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Post Civil Rights to the New Millennium
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Conclusion


In 1979, rap music exploded onto the popular landscape with the enormous success of a single by the Sugarhill Gang entitled " Rapper's Delight ." Following its release in October 1979, "Rapper's Delight," with its complete sample of the group Chic's disco hit "Good Times," was a mainstay on the Billboard Pop charts for twelve weeks. Although it was not the first rap record to garner widespread acclaim, "Rappers Delight" is arguably the popular point of departure for contemporary rap music.

Oratorical practices to rappers and rap music before "Rapper's Delight" include the following:

  • Jamaican-style toasts: a form of poetic narrative performed to instrumental music
  • Various blues songs: especially where conversational talking styles are dominant
  • Prison toasts
  • Playing the dozens: an endless repertoire of verbal insults
  • Disc jockey announcer styles: such as that of Douglas "Jocko" Henderson
  • The Black Power poetry of Amiri Baraka
  • The street-inflected sermons of Malcolm X
  • The rhetorical prowess of nearly all of the prominent Black poets of the early 1970s, including Gil Scott Heron, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, the Watts Poets, and The Last Poets

Rap music might not exist (at least in the way it does today) without the iconic influence of James Brown. The "Godfather of Soul" was also the preeminent forefather of rap music. His celebrated call-and-response technique, coupled with his conversational vocal style, incredible interaction with his band and audience, and his ear for the most contagious break-down arrangements in the history of Black music, puts him at the start of the hip-hop culture that gave rise to rap music. Listening to a James Brown classic, such as " Funky Drummer " or " Funky President ," will immediately render his impact on rap music apparent. Indeed, Brown was rappin' before rap music became reified as a popular phenomenon. It is no mistake that James Brown's music is still one of the most sampled and copied sounds in rap music.

James Brown public memorial at the Apollo Theater in Harlem

James Brown public memorial at the Apollo Theater in Harlem

Grandmaster Flash is now best known as a recording artist, but several purely technical DJ breakthroughs owe their existence to his hand-and-eye coordination. For example, "Punch phrasing"-playing a quick burst from a record on one turntable while it continues on the other-and "break spinning"-alternately spinning both records backward to repeat the exact phrase over and over-are credited to Flash.

JAn aerosol paint can, a common tool used in modern graffiti

JAn aerosol paint can, a common tool used in modern graffiti

When all of the historical and influential touchstones for rap music are considered, the fact that rap has become the premier element of hip-hop culture, a culture that has spread all over the world, should be pretty unremarkable. Since 1979, thousands of known and unknown rappers have produced records, some of which have achieved commercial success. However, to develop a definitive sense of rap music, especially its connections to race and African American culture and its relationship to inner-city populations and American popular culture, various subcategories of the genre warrant some further explanation. The intersection of the four elements of hip-hop in the West and South Bronx (DJ-ing, breakdancing, MCing, and graffiti) with its artisans and audiences, and commercial products, facilitated the cultural revolution of hip-hop as we know it today.

Russell Simmons

The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.

Rakim

The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious...There was an integrity that people respected.