most successful crossover groups of the 1990s. Female artists like Foxy Brown, Lil' Kim, Lauryn Hill, Lady of Rage, Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah, Bahamadia, Heather B, and others increased women's profiles in the Hip-Hop industry. Also in the late 1990s, the art of deejaying underwent a renaissance, with turntable crews Invisibl Skratch Piklz, X-ecutioners, and the Beat Junkies, as well as individual turntablists DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, DJ Faust, Kid Koala, and Mixmaster Mike expanding the sonic possibilities of using two turntables.

Despite almost yearly predictions of Hip-Hop's commercial and artistic failure since 1979's "Rapper's Delight," Hip-Hop remained a commercially vital, artistically rich musical tradition well into the 1990s. By the end of the century, Hip-Hop appeared to be more popular and influential than ever.

—Kembrew McLeod