Rapping
For the English folk dance, see rapper sword.Rapping, the
rhythmic delivery of
rhymes, is one of the central elements of hip hop
culture and
music. It can be delivered over a
beat or
a cappella — without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, poetry, prose, and song. Derived from
African,
Jamaican, and
American roots, rap has developed both inside and outside of hip hop since the early 1970s.
Modern rappers deliver stylized,
rhythmic raps with complex cadences, rhymes, and wordplay. Rap lyrics cover a variety of subjects, from social struggle to monetary boasts to sex. Rappers often showcase their skills by competing in
freestyle battles in which they ridicule their opponents with
improvised rhymes. Although rap has become an international phenomenon through hip hop culture and music, issues concerning racial, class, and sexual disputes remain among rappers and their listeners.
The definition of
rap in the hip hop sense originates from its earlier meaning— "to discuss or debate informally"—a usage well established among African-Americans by the 1960s.
[The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition.] The first people to rap in the hip hop style were the
DJs of the 1970s, such as
Hollywood and
Kool Herc, who rapped shout-outs to their friends as they DJ'd behind the
turntables. Although rapping in hip hop began with the DJs, most rappers today don't DJ;
Coke La Rock, a member of Kool Herc's
Herculoids, is often cited as the first example of such a rapper.
With the popularization of hip hop, words like
rap and
chill took on new meanings outside of the African-American community.
With the popularization of hip hop slang, several words have lost their original meanings in their usage outside of hip hop. For example, a fact often unrecognized outside of hip hop culture is that not all rappers are
MCs. While the former includes anyone who raps, the latter requires that one performs for crowds.
[A search on Google News results in 9,860 hits for "rapper" and only 4,920 hits for "MC" or "master of ceremonies". URL's accessed on 11 May 2006.]Rapping in
hip hop music can be traced back in many ways to its African roots. Centuries before the
United States existed, the
griots (folk poets) of
West Africa were rhythmically delivering stories over
drums and sparse instrumentation. Because of the time that has passed since the griots of old, the connections between rap and the African griots are widely recognized, but not clearâ€"cut. However, such connections have been acknowledged by rappers, modern day "griots",
spoken-word artists, mainstream news sources, and academics.
,
rooted in the
work songs and
spirituals of
slavery, was created by Blacks (and some Whites) in the
Mississippi Delta region of the United States around the time of the
Emancipation Proclamation. According to several musical historians, the blues were being rapped as early as the 1920s.
In fact,
Grammy-winning blues musician/historian
Elijah Wald has referred to hip hop as "the living blues."
Music critics and historians have observed similarities between the delivery and lyrical content of blues and modern rap lyrics.
|
The Memphis Jug Band, whose lyrical content and delivery was comparable to rapping. |
Jazz, largely developed from the blues, originated around the beginning of the
20th century. Improvised jazz singing, called
vocalese, is often compared by musicians and music critics to the
freestyling of rappers within hip hop. Freestyling has also been said to derive from the art of improvising songs that often distinguishes jazz. Jazz has influenced hip hop greatly throughout its entire history; the
scat singing of jazz could be heard in the seminal 1979
old school hip hop song "
Rapper's Delight" by the
Sugarhill Gang. To this day, jazz musicians such as
Miles Davis and
Herbie Hancock collaborate with rappers, creating a sound that blurs genre lines.
During the mid-20th century, the musical culture of
Jamaica was constantly influenced by the concurrent changes in
American music. In the 1950s, the descendants of Jamaican slaves were mixing their traditional folk music styles of
calypso,
mento, and
soca with the
jazz,
soul, and
blues of America. This fusion led to the creation of
ska and eventually
reggae. As early as 1969,
Deejays were
toasting (an African tradition of "rapped out" tales of heroism) over
dubbed Jamaican beats.
The dubbed
dancehall toasts of Jamaica, as well as the
disco-rapping and jazz-based spoken word
beat poetry of the United States set the template for the rapping in hip hop music. One of the first rappers in hip hop was also hip hop's first
DJ—
Kool Herc. Herc, a Jamaican immigrant, started delivering simple raps at his parties in the early 1970s. As Herc would explain in a 1989 interview, "[t]he whole chemistry came from Jamaica. I was listening to American music in Jamaica, and my favorite artist was
James Brown. When I came over here I just had to put it in the American style."
By the end of the 1970s, hip hop had spread throughout New York, and was getting some radio play. Rappers were increasingly writing songs that fit
pop music structures and featured continuous rhymes.
Melle Mel (of
The Furious Five) stands out as one of the earliest rap innovators. From the 1970s to the early 1980s, Melle Mel set the way for future rappers through his sociopolitical content as well as his creative wordplay.
Hip hop lyricism saw its biggest change with the popularity of
Run-DMC's
Raising Hell in the mid-1980s. This album helped set the tone of toughness and lyrical prowess in hip hop; Run-DMC were almost yelling their aggressive lyrics. Run-DMC exerted an enormous influence on the greatly experimental
golden age of hip hop, which would last until 1993. In golden age rap, internal rhyme schemes and varying cadences were commonplace. Rhyme styles continue to develop throughout the world to this day.
Rhyme styles
Aside from a rhythmic delivery, the only other central element of rapping is
rhyme. In classical poetry, rhymes that span many syllables are often considered whimsical, but in hip hop the ability to construct raps with large sets of rhyming syllables is valued. Rap can contain any and all forms of rhyme found in classical poetry such as
consonance,
assonance,
half rhyme, or
internal rhyme. Rappers are known for their style of rhyming.
Juelz Santana often avoids full rhymes in favor of assonance, consonance, half rhymes, and internal rhymes.
Eminem, on the other hand, often focuses on complex and lengthy rhyme schemes.
Literary devices
Rappers use
double entendres,
alliteration, and all other forms of wordplay that are also found in classical poetry.
Similes and
metaphors are used extensively in rap lyrics; rappers such as
Paul Wall have written entire songs wherein every line contains a simile or metaphor.
Hip hop lyrics often make passing references to popular culture and other topics. Such
allusions serve to illustrate or exaggerate a song's message. Some of these reference are overtly political, while others simply acknowledge, credit, or show dismay about towards aspect of the rapper's culture and life.
Use of "metaphor" to refer to all imagery is widespread among rappers.
Common acknowledges this, rapping:
Hold the mic like a memoryNiggas say I'm nice with metaphors but these are similes (Common, "1-9-9-9",
Soundbombing 2)
Word choice and slang
Many hip hop listeners believe that a rapper's lyrics are enhanced by a complex vocabulary.
Kool Moe Dee claims that he appealed to older audiences by using a complex vocabulary in his raps.
Rap is famous, however, for having its own vocabulary— from international
hip hop slang to local/regional slang. Some artists, like the
Wu-Tang Clan, develop an entire lexicon among their clique.
African American Vernacular English has always had a significant effect on hip hop slang, and vice-versa. Certain regions have introduced their unique regional slang to hip hop culture, such as the
Bay Area (
Mac Dre,
E-40),
Atlanta (
OutKast,
Lil Jon), and
Kentucky (
Nappy Roots).
The Nation of Gods and Earths, a religious/spiritual group spun off from the
Nation of Islam, has influenced mainstream hip hop slang with the introduction of phrases such as "word is bond" that have since lost much of their original spiritual meaning.
Word choice has also been a large factor in distinguishing MCs. Whereas some rappers would simply say,
I'm hot, who wanna get burned?I'll fire one in your knot, and watch your whole fuckin head turn (
Fat Joe, "John Blaze",
Don Cartagena)
Other rappers go for a more literal and less metaphorical approach to making a statement:
Once they caught us off guard, the Mac-10 was in the grass andI ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin (
Nas, "N.Y. State of Mind",
Illmatic)
Preference toward one or the other has much to do with the individual;
GZA, for example, prides himself on being very visual and metaphorical but also succinct, where underground rapper
MF Doom is known for heaping similes upon similes. In still another variation,
2Pac was known for saying exactly what he meant, literally and clearly.
Subject matter
Hip hop music originated in
New York City in the 1970s, and continues to focus largely on metropolitan centers in the
East and
West coasts of America. Many rappers use urbanity as the backdrop for their raps, focusing on the hardships of inner-city life. One element that has always existed in rapped rhymes, dating back to hip hop's inception, is "the struggle". This struggle was originally financial or personal in nature; getting a girlfriend, or paying the rent. With "
The Message," a
concept rap written by
Melle Mel and performed by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the idea of "the struggle" was put in another context: the shared hardships of the ghetto.
The roots of these sociopolitical raps are in the
beat poetry of
The Last Poets and
Gil Scott Heron. "The Message" pioneered the inclusion of political content in hip hop rhymes, expanding beyond basic personal issues and party raps. In
the golden age of hip hop,
Public Enemy emerged, with a focus on political and social issues. Modern East Coast hip hop artists such as
Mos Def,
Talib Kweli,
Nas, and
Dead Prez are known for their sociopolitical subject matter.
Other rappers take a less critical approach to urbanity, sometimes even embracing such aspects as crime.
Schoolly D was the first notable MC to rap about crime.
. Several years later, he would go on to influence
Ice T, who had more overtly "gangsta" lyrics.
Gangsta rap, made popular largely because of
N.W.A. and "proto-gangsta rapper"
KRS-ONE, celebrates crime and a hedonistic "gangsta" lifestyle. With the death of his DJ,
Scott La Rock, KRSâ€"ONE went on to speak out against violence in hip hop. Several gangsta rappers also laud the use of drugs such as
marijuana, which occupies a significant place in the subject matter of modern hip hop. West-coast rappers such as
Snoop Dogg and
Cypress Hill, for instance, helped popularize drug-related songs in the early
1990s.
In contrast to the hedonistic approach of the gangsta rappers, some rappers have a spiritual or religious focus.
Christian rap is currently the most commercially successful form of religious rap. Aside from
Christianity, the
Five Percent Nation, a
gnostic religious/spiritual group, has been represented more than any religious group in popular hip hop. Hip-hop artists such as
Rakim, the members of the
Wu-Tang Clan,
Brand Nubian,
X Clan,
Busta Rhymes, and Nas, have had success in spreading the
theology of the Five Percenters.
"Party rhymes," meant to pump up the crowd at a
party, were nearly the exclusive focus of
old school hip hop (with the exception of
The Furious Five). Party raps remain a staple of hip hop music to this day. In addition to Party raps, rappers also tend to make references to love and sex. Love raps were first popularized by
Spoonie Gee of the
Treacherous Three, and later, in the golden age of hip hop,
Big Daddy Kane,
Heavy D, and
LL Cool J would continue this tradition.
2 Live Crew, a
Miami bass group, were among the first hip hop act to be temporarily banned in the United States for the overtly sexual and profane content of their raps.
Flow
Rap delivery, or
flow, is defined by
prosody,
cadence, and
speed. Cadence deals with the dynamics and patterns of the rhythm. In addition to
rubato (changes in tempo for the purpose of expression), cadence can also serve to reinforce song structure through
ritardando (the gradual slowing down of
tempo).
Old school rappers generally maintained a simple cadence, without much deviation,
while
golden age rappers such as
Rakim experimented extensively with cadence.
Present day popular rapper
Snoop Dogg is considered to have a versatile cadence because of his ability to rap over disparate beats equally well.
A rap's prosody, which exists in classical poetry, is its
meter and
foot. The
hardcore rapping style pioneered by
Run-DMC and
KRS-ONE is an inverse of
iambic pentameter, in other words,
trochaic pentameter. Iambic pentameter, which was
Shakespeare's meter of choice, is known for its resemblance to natural, conversational
speech. For this reason, rapping often sounds like talking "turned upside down."
A common way MCs judge how to flow in a verse is by writing a rhyme so that the most stressed words coincide with the beat's
percussion, in a way that makes one's rhyming sound more musical as opposed to spoken word and that better combines the MC's voice with the musical backdrop. Rakim, who many credit for changing the way most rappers flow on a song, experimented with not only following the percussion but also with complimenting the melody of the song using his own voice; making his flow sound more that of an instrument (a saxophone in particular).
The ability to rap quickly and clearly is sometimes regarded as an important sign of skill. In certain
hip hop subgenres such as
chopped and screwed, slow-paced rapping is often considered optimal. The current record for fastest rapper is held by MC
Ricky Brown, who rapped 723 syllables in 51.27 seconds (14.1 syllables per second) on his track "
No Clue" at
B&G Studios on
January 15,
2005.
To successfully deliver a nicely
flowing rap, a rapper must also develop vocal presence,
enunciation, and
breath control. Vocal presence is the distinctiveness of a rapper's voice on record. Enunciation is essential to a flowing rap; some rappers choose also to exaggerate it for comic and artistic effect. Breath control, taking in air without interrupting one's delivery, is an important skill for a rapper to master, and a must for any MC. An MC with poor breath control can't deliver difficult verses without making unintentional pauses.
Raps are sometimes delivered with melody. West-coast rapper
Egyptian Lover was the first notable MC to deliver "sing-raps."
Popular rappers such as
50 Cent add a slight melody to their otherwise purely percussive raps. Some rappers, such as
Cee-Lo, are able to
harmonize their raps with the beat. The Midwestern group
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony was one of the first groups to achieve nation-wide recognition for using the fast-paced, melodic and harmonic raps that are also practiced by
Do or Die, another Midwestern group.
Synchronization is common among
rap groups. Synchronization refers to the organization of several rappers into one song either by overlapping or through
call and response.
Grandmaster Flash's MCs, the
Furious Five, were the first to make five rappers sound as one through synchronization. Some rappers take the role of two different characters that are talking to each other in the song. Examples include "Warning" by Notorious BIG and "
Stan" by
Eminem.
Freestyle rapping
Freestyle rapping, typically referred to as
freestyling or
spitting, is the improvisation of rapped lyrics. When freestyling, some rappers inadvertently reuse old lines, or even "cheat" by preparing segments or entire verses in advance. Therefore, freestyles with proven spontaneity are valued above generic, always usable lines. Rappers will often reference places, objects in their immediate setting, or specific (usually demeaning) characteristics of opponents, to prove their authenticity and originality.
Battle rapping
Battle rapping, which can be freestyled, is the competition between two or more rappers in front of an audience. The tradition of insulting one's friends or acquaintances in rhyme goes back to
the dozens, and was portrayed famously by
Mohammed Ali in his boxing matches. The winner of a battle is decided by the crowd and/or preselected judges. According to
Kool Moe Dee, a successful battle rap focuses on an opponents weaknesses, rather than one's own strengths.
s such as
BET's
106 and Park and
MTV's
DFX host weekly freestyle battles live on the air. Battle rapping gained widespread public recognition outside of the African-American community with Eminem's movie,
8 Mile. Eminem, like many other rappers, also releases "diss tracks" on his albums, meant to insult his enemies.
By the
United States 2000 Census, three-fourths of the United States' population is white, while one-eighth is black. However, most rappers are black
. Many believe this discrepancy is a good thing; popular rapper
Kanye West has said: "I hate music where white people are trying to sound black. The white music I like [sounds] white"
.
|
Vanilla Ice's record company supposedly encouraged him to lie about the origin of his upbringing and background. |
Unlike Kanye West, who came from a middle-class background
, the majority of popular American rappers to date have come from a poor, often inner-city life.
Vanilla Ice, a white
pop rapper, went so far as to lie about his place of origin, claiming that he came from a poorer area than he did. According to Vanilla Ice, he was encouraged to lie by his record company, to increase their profits
.
The most notable exception to the skin color trend in rappers is
Eminem, who is of mainly
Scottish descent. According to the
Guinness Book of World Records 2005, Eminem is the highest selling rapper of all time, outselling the late
Tupac Shakur, who has had several
posthumous albums released. The
Beastie Boys are another exception to the above patterns, and are notable for being a white, Jewish, middle-class rap group that was able to gain street credibility despite the race and class stigma involved. And a third exception is another white rap group,
Insane Clown Posse. ICP, who are
horrorcore/
hardcore hip hop musicians, co-founded a major record label,
Psychopathic Records, and have worked with such artists as
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,
Three 6 Mafia,
Mack 10,
Vanilla Ice,
2 Live Crew,
Tech N9ne, and
Paul Wall.
Despite so many rappers being black, fans of hip hop tend to be white, reflecting demographics. According to
musicologist Arthur Kempton, "Today 70 percent of hip-hop is bought by white kids"
. The discrepancy is particularly pronounced in
undergound hip hop, where many concertgoers are white. According to political rapper Zion of
Zion I, this is because "...so many Black people don't want to hear it. They want that thug shit." In addition to Zion, several other underground rappers, such as Boots Riley of
The Coup, report nearly all-white audiences
.
Almost all popular rappers identify themselves as
heterosexual.
Homophobia is both prevalent and blatant throughout hip hop culture, although a small number of MCs have explored
GLBT issues. There is an underground culture of gay hip hop, which was profiled in the 2005 documentary film
Pick Up the Mic, although to date only
Queen Pen, an openly
bisexual female MC, and
Caushun, an openly
gay male rapper, have had significant mainstream success.
Various politicians, journalists, and rappers have accused rappers of fostering a culture of violence and hedonism among hip hop listeners through their lyrics.
Throughout hip hop's history, new musical styles and genres have developed that contain rapping. Entire genres, such as
rapcore (
rock/
metal/
punk with rapped vocals) and
hip house have resulted from the fusion of rap and other styles. All popular music genres with a focus on percussion have contained rapping at some point— be it
disco (
DJ Hollywood),
jazz (
Gangstarr),
new wave (
Blondie),
funk (
Fatback Band),
contemporary R&B (
Mary J. Blige),
reggaeton (
Daddy Yankee), or even Japanese dance music.
UK garage music has begun to focus increasingly on rappers in a new subgenre called
grime, pioneered and popularized by the MC,
Dizzee Rascal.
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List of rappers*
Scrypt*
Diss song*
Posse cutSimilar lyrical traditions
*
Griots in
West Africa*
Pansori in
Korea*
Mor lam in
Laos*
Chastushka in
Russia*
Rhapsody in
Ancient Greece*
Kuai ban in
China*
Limerick in
Ireland*
Sprechstimme in
Germany
*
