Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About the History of Rap Music
One of the most widely known music forms and genres in the world is Rap music, known for its distinctive vocal techniques and colourful characters.
Extremely popular today, Rap was practically unheard of until the late 1960s and early 1970s, although it didn’t really become “mainstream” popular until the 1980s. The history of rap origins link to both Jamaica and New York City’s underground music scene.
This short article will go into a brief history of rap genre and tell you Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Rap Music. Enjoy.
What is Rap Music?
More or less a sub-genre of Hip Hop, Rap has a unique style of delivery that combines spoken words, rhythm and rhymes delivered over a sick beat that makes people want to get up and move.
There are three distinct elements of rap that include content, flow and delivery, all three of which play upon each other to deliver a sound that is unlike almost any other in the music world.
- Content is the words, which are probs the most important part of rap and the one area where rappers put most of their effort.
- Flow is the rhythm & rhyme, a vital part of Rap that is one of the hardest to master.
- Delivery refers to both the tone of the words being said (hard, soft, edgy, sexy, etc.) and the speed at which they’re spoken or delivered.
Where Did The First Roots of Rap Originate?
Pinpointing exactly where the history of Rap originated isn’t an easy task. Today you can find Rap’s influence in practically every genre both past and present, including Reggaeton, jazz and even (dare we say it) disco and has influenced new musical forms like rap metal, mumble rap and rapcore, among others. That being said, Rap is definitely unique while at the same time being highly malleable.
The Griots of West Africa & The History Of Rap
Centuries ago in west Africa were a group of tribal historians who told stories to their tribes using rhythm, rhymes and simple drumbeats. They were the Griots and, as far as Rap historians say, were the first to put the combination of content, flow and delivery together.
Jamaica and the Caribbean
Much closer to today, Caribbean folk artists in countries like Jamaica, Bermuda and the Virgin Islands were telling stories using rhymes, basic beats and their strong voices. This is where many will tell you that the history of Rap was born, at least the Rap that we all know and love today.
New York City and the Birth of the Loop
Griots and folks artists aside, most Rap aficionados will agree that modern Rap started in the 1970s when DJs in the Big Apple started putting together their own repetitive beats by ‘sampling’ the percussion from funk, soul and disco songs, creating unique beats that became extremely popular.
These so-called loops would then be repeated over and over, laid on top of the instrumental portion of whatever song he sampled them from. Needless to say, they were an instant hit.
DJ Kool Herc and Coke La Rock
If there is one person who most folks consider the grand-daddy of Rap it’s a man named Clive Campbell, better known to his thousands of fans by his stage name, DJ Cool Herc. Born on April 16, 1955, in Kingston, Jamaica, DJ Cool Herc famously hosted his sister’s “Back to School Jam” in 1973 at the infamous 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx, New York. Forever linked to the history of rap music.
It was there that he had the idea to use 2 turntables (record players for the uninitiated) to create his now-famous loops (see above). Coke La Rock, which seems to be his honest-to-goodness name, was a friend of DJ Kool Herc’s.
He is also credited by many as dropping the first Rap song at the same “Back to School Jam” party. Although neither he nor DJ Kool Herc never rose to the same fame (or, frankly, and real fame to speak of) as some of their later counterparts, both are credited with being the originators of what we know today as Rap.
In short, if you want to name the person who was the ‘first Rapper’, Coke La Rock is your man. One of the Rap songs he originated back in the Bronx on that fateful day in 1973 goes like this;
“There is not a man that can’t be thrown A horse that can’t be rode A bull that can’t be stopped There is not a disco that I Coke La Rock can’t rock.“
What Was the First Rap Song?
While there may be some argument about what song was the first rap song (see Coke La Rock, above), the first Rap song to be recorded and released was King Tim III (Personality Jock) – by a musical group called The Fatback Band, who performed with MC Tom Washington from the Bronx.
You can listen to the song here
and time-travel back to the groovy sounds of 1973, man! Interestingly, The Fatback Band was not a Rap group, per se, but basically a musical group who happened to be recording some new music at the same time that Rap and Hip Hop were becoming extremely popular.
When they caught wind of the new genre and saw how Black people in urban New York were reacting to it, they thought it would be a great idea to include a Rap song on their new album. The band went to the Bronx to do some scouting and found Tim Washington, a local MC and rapper that they heard and liked, so they hired him to rap one of his songs on their album. That’s why the name of the song is King Tim III because it was named after Tim Washington.
The First Rap Song Recorded by a Rap Group
We would be remiss if we forgot to mention the Rap, or technically Hip Hop, musical group who recorded the Rap song first. They were a band known as the Sugar Hill Gang and, in 1979, just a few weeks after King Tim III was recorded, they came out with the very first rap song recorded by rappers.
It was, not surprisingly, a song called Rappers Delight. Today Rapper’s Delight is one of the most famous Rap songs ever recorded and, if you want to be delighted by it, you can listen to it here. In 1979 the Sugar Hill Gang went on a TV program in Palisades Park, NJ called The Soap Factory Disco Show and sang their song for the crowd and the show.
That video is as famous as the song, which sampled the song Good Times from disco group Chic. (See, we told you that the history of Rap was influenced by Disco!) By the way, not only was Rapper’s Delight the first rap song recorded by a Rap group, but it was also a smash hit and so is the first smash hit Rap song!
DJs and Rappers and MCs, Oh My!
Throughout the 1970’s Rap, and its successor Hip Hop, flourished. During that time DJ’s were pretty much the dominant force driving the music. However, MCs were rising to fame too because most of the big-time DJ’s weren’t as interested in recording as they were in hosting parties.
Both The Fatback Band and the Sugar Hill Gang had Top 40 hits, Mercury Records signed soon-to-be superstar Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa were both busy becoming legends. The 1980s were a great time to be alive too if you loved Rap, especially after scratching was accidentally invented by Grandmaster Flash as well as the now staple of Rap, the needle drop, which was invented by DJ Grand Wizard Theodore.
The needle drop was a turning point of sorts in the history of Rap genre, allowing DJs to move at lightning speed because they didn’t need to ‘cue up’ a song on their turntable. Instead, they would drop the needle, or stylus, of the turntable to the exact point where they wanted the playback to start.
Rap Gets Socially Conscious
It didn’t take long for Rappers to realize that, as popular as the genre was becoming, they could use it for more than entertaining crowds and wooing women (although that was still cool too). Public Enemy rose to fame along with the likes of Run-DMC, A Tribe called Quest and others.
Production values started to significantly improve, as well as the technology used for sampling but, at the same time, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee were writing songs that shone a harsh and revealing light on the social injustice happening, especially in the inner city of most major US metro areas like New York and LA.
The West Coast Rap scene exploded as well, with Ice-T and N.W.A leading the charge with lyrics that shouted out what life was like in places like Oakland, where life could be hard and may young African Americans were dying too young. “Gangsta Rap’ was born when N.W.A released their seminal song “Fuck Tha Police”, which put police departments across the US on notice that their brutal tactics would no longer be tolerated or ignored.
East vs West
No history of rap music would be complete without at least a quick look at the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast rappers that, unfortunately, exploded and violence in the early and mid-1990s.
Two of the biggest casualties of the war between East and West were the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, whose murders were never solved. The only good thing that seemed to come out of the ‘Rap war’ was that tensions afterward de-escalated and Rap began to transcend it’s violent image and ‘go mainstream’, allowing for rappers like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z to come up.
Also, women started making a name for themselves in the Rap community, with Salt-N-Pepa and Queen Latifah leading the way while Lauryn Hill spun platinum albums and Da Brat won Grammy awards.
The Future is Here
From the 2000s up until today Rap has constantly been changing, and so has the technology used to record it. Streaming arrived, while beat development and sampling have all changed significantly. Today collaboration is key, with rappers being featured on the tracks of their peers and mixing with different genres more than ever. Today Rap and all of the sub-genres that it spawned, is still going strong and gaining a new generation of fans. The beat, as they say, goes on.
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