REVISED History of Rap

History of Rap

            Ever since your great granddaddy could spit kids have wanted to be rebellious. It all started when Jesus turned water to wine at his high school graduation party and ever since then kids have been pissing their parents off in any way they could. The 1950s and 60s kids modernized rebellion by using rock and roll to ‘stick it to the man’. Similar to the children of that era kids of the 1990s and 2000s use rap to channel their wild side. Do you actually expect 16-year-old white girls to do the horrific things described in these songs? No, but the carefree aggressiveness you get from these songs is what draws in the listeners. Rap hasn’t always been rebellious though, it started from very different roots and has transformed over time.

            Nobody knows exactly where rap came from but a lot of nerds who research this kind of stuff mostly agree that it came from Africa and the Caribbean Islands. It started with storytelling with a beat behind it. This style of storytelling was brought to America when the slave trade brought thousands of Africans across the ocean. Until the 1960s who knows what happened to rap. The genre laid low and didn’t get too much love because it was an African American dominated genre and blacks were not the most loved people in the 1960s. Once Blacks began fighting back against oppression the genre gained traction and popularity as a genre all Blacks could get behind and support as music their people created and liked. Rap popped up again with a legend, DJ Kool Herc (you know he’s really cool because he spelled cool with a K).

Herc started making beats by using two record players and bouncing back and forth between the two to make the first beats ever for rapping. This is pretty dope because people now make some pretty garbage beats and they have thousands of dollars of equipment and all my man had was 2 record players. This really opened up the flood gates for anyone who can rap because now they had beats to rap on. The Fatback Band released the first rap song ever ‘King Tim III’, not a super well known song but it’s important to mention because releasing the first rap song ever is pretty cool. No one really cares about the Fat Back Band but everyone knows about Rapper’s Delight. This song brought the masses into the rap scene and got them interested. After the crowds got drawn into the rap scene it was time for Run- DMC and N.W.A. to make their dash into the lime light and cement their place as rap legends. Rap with these kinds of rappers was meaningful and had messages about social problems and other big issues. N.W.A.’s hit song ‘Fuck the Police’ was a rally song for blacks who felt oppressed by the police. If you find a song as influence as that song now, please come find me because you probably never will. Until the 1980s rap had been dominated by African Americans, it was time for the white people to show what they could do, the Beastie Boys were the first and wow was that weird… but still great music. This was a big time for rap because it showed that rap was for both black and white people because before that rap was seen as music only for African Americans. Better white rappers did come along, in the early 2000s Eminem came onto the scene and it hasn’t been the same since then. Before you can talk about Eminem you can’t skip over some of the rapping greats. 

The 1990s were dominated by the biggest rap names of any time period: The One and Only Dogg, Tupac, DMX, and Ice Cube. Most people would probably consider this the Golden Era of rap. The media was dominated by Rap and the feuds that came with it. The beef between Suge Knight, Biggie, and Tupac was the biggest headlines to come from rap. Suge Knight was blamed for the murder of both of them, even if you didn’t care for rap you still knew what was going on because it was like a reality show. Conspiracies still surround what happened between these prominent artists. Rap had meaning and was not the violent hate filled rap we see today until this point in the genre. Once rappers started shooting each other and becoming angry is when the genre took a new direction. Some may say this is bad but it gave birth to some of the greatest rap music ever created. ‘No Sunshine’ by DMX is a good example of this, it is a rap song with no great meaning but it is loud and violent and it described the rap climate at the time.

Not all artist stuck to this loud and in your face rap, that style of rap isn’t for everyone and was at times too much to listen to. Rappers like Snoop Dogg, and later Wiz Khalifa, stayed away from killing and stuck to a calmer recreational activity, smoking the gandja. It’s what the Dogg has always done and will always do. On a side note Snoop Dogg created the scene for rapping about weed and that’s still popping today with rappers like Wiz Khalifa. This style of rap is carefree and more accessible to people who can’t handle hardcore rap. So after all that drama and nonsense with Suge Knight we get into some more great rap from people like Eminem. The movie 8 Mile showed off rap and brought more people into the genre. Rap battles and freestyles became popular and pinned two rappers against each other to see who the better rapper was. Rap was at its prime for lyrics at this point in the genre. The genre was focused on the word used but that was all about to change because next came rappers with insane beats.

The 2000s were started with lyrics but the genre has definitely transitioned away from that and gone towards flashy beats and catchy hooks. Andre 3000 and his flamboyant clothing was one of the first to get into this with songs like ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘Ms. Jackson’.  Although these songs may not be meaningful and the anthems for social justice these songs did a lot for the genre of rap. It showed that rappers can have topics besides shooting each other and smoking pounds of weed and still stay on the radio. Andre 3000 started this kind of rap but it became perfected with artists like Jay Z and Kanye. Jay Z is undoubtedly the most successful rapper to ever be in the game, he took rap and made it into his empire. Jay Z started a label and signed on artists, this is a big move for the rap game because artists started to collaborate and work together rather than shoot and hate each other. Jay Z has also made an ass ton (thats a metric measurement) of money from rap, he is the third richest rapper ever with a net worth of $550 million dollars. Jay Z saw the potential in rap and the culture surrounding it and made it his goals to get a portion of that. Dr. Dre had a similar mindset and capitalized on rappers and rap fans by creating Beats by Dre a headphone company. Artists turned businessmen like Jay Z and Dr. Dre are popping up more and more. The most recent has been with Kanye West and his takeover of the fashion through Yeezys and his clothing lines.

Kanye was born in the rap game, he embraces the fast and wild lifestyle that you expect a rapper/fashion artist to live. As a side note Kanye is married to Kim Kardashian, take that how you will but to me its evidence Kanye may be clinically insane. Although the rap game did some weird things to Kanye he still is a rap mastermind, he took the emphasis away from the lyrics in his album Yeezus and made it a mashup of rap and electronic music. Kanye is breaking ground in the rap world by using electronic beats and fully altering his voice through auto tune and other electronic software. Kanye uses these tools on Yeezus, not because he needs help with his sound but because he wants to create sounds and songs unique to anything you've heard before.  Although this album is surrounded by hate it was still a huge album because he combined rap and electronic music, arguably the two largest genres for party music, and opened the floodgates for wild party rap. Yeezus also introduced rapper styles like the goon himself, Lil Boat (Lil Yachty or Miles McCollum), the savage from Atlanta.

Lil Yatchy is an anti-thug, fun loving, rainbow grill wearing rapper that is living the dream life of every teenager in the USA right now. Although Yachty will probably be gone soon he still has made his mark on the rap game with electronic silly beats that ride the top 100 songs on the radio for waaaaay too long. Yachty will also be noted for being a successful rapper that never acted like a thug. Many rappers had to play hard and flew how street they are to make it to the top but Yatchy never did this. He stayed true to himself and rapped about his life, as normal as that sounds it’s not the normal for the rap industry. The most recent kings of the rap game have been the group Migos. Migos has combined lyrics and catchy beats unlike any other artists to bring together the two elements of rap and create radio dominating rap music. Migos and especially crew member Quavo have been featured on most new rap songs released and have dominated radio and all rap top 20 charts. As we have seen rap has gone from social justice music for African American rallies to music everyone and their mother has heard, rap has been all over the spectrum of music. Many people say the Golden Era of Rap has already happened but I believe we are living in it right now. If this is the Golden Era of Rap then who knows what will come next??