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Rap Music: North America
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Rapping (... known as [E]mceeing, MCing, spitting, or just rhyming) is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, one of the elements of hip hop music and culture. Although the word rap has sometimes been claimed to be a backronym of the phrase "Rhythmic African Poetry", "Rhythm and Poetry", "Rhythmically Applied Poetry", "Rapping About Poetry," "Racing Always Pacing," or "Rhythmically Associated Poetry", use of the word to describe quick speech or repartee long predates the musical form,[1] meaning originally "to hit".[2] The word had been used in British English since the 16th century, and specifically meaning "to say" since the 18th. It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style.[3]
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Rap music has stampeded through America like no other form of music since the creation of rock music in the 1960s. Like other popular styles, it has a history that is closely aligned with the rebellious attitude of its young creators; youth who rejected the contemporary music prevalent during the late 1970s (disco). Rap music is not a novelty, as many music professionals thought, but has a beginning as equal to blues, jazz, r&b, rock & roll, or any form of popular music.
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Morley (1992) posits that rap music has ... evolved from African American music forms with influences from be-bop, fusion, rhythm and blues, funk, and contemporary gospel. Rappers produce music that is both an evolution of the past African American oral tradition and a reflection of society from their perspective. Rap is primarily a verse form. The words and the rhymes are critically important because, like blues, these words describe the society from which it evolved. Oratory is rhythm and rhythm becomes 'stylin' or the manipulation of language to express feelings or tell a story (Hamlet, 1998, pp.96-97). Furthermore, both blues and rap speak of pain, struggle, and survival, despite periods of hopelessness.
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During the mid-1980s, rap moved from the fringes 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.
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Although there are different styles of rap music, this paper focuses on the media-driven central figure in hard core rap music videos, the "original gangsta" (OG) rappers. This image is rooted in the curious juxtaposition of the African American oral tradition of hero outlaws as described by LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) in Blues People (Jones, 1963). The communities that created outlaws and OGs are important as sources for understanding the evolution from outlaw to OG (Washington, 1996) to organic intellectual (OI). Original gangsta rappers and blues singers are engaged in a dynamic activity that seeks a common ground with the audience through a shared attitude about the topics that affect rappers, singers and audience (Hamlet, 1998) The emerging patterns of behavior and topics within the discourse constitute the sites of conflict in rap music: economics, violence, family, social alienation, polarization of societal units, and cultural and social deprivation (Washington & Shaver, 1997).
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The genre of rap and hip-hop in its modern iteration is increasingly influenced by other musical forms. Notably, remixes of existing hits with current notable rappers has become an increasing trend. The influence of rap has increased internationally, with independent styles, such as Grime, Trip Hop, and Hyphy. Southern, Northern, and midwestern rap has ... gained increasing popularity and penetrated the coastal markets on a large scale for the first time. Along with the increasing commercialisation of rap and hip-hop culture, this has led to many artists such as Nas to claim that "hip-hop is dead", echoing the common ironic refrain from self-identified Punks that Punk is dead.
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