Mid 1980's Rap Music example essay topic

History of Rap Rap Music, a genre of R&B that includes rhythmic poetry put over a musical background. The background consists of beats combined with digitally isolated sound bites from other recordings. The first recording of rap was made in 1979 and the genre began to take notice in the U.S. in the mid-1980's. Though the name rap is often used back and forth with hip hop. The name hip-hop comes from one of the earliest phrases used in rap on the song "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang.

"I said a hip hop, hippie to the hippie, the hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it to the bang bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie, to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat". . In addition to rap music, the hip-hop subculture also formed other methods of expression like break dancing, graffiti art, a unique slang vocabulary, and fashion sense. Rap started in the mid-1970's in the South Bronx area of New York City. The birth of rap is, in many ways, like the birth of rock and roll. Both originated in the African American community and both were first recorded by small, independent record labels and marketed towards, mostly to a black audience.

And in both cases, the new style soon attracted white musicians that began performing it. For rock and roll it was a white American from Mississippi, Elvis Presley. For rap it was a young white group from New York, the Beastie Boys. Their release " (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!) " (1986) was one of the first two rap records to reach the Billboard top-ten. Another early rap song to reach the top ten, "Walk This Way" (1986), was a collaboration of Run-DMC and Aerosmith. Soon after 1986, the use of samples was influenced in the music of both black and white performers, changing past thoughts of what make up a "valid" song.

Rap music was first a cross-cultural product. Most of its important early practitioners, Kool Herc, DJ Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa, were either first- or second-generation Americans of Caribbean background. Kool Herc and DJ Hollywood are given credit for introducing the Jamaican style of cutting and mixing into the musical culture of the South Bronx. Herc was the first DJ to buy two copies of the same record for just a 15-second break (instrumental segment) in the middle. By mixing back and forth between the two copies he was able to double, triple, or endlessly extend the break. By doing this, Herc made the turntable a musical instrument.

While he was mixing with two turntables, Herc would also perform with the microphone in Jamaican style-joking, boasting, and using all around group references. Herc's parties soon gained notice and were recorded on cassette tapes. Copies of the tapes quickly made their way through the Bronx, Brooklyn, and uptown Manhattan, creating a number of similar DJ acts. Among the new DJs was Afrika Bambaataa, the first Black Muslim in rap. Bambaataa often waged in sound-system battles with Herc. The sound system competitions were held in city parks, where hot-wired street lamps supplied electricity, or at local clubs.

Bambaataa would sometimes mix sounds from rock-music and television shows into the standard funk and disco advance that Herc and most of his followers relied on. By the 1990's any sound source was considered useable and rap artists borrowed sounds from such disparate sources as Israeli folk music, bebop jazz records, and television news broadcasts. In 1976 Grandmaster Flash introduced the technique of quick mixing, in which sound bites as short as one or two seconds are combined for a unique effect. Shortly after Flash introduced quick mixing, his partner Grandmaster Mell e Mel composed the first extended stories in rap. Up to this point, most of the words heard over the work of disc jockeys had been improvised phrases and expressions. In 1978 DJ Grand Wizard Theodore introduced scratching of records to produce rhythmic patterns.

In 1979 the first two rap records appeared: "King Tim " by the Fatback Band, and "Rapper's Delight", by Sugarhill Gang. A series of verses by the three members of Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight" became a national hit, reaching number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music charts. The spoken content, mostly bragging spiced with fantasy, came largely from material used by the earlier rappers. The background for "Rapper's Delight" was supplied by studio musicians, who copied the basic groove of the hit song "Good Times" (1979) by a disco group Chic.

Sampling brought into question the ownership of the new sound. Some artists claimed that by sampling recordings of black artist they were challenging white corporate America and the recording industry's right to own black cultural expression. Rap artists were also challenging other musicians' right to own, control, and be given credit for the use of their creations. By the early most artists requested permission for the use of samples. Some commonly sampled released CDs containing dozens of sound bites specifically for sampling. One effect of sampling was the sense of musical history among black youth.

Earlier artists were celebrated as cultural heroes and their older recordings were reissued and re popularized. During the mid-1980's, rap moved from the verges of hip-hop culture to the mainstream of the American music industry as white musicians began to accept the new style. In 1986 a rap record 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 combine rock music into its raps, Run-DMC became one of the first rap groups to be featured regularly on MTV. Also during the mid-1980's, the first female rap group, Salt-N-Pepa, released the singles "The Show Stop pa" (1985) and "Push It" (1987).

"Push It" reached the top 20 on Billboard's pop charts. In the late 1980's rap became highly politicized, resulting in the most mediated social agenda in popular music. The groups Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions condensed this political style of rap. Public Enemy became noticed with their second album, "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" (1988), and the theme song "Fight the Power" from the motion picture "Do the Right Thing" (1989), by filmmaker Spike Lee. Stating the importance of rap in black culture, Chuck D., of Public Enemy, referred to it as the African American CNN. Next to the rise of political rap came gangsta rap, which attempts to state an outlaw lifestyle of sex, drugs, and violence in the city.

In 1988 the first major album of gangsta rap was released, "Straight Outta Compton" by the rap group NWA (Niggaz With Attitude). Songs from the album created an extraordinary amount of bickering for their violent attitudes and hatred towards a number of organizations, including the FBI. However, attempts to censor gangsta rap only served to publicize the music and make it more attractive to both black and white youths. Since the mid-1980's rap music has influenced both black and white culture in America.

Much of the slang of hip-hop, like dis, fly, def, chill, and wack, have become standard parts of vocabulary for a number of young people of various backgrounds. Many rap enthusiasts claim that rap is used as a voice for a people without access to the mainstream media. According to supporters, rap serves to provoke self-pride, self-help, and self-improvement, passing on a positive and fulfilling sense of black history that is missing from other American institutions. Gangsta rap has been severely criticized for lyrics that many people interpret as praising the most violent and misogynistic (woman-hating) views in the history of popular music. Defenders of gangsta rap argue that no matter who is listening to the music, the raps are good because they precisely show life in inner-city America..