Rap Music
No one who heard the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight when it was released in 1979 could have guessed that rap would become the most important and incendiary music of the '80s and '90s. Certainly, there wasn't much in the song to suggest such grandiose notions: over a bass groove borrowed from Chic's "Good Times," Big Bank Hank, Master Gee, and Wonder Mike offered a series of humorous boasts in a drawling fashion that wasn't quite spoken-word but definitely wasn't conventional singing. The pumping music was rooted in the house-party traditions of the Bronx, where DJs mixed throbbing funk records through massive sound systems. Although people snapped the record up, most critics thought the song was an intriguing novelty hit and left it at that.
But that silly novelty tune introduced the masses to a challenging new facet of R&B.; By the time Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released The Message in 1982, rap had established itself as the next link in the chain that connects Delta and urban blues, R&B;, soul, funk, and disco. The Message was a stark, shocking cry from the ghetto, centered around Melle Mel's warning, "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge." By expanding the still-young genre's musical and lyrical boundaries, The Message opened the doors to a new form of expression. Coupled with the low-cost equipment needed to make the music -- a couple of mikes, a PA, a turntable, and some source records -- rap became accessible to anyone who had a way with words and a clever DJ who could cut records on the turntable.
By 1984 rap had exploded, with dozens of grassroots independent labels releasing bold new records (mostly singles) by the likes of Kurtis Blow, Run-D.M.C., the Fat Boys, LL Cool J, and countless other young artists. Run-D.M.C.'s third album, Raising Hell, was a massive crossover hit in 1984, thanks in part to their collaboration with Aerosmith's, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on "Walk This Way." LL Cool J's 1985 debut (Radio) established him not only as one of the genre's greatest lyricists but also as rap's first sex symbol.
The contrast between Rapper's Delight and The Message continues today, with rap offering dance-floor novelties like Digital Underground's Humpty Dance, explicit boasts of sexual potency like Luther Campbell's, 2 Live Crew, and the trenchant, militant wail of Public Enemy, N.W.A., and Ice Cube. Unlike punk rock, to which rap has always been compared, the genre has continually evolved, taking advantage of electronic innovations such as digital samplers (through which DJs can lift the riffs from old records and rework them around their own beats and soundscapes) and expanding and elaborating on the themes introduced in The Message. There are nearly as many varieties of rap as there are of rock & roll.
Rap has come under constant attack from Black radio programmers, hostile White rock fans, and music censors. In the late '80s and '90s, the censors attacked everyone from N.W.A., Ice Cube, and 2 Live Crew to Public Enemy and the Geto Boys on the grounds that their music was vulgar and lewd. But the music has retained its vitality throughout these assaults, as suggested by new acts such as De La Soul, Brand Nubian, Arrested Development, and PM Dawn, who have taken the music farther than the Sugarhill Gang could have ever dreamed.