Rap music originated as a cross-cultural product. Most of its major early practitioners, including Kool Herc, DJ Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa, were first- or second-generation Americans of Caribbean descent. Herc and Hollywood are credited with introducing the Jamaican style of cut and mix 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 only a 15-second break (rhythmic instrumental segment) in between. By mixing back and forth between the two copies, he was able to double, triple, or extend the break indefinitely. In doing so, Herc effectively deconstructed and reconstructed the so-called found sound, using the record player as a musical instrument.
While cutting with two turntables, Herc would also perform on the microphone in the style of a Jamaican toast—joking, bragging, and using countless 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. Recorded duplicates of these parties quickly made their way through the Bronx, Brooklyn, and midtown Manhattan, spawning a string of similar DJ acts. Among the new generation of DJs was Afrika Bambaataa, the first major black Muslim in rap. (The Muslim presence would become very influential in the late 1980s.) Bambaataa would often engage in sound system battles with Herc, similar to the so-called cutting contests in jazz of an earlier generation. Sound system contests were held in city parks, where hot-wire street lamps supplied electricity, or at local clubs. Bambaataa sometimes mixed sounds from rock music recordings and TV shows with the standard disco and funk music that Herc and most of his fans relied on. Through the use of rock records, Bambaataa extended rap beyond the immediate reference points of contemporary black youth culture. In the 1990s, any sound source was considered fair game, and rap artists borrowed sounds from sources as disparate as Israeli folk music, bebop jazz records, and TV 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 the Sugarhill Gang. A series of verses recited by the three members of the Sugarhill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” became a national hit, peaking at number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music charts. The spoken content, mostly fantasy-seasoned bragging, was largely derived from a set of material used by most previous rappers. The backing track for “Rapper’s Delight” was provided by hired studio musicians, who replicated the basic beat of the hit song “Good Times” (1979) by American disco group Chic. Perceived as a novel by many white Americans, “Rapper’s Delight” quickly inspired new wave band Blondie’s “Rapture” (1980), as well as a host 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, Bambaata introduced the sampling capabilities of synthesizers on the fast-mixing “Looking for the Perfect Beat” (1983), in which sound bites as short as a second or two are combined for a collage effect. . Speed mixing paralleled the speed editing style of television advertising in use at the time. Shortly after Flash introduced speed mixing, his partner Grandmaster Melle Mel composed the first extended stories in rhymed rap. Until this moment, most of the words heard about the work of DJs like Herc, Bambaataa and Flash had been improvised phrases and expressions. In 1978 DJ Grand Wizard Theodore introduced the scratching technique to produce rhythmic patterns.
The sampling called into question the ownership of the sound. Some artists claimed that by sampling recordings by a prominent black artist, such as funk musician James Brown, they were challenging the right of white corporate America and the recording industry to own black cultural expression. More problematic was the fact that rap artists were also challenging the right of Brown and other musicians to own, control, and be compensated for the use of their intellectual creations. In the early 1990s, a system emerged whereby most artists would request permission and negotiate 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 the sampling was a new sense of musical history among black youth. Earlier artists like Brown and Clinton were celebrated as culture heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopularized.
In the mid-1980s, rap moved from the fringes of hip-hop culture into 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 their raps, Run-DMC became one of the first rap groups to appear regularly on MTV (Music Television). Also in the mid-1980s, the first major female rap group, Salt-N-Pepa, released the singles “The Show Stoppa” (1985) and “Push It” (1987); “Push It” reached the top 20 on the Billboard 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. Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions they epitomized this political style of rapping. Public Enemy rose to fame with their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), and the main theme “Fight the Power” from the film Do the Right Thing (1989), by American filmmaker Spike Lee. . . In proclaiming the importance of rap in African-American culture, Public Enemy lead singer Chuck D. referred to it as African-American CNN (Cable News Network).
Along with 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 great gangsta rap album was released: Straight Outta Compton by the rap group NWA (Niggaz With Attitude). The songs on the album generated an extraordinary amount of controversy for their violent attitudes and inspired protests from various 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 black and white youth. NWA became a platform to launch the solo careers of some of the most influential gangsta rappers and rap producers, including Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E.
In the 1990s, rap became increasingly eclectic, demonstrating a seemingly limitless ability to sample any and all musical forms. Various rap artists have borrowed from jazz, using samples and 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 British group US3. In the UK, jazz-rap evolved into a genre known as trip-hop, with Tricky and Massive Attack being the most prominent artists and groups. As rap became increasingly part of the American mainstream in the 1990s, political rap became less prominent while gangsta rap, epitomized by the Geto Boys, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, grew in popularity.
Since the mid-1980s, rap music has heavily influenced black and white culture in North America. Much of the slang of hip-hop culture, including terms like dis, fly, def, chill, and wack, have become standard parts of the vocabulary of significant numbers of youth of various ethnic backgrounds. Many rap enthusiasts claim that rap works as a voice for a community without access to mainstream media. According to advocates, rap serves to engender self-pride, self-help, and self-improvement, communicating a positive and satisfying sense of black history that is largely absent from other American institutions. Political rap artists have sparked interest in the black Muslim movement as expressed by Minister Louis Farrakhan, drawing much criticism from those who view Farrakhan as a racist. Gangsta rap has also been severely criticized for lyrics that many people interpret as glorifying the most violent and misogynistic (women-hating) images in popular music history. The style’s popularity among middle-class whites has been attacked as vicarious thrill-seeking of the most insidious kind. Proponents of gangsta rap argue that no matter who is listening to the music, raps are justified because they accurately portray inner-city life in America.