Expert: Ted Nesbitt - 7/18/2007

Question
HI there, hoping you can settle a dispute.  We were talking about the word "Rap" and my collegue insists that the
muscial style of rap came before rap had meant to have a dialogue with
someone else.  Do you know which had come first for sure?  Thanks for your time.

Answer
David:

If I agree with you [rap or dialogue came before rap as music], then you'll give me a great rating, right?

According to the "bible" of the study of word origins -- The Oxford English Dictionary [OED] -- the first WRITTEN usage of "rap" to mean talking or chatting with someone occurred in 1898!  

The very famous black activist and writer, Eldridge Cleaver, used the word rap to mean a conversation in his 1965 book, "Soul on Ice."

It was not until the 1970s that the word was first applied to music.

Your friend loses.  Give him my best.

By the way, when I was in college [and you don't need to know WHEN that was], we often had "rap sessions" in the dorm, the student union, etc.

I am pasting in below, ALL of the references from the OED, both the noun form and the verb usage.

Ted Nesbitt

5. a. Conversation, talk, chat. dial.
1898 R. BLAKEBOROUGH Wit N. Riding Yorks. 433 Lets 'ev a pipe an' a bit o' rap.
   b. Among American Blacks, a special style of verbal display, repartee, etc. (see quot. 1967). More generally, impromptu dialogue, talk, or discussion. colloq. Cf. RAP v.1 3d.

1967 J. HORTON in Trans-Action Apr. 6/1 Sometimes used synonymously with street conversation, ‘rap’ is really a special way of talking repartee... For example, one needs to throw a lively rap when he is ‘putting the make on a broad’. 1970 D. LEE We walk Way of New World 52 The national rap deliberately continues, ‘wipe them niggers out’. 1970 New Yorker 8 Aug. 36/1 Around Jane Fonda you may call it a rap, but here it's still called a powwow. 1971 Black Scholar Jan. 17/2 The indigenous, enduring black folk rap, then, is populated with witches, tyrants, befrienders of young children, the strong, the stoic, the quick-witted. 1972 Last Whole Earth Catalog (Portola Inst.) 183/3 Ordinarily the talk about their Uncle Emmit would have led D.R. and Marcella on into a general rap about other relatives. 1973 S. HENDERSON Understanding New Black Poetry p. xi, An extension of this is the emergence over the past few years of the ‘rap’ as an authentic Black literary form. 1974 Black World Sept. 55/2 The percussion group introduces Roach's rap, whose text is ministerial on ‘the power of love’. 1974 H. L. FOSTER Ribbin' ii. 51 George is sitting on the steps in the school running a strong rap with a number of girls. 1975 Time Out 7 Feb 43/2 Although their rap between songs seems more suited to a family variety show it can at least be excused as ‘professionalism’. 1976 New Musical Express 31 July 6/4 Five minutes into the rap and the singer who replaced Ian Gillan three years ago seems prepared to reveal a damn sight more than one of the original members. 1977 Zigzag Apr. 46/1 ‘Dum Dum Boys’ opens with a ‘whatever happened to me mates’ rap. 1978 Amer. Poetry Rev. July/Aug. 44/3 Each section of the book..is an interlude, a rap, a seeming improvisation on some aspect of the blues. 1978 Verbatim Feb. 10/1 Each sees Black English as richly metaphoric and imagistic, its speakers adept at creative compounds and the double entendre, frequently extraordinarily skilled in traditional verbal battles and games which are integral to their world, a world in which the baddest dude is often the one with the best rap. (A word..whose meaning in Black English differs from the meaning it took on when assimilated into White English.)

*****

7. attrib. and Comb. (chiefly U.S. colloq.), as (sense 4d) rap partner; rap centre, the meeting-place of a rap group; rap club, a club that ostensibly provides companionship and conversation but is really a brothel; rap group, a group that meets to discuss problems; rap parlour = rap club; rap session, a group discussion; rap sheet, a police record.

1973 Tucson (Arizona) Daily Citizen 22 Aug. 28/1 Those turned off by rap centers, afraid of encounter groups and frightened to death by pillows-on-the-floor revelations may be seeking someone to listen to them. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 16 Oct., The committee decided we needed a sort of rap center for teenagers with the exhibit, and we wanted to do something that would be appealing to them.

1973 N.Y. Post 22 June 7 In the face of a crackdown on street prostitution many of the girls..are taking shelter in ‘rap clubs’ which have replaced massage parlors in the sex-for-sale world.

1970 Time 30 Aug. 18 The heart of the [women's liberation] movement is made up of hundreds of ‘rap groups’, usually formed on an ad hoc basis. 1971 N.Y. Times 12 June 28 The New York chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War instituted weekly ‘rap groups’ where men meet and talk about their experiences and feelings. 1972 Listener 31 Aug. 270/1 We created..a kind of anti-war community consisting of veterans and professionals. To avoid clinical terminology, we called the programme we established ‘rap groups’ rather than ‘therapy groups’. 1978 Chicago June 82/3 Women's center for lesbians and other women... Rap-group organizing, info on pregnancy testing, birth control etc.

1975 N.Y. Times 4 Oct. 1/8 ‘Rap’ parlors, ‘sensitivity training’ centers and other establishments that use imaginative covers for illicit sex other than the pretense of being a massage parlor would not be affected by the measure.

1971 Black Scholar Sept. 37/1 He thought about..the four rap partners he had on his last beef.

1970 Time 24 Aug. 12 In every major city, women, most of them young, gather for ‘consciousness-raising’ rap sessions, the awareness rituals of The Sisterhood. 1973 Publishers Weekly 18 June 9 (Advt.), Secret tapings of rap sessions where seven suburban wives tell with startling candor of their search for personal identity. 1974 Greenville (S. Carolina) News 23 Apr. 16/1 Special-interest rap sessions will be conducted by Campus Scouts from Furman University. 1976 Sunday Times (Lagos) 3 Oct. 13/2, I drive straight to the NBC studios for a recording of my rap session on the weekly programme for youths. 1977 Times Lit. Suppl. 18 Feb. 179/2 For years Americans have been participating in rap sessions and consciousness-raising groups. 1980 Underground Grammarian Mar., The ensuing rap session will be quite long enough to provide yet another day's respite from the tedious and dehumanizing study of language and thought.

*****

rap, n.1
   Add:    [5.] c. A style of popular music (developed by New York Blacks in the 1970s) in which words (usu. improvised) are spoken rhythmically and often in rhyming sentences over an instrumental backing; a song or piece in this style. Cf. *RAP v.1 3 e. orig. U.S.
1979 Village Voice (N.Y.) 3 Dec. 86/2 This meeting of the bullshitters is more groove than rap. 1982 Face May 57/2 There is even a Rap single of ‘Mama’ available. 1983 N.Y. Times 18 May C19/5 Rap, the streetwise, intensely rhythmic pop sound that has come roaring out of Harlem, Brooklyn and the South Bronx..is entering a second critical phase in its evolution. 1987 Sounds 30 May 14/3 Later, while attending New York University, Rubin moved closer to the rap scene. At hangouts like Negril and the Roxy, he met all the right people in the rap movement. 1988 Tower Records' Top Feb. 7/5 Cartel distributors, Revolver, have great hopes for the..hip-hop EP..consisting of ‘Anyone’, ‘The Dark’ and 2 raps.
   [7.] rap group, (b) a group which plays rap music.
1980 Washington Post 31 Aug. G2/5 That's the kind of popularity that got [Kurtis] Blow booked into the Capital Centre last night, along with another rap group, the Sugarhill Gang. 1987 New Musical Express 9 May 30/3 But when he realised that black classmates were listening to a different rap group each week he decided that rap was much more progressive than rock 'n' roll.
   rap music = sense *5 c above.
1982 N. H. & S. K. MAGER Morrow Bk. New Words 218/2 *Rap music,..personal lyrics sung with no melody in a syncopated beat. 1987 Times 13 Nov. 21/6 Rap music is said to have come from the black ghettos of New York.
****
RAP as a verb – meaning to talk
d. intr. In more informal contexts than sense 3b: to talk or chat in an easy or discursive manner. Freq. const. with. colloq. (chiefly U.S.). Cf. RAP n.1 5b.
1929 D. RUNYON in Hearst's Internat. Oct. 65/2, I wish Moosh a hello, and he never raps to me but only bows, and takes my hat. 1965 E. CLEAVER Let. 19 Sept. in Soul on Ice (1968) I. 46 In point of fact he is funny and very glib, and I dig rapping (talking) with him. 1967 Time 7 July 17/1 Hirsute, shoeless hippies huddled in doorways, smoking pot, ‘rapping’ (achieving rapport with random talk), or banging beer cans. 1968 Negro Digest Jan. 4/2 Karenga is a spokesman..with the power to rap in a manner thoroughly black. 1971 P. KAVANAGH Triumph of Evil iv. 35 It really helped me to talk to you, Miles. You're the only older person I know that I can rap with. 1973 S. HENDERSON Understanding New Black Poetry 26 The younger poet will usually rap or declaim or sing, but if he wants to create a Black character..he usually turns to drama or the short story. 1975 Times Lit. Suppl. 13 June 675/2 Eavesdropping on..Ishmael Reed when he raps along quite disingenuously about a press dominated by white reviewers. 1978 Detroit Free Press 16 Apr. F6/4 Can you rap with students? 1979 Tucson (Arizona) Citizen 20 Sept. 7A/1 Obviously relishing the opportunity to rap with what Jordan called the ‘press biggies from out of town’. 1979 Quarto Oct. 3/3 Like a good investigative journalist, Wolfe has raided official sources and rapped with those in the know. 1980 Oxford Times 4 Jan. 15/2 She ‘raps’ (i.e. talks) in the intimate style of Millie Jackson.