subject: A Concise Back Story Of Hiphop - The Resurrection Of Music [print this page] A history of rap can be concise because the musical style has only been around for about four decades. Rap music began in the 70's heavily influenced by African American and Latino rhythms as well as Jamaican folk tales whose stories were related in rhyming patterns. Its hip hop roots cannot be overlooked either when New York City DJs put an emphasis on the rhythmic drum breaks in funk and disco music so popular in the 70's increasingly trendy club scene. Clubs grew to be highly recognizable and very influential with big name DJs who were great at attracting many of the top members of the in-crowd. This veneration of DJs and the rise of rap music went hand in hand to create the phenomenal rise of rap as we knew it then and today.
The growing popularity of rap music brought with it an expansion of the Master of Ceremonies' (MC) role. Actually, the most gifted MCs and their charisma had much to do with the importance of the expansion of hip hop music and the rap artist. The star MCs were great at entertaining audiences before, during and after the rap and hip hop artists' performances. Rap music was also known as MCing in its early days as rap artists speak poetically in rhyme and verse.
The word of this new music was spread by break dancers, rap artists and graffiti artists in New York City in the early 1970's. By the late 70's rap music had gained some powerful commercial attraction and thus began its steep uphill rise as an alternative to pop music in America and subsequently all over the world. Rap music is performed both with and without instrumentals or synthesizers in the background. Lyrics can be written down and learned by the rap artist, or they may be improvised by the artist ad lib while performing.
The Sugar Hill Gang in 1979 had the first commercial success with their rap song Rapper Delight. The Gang caught the attention of several major record labels, which furthered the style's popularity with a larger audience.
By the 1990's, a sub-class of rap called gangsta rap sprang up and flourished in the United States. It consisted of controversial lyrics with a focus on street violence, sex and drugs, which of course added significantly to rap music's appeal to American youth and rapidly spread to all levels of socio-economic groups.
Rap continued its notoriety and gained more and more audiences with the likes of Public Enemy, NWA and Ice-T. Now more than 20 years have elapsed since these original artists and rap still enjoys a huge and eclectic following.
Because of rap's controversial lyrics and original musical style, the genre maintained its meteoric rise into the 21st century. Today, it is the fastest growing and most listened to segment of the music industry in America and across all continents.
Currently, rap and its close cousin hip hop are in the very midst of their greatest popularity due to the mainstream acceptance largely brought on by such artists as Kid Rock and Eminem who may have served to reach a whiter rap audience, not to mention women of rap like Salt N' Pepa, Li'l Kim and the most versatile of all, Queen Latifah who bring more females into rap's folds.
The term rap for this particular musical genre was first coined by Steven Hagar in The Village Voice. Mr. Hagar later authored a history of the hip hop titled The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music and Graffiti. Unfortunately for those serious fans of musical stylistics throughout history, the book is out of print.
