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Rap Music; It's impact on society since it's birth.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines "rap" as a rhythmic chanting of usual rhymed
couplets to a musical accompaniment. The purpose of this paper is to show how rap
music has come to be. Also, citing the many performers who have mad this form of music
what it is today. Rap is a large part of our society and its evolution is proof that this
personal
style of music will be around for a very long time. 
Rap music as a musical form began among the youth of South Bronx, New York in the mid
1970's. Individuals such Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash were some of the early pioneers
of this art form. Through their performances at clubs and promotion of the music, rap
consistently gained in popularity throughout the rest of the 1970's. The first commercial
success of
the rap song "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979 helped bring rap music
into the national spotlight. The 1980's saw the continued success of rap music with many
artists
such as Run DMC (who had the first rap album to go gold in 1984), L.L. Cool J, Fat Boys,
and west coast rappers Ice-T and N.W.A becoming popular. Today, in the late 1990's rap
music continues to be a prominent and important aspect of African- American culture.
Rap music was a way for youths in black inner city neighborhoods to express what they
were feeling, seeing, and living and it became a form of entertainment. Hanging out with
friends
and rapping or listening to others rap kept black youths out of trouble in the dangerous
neighborhoods in which they lived. The dominant culture did not have a type of music that
filled the
needs of these youth, so they created their own. So, rap music originally emerged as a
way for [black] inner city youth to express their everyday life and struggles (Shaomari,
1995, 17). 
Rap is now seen as a subculture that, includes a large number of middle to upper white
class youths, has grown to support and appreciate rap music. 
Many youth in America today are considered part of the rap subculture because they share
a common love for a type of music that combines catchy beats with rhythmic music and
thoughtful lyrics to create songs with a distinct political stance. Rap lyrics are about
the problems rappers have seen, such as poverty, crime, violence, racism, poor living
conditions,
drugs, alcoholism, corruption, and prostitution. These are serious problems that many
within the rap subculture believe are being ignored by mainstream America. Those within
the rap
subculture recognize and acknowledge that these problems exist. Those within this
subculture consider the other group to be those people who do not understand rap music
and the
message rap artists are trying to send. The suppresser, or opposition, is the dominant
culture, because it ignores these problems and perhaps even acts as a catalyst for some
of them.
"The beats of rap music has people bopping and the words have them thinking, from the
tenement-lined streets of Harlem, New York, to the mansion parties of Beverly Hills,
California"
(Shomari, 1995, 45). Rap music, once only popular with blacks in New York City,
Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, has grown to become America's freshest form of music,
giving
off energy found nowhere else. While the vocalist(s) tell a story, the sic jockey
provides the rhythm, operating the drum machine and scratching. Scratching is defined as
"rapidly
moving the record back and forth under the needle to create rap's famous swishing sound"
(Small, 1992, 12). The beat can be traditional funk or heavy metal, anything goes. The
most
important part of rap is rapping, fans want to hear the lyrics. 
During every generation, some old-fashioned, ill-humored people have become frightened by
the sight of kids having a good time and have attacked the source of their pleasure. In
the
1950s, the target was rock 'n' roll. Some claimed that the new type of music encouraged
wild behavior and evil thoughts. Today, rap faces the same charges. 
Those who condemn this exciting entertainment have never closely examined it. If they
had, they would have discovered that rap permits kids to appreciate the English language
by
producing comical and meaningful poems set to music. Rappers don't just walk on stage and
talk off the top of their heads. They write their songs, and they put a lot of though
into them.
Part of rapping is quick wit. "Rappers like L.L. Cool J grew up rapping in their
neighborhood, and they learned to throw down a quick rhyme when they were challenged"
(Nelson,Gonzales, 1991, 135). But part of it is thoughtful work over many hours, getting
the words to sound just right so that the ideas come across with style. As L.L. Cool J
describes
it, I write all my songs down by hand. Each song starts with a word, like any other
sentence, and becomes a manuscript. (Nelson, Gonzales, 1991, 137). 
Many performers set a positive example for their followers. Kurtis Blow rapped in a video
for the March of Dimes' fundraising drive to battle birth defects and he has campaigned
against
teenage drinking as a spokesperson for the National Council on Alcoholism. On the
television show Reading Rainbow, Run-D.M.C. told viewers how books enabled them to
become
kings of rock. On another occasion, group member Darryl D.M.C. McDaniels said, Little
kids like to follow me around the neighborhood. I tell them to stay in school. Then I
give
them money to get something in the deli. Run-D.M.C. is one of the numerous rap combos
advising kids to keep off drugs. Doug E. Fresh and Grandmaster Flash have each made
records telling of the horrors of cocaine. On Grandmaster Flash's hit White Lines, he
details how the drug can ruin a life, and shouts, Don't do it! 
The most popular and influential form of African-American pops music of the 1980's and
1990's, rap is also one of the most controversial styles of the rock era. And not just
among the
guardians of cultural taste and purity that have always been counted among rock 'n'
roll's chief enemies. Black, White, rock and soul audiences continue to fiercely debate
the musical and
social merits of rap, whose most radical innovations subverted many of the musical and
cultural tenets upon which rock was built. Antecedents of rap are easy to find in rock
with other
kinds of music. Music is often used to tell a story, often with spoken rhymes over
instruments and rhythms. Talking blues, spoken passages of sanctified prose in gospel,
and numerous
hits that call out slogans and rhymes, from Bo Diddley's Say Man to Shirley Ellis' The
Name Game". More direct paths leading to rap though can be found in a few of the trends
of the
late '60s and '70s. "In R&B music, funk and disco stripped soul down to its most basic
rhythms, forgoing much of the instrumentation and vocals habitually used as
embellishments"
(Rose, 1994, 21). James Brown in particular is often cited as a forefather in his use of
stream-of-consciousness over elemental funk backup, and he (as well as other funk giants)
has
been sampled by modern-day rappers on innumerable occasions. Two much more overlooked
influences originated from outside of the R&B and rock mainstream. The Last Poets, Gil
Scott-Heron, and Jayne Cortez set highly politicized tales of African American and urban
life against percussive jazz tracks in the early '70s. In reggae, the use of DJs or
toasters, to rap
over basic instrumental backing tracks when they took their mobile sounds systems to
dances became widespread. New York City, particularly Brooklyn and (more importantly in
terms
of rap's birth) the Bronx, was home to a large Jamaican community. Jamaican DJ's mixed
sounds from several turntables, devices that would become a rap trademark. Although
mixing
from large sounds systems began to be employed at New York house parties in the 1970s, it
didn't really emerge as a recorded sound until the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight in
1979. While many critics and listeners shrugged the song aside as a fluke, the early rap
sound continued to spread in the early '80s, due in large part to the efforts of the
Sugarhill label
itself. "Grandmaster Flash's hard-hitting 1982 single, The Message, really stands as
rap's watershed mark" (Shomari, 1995, 67), with a massive impact belied by its relatively
modest
peak on the pop charts. No longer could rap be ignored; here was straight up social
commentary, reporting from the front lines of the ghetto with more immediacy than almost
any
newspaper or television broadcast. 
From it's inception, rap indured a lot of hostility from listeners--many, but not all,
White--who found the music too harsh, monotonous, and lacking in traditional melodic
values.
However, millions of others - often, though not always, young African-Americans from
underprivileged inner city backgrounds - found an immediate connection with the style.
Here was
poetry of the street, directly reflecting and addressing the day to day reality of the
ghetto in a confrontational fashion not found in any other music or medium. "You could
dance to it,
rhyme to it, bring it most anywhere on portable cassette players, and, in the best rock
'n' roll tradition, form your own band without much in the way of formal training"
(Small, 1992,
177). The basic workouts of early rappers like Kurtis Blow and the Fat Boys can sound a
bit tame today. 
Many were still expecting the music to peter out before Run D.M.C. came along. Rap was,
and to a large degree still is, a singles oriented medium, but these men from Queens
proved
that rappers could maintain interest and diversity over the course of entire full-length
albums. Combining hard beats and innovative production with material that emphasized
positive social
activism without ignoring the cruel realities of urban life, they found as much favor
with the critics as the street. Among the first rap groups to climb the pop charts in a
big way, they also
were among the first to make big inroads into the White and Middle-American audiences
when they teamed up with Aerosmiths's Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry for the hit single
Walk
This Way. The mid- and late '80s saw rap continue to explode in popularity, with the
"birth" of superstars like LL Cool J and Hammer (the latter is often accused of providing
a safe
rap- pop alternative). Although most early rap productions originated in New York City
and its environs, the music took hold as a national phenomenon, with strong scenes
developing in
other East Coast cities like Philadelphia, as well as West Coast strongholds in Los
Angeles and Oakland. Production techniques became increasingly sophisticated;
electronics, stop-on-
a-dime-editing, and sampling from previously recorded sources became prominent. The
increased emphasis on electronic beats led to the popularization of the term hip-hop, a
designation which is by now used more or less interchangeably with rap. The Beastie Boys,
obnoxious white ex-punks from New York, brought rap further into the Middle American
mainstream with their "vastly popular hybrids of hip-hop, hard rock, and in your face
braggadocio" (Nelson, Gonzales, 1991, 12). While rap had always forthrightly dealt with
urban
struggle, the late '80s saw the emergence of a more militant strain of the music.
Sometimes advantaged neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles, although performers
like
Philadelphia's Schoolly D probed that the genre was not specific to the area. Boogie Down
Productions laid down a prototype that was taken to more extreme measures by N.W.A.,
who reported on the crime, sex and violence of the ghetto with an explicit verve that
some viewed as verging on celebration rather than journalism. Enormously controversial,
and
enormously popular with record buyers, several N.W.A. members went on to stardom as solo
acts, including Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. The most popular and controversial of the
militant rappers, the New York based Public Enemy, were perhaps the most political as
well. Their brand of activism, like that of Malcolm X's two decades earlier, made a lot
of people,
including liberals, pretty uncomfortable, with their emphasis upon Black Nationalism and
careless anti-Sematic, homophobic, and sexist references. Groups such as Public Enemy
ignited
an ongoing debate in the media. Activist-oriented critics and audiences found a lot to
praise in their music. At the same time, they could not let the xenophobic tendencies of
these acts
pass unnoticed, or ignore the frequent quasi-celebration in much rap music of misogyny,
drugs, and violence, and the status to be gained in the urban community by the practice
thereof.
Passionate advocates of civil liberties and free speech wondered, sometimes aloud,
whether rappers were taking those privileges too far.
Newly emerging gangsta rappers like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Slick Rick, and 2Pac not only take
the violent subject matter of their lyrics to new extremes (and to the top of the
charts), but
have been accused of enacting their scenarios in real life, landing in jail for
manslaughter or fighting similarly grave charges. These performers often unrepentantly
contend they are only
reporting things as they happen in the 'hood, of a culture that not only shoots people,
but is being shot at. Many critics find their line between art and reality too thin, and
hate to see them
spreading their gospel from the top of the charts (2Pac's 1995 album Me Against the World
debuted at No. 1 even as he was serving a prison sentence), or serve as role models for
international youth. Gangsta rap may have gotten a lot of the headlines in recent years,
but the field of rap as a whole remains diverse and not as dominated by the
shoot-'em-out
minidramas of gangsta rap, as many would have you believe. De La Soul took rap and
hip-hop productions to new heights with their 1989 debut Three Feet High & Rising, an
almost
psychedelic sampling and editing of a wildly eclectic pool of sources that would do Frank
Zappa proud. Their humorous and cheerful vibe inspired a mini-school of Afrocentric acts
most notably the Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest. Arrested Development, Digable
Planets, and Digital Underground also pursued playful, heavily jazz- and funk-oriented
paths
to immense success and high critical praise. The work of rap is a highly macho (some
would say sexist) environment, but some female performers arose to provide a much needed
counterpoint from various perspectives: the saucy (the various Roxannes), the pop
(Salt-N-Pepa), and the feminist (Queen Latifah). It is a measure of rap's huge influence
that the style
has infiltrated mainstream soul and rock as well. Producer Teddy Riley gave
urban-contemporary performers like Bobby Brown a vaguely hip edge with his brand of New
Jack Swing,
White alternative rockers like G. Love and most notably Beck devised a strange hybrid of
rap, blues, and rock. Vanilla Ice probed that Whitbread pop-rap could top the charts,
though
he was unable to sustain his success.
More than most genres' rap/hip-hop has become a culture with its own sub-genres and
buzzwords what can seem almost impenetrable to the novice. Despite this proliferation of
schools
of production and performance, many rap records can appear virtually indistinguishable
from each other to a new listener. And there's no getting around the fact that a lot of
them are. 
"The market is saturated with repetitive beats and monotonously uncompromising slices of
urban street life, to the point that they've lost a lot of both their musical novelty and
shock
value" (Rose, 1994, 56). Rap music has lost none of its momentum as we head into the last
half of the 1990's. Scenes continue to proliferate, not just on the coasts, but in
Atlanta,
Houston, and such unlikely locales as Paris. It may appeal more to inner-city adolescents
than anyone else may, but gangsta rap may be bigger than anything else in R&B music may
commercially, and there are more multiplatinum rap/hip-hip acts than you can count.
Shinehead, Shabba Ranks, and less heralded performers like Sister Carol have fused reggae
and rap.
And the jazz and rap worlds are being brought closer together than ever through the
efforts of "Gang Starr and their lead Guru, US3, and the landmark Stolen Moments: Red,
Hot +
Cool compilation, which united many of the top names of hip-hop and jazz" (Rose, 1994,
67). 
Rap is still a new music form. It is expanding every day, and the sound has grown wide
enough to include scores of future stars. Some rap is rock-based, some is funk, and some
is very
close to the original street sound. A few of the present stars will definitely have a
noticeable impact on the future of rap. Themes that are found more and more in rap lyrics
are: pride in
an African heritage and the call for harmony between men and women. Queen Latifah and MC
Lyte are working hard to open doors to women in the music business. Rap fans are also
starting to accept more white artists. 3rd Bass and Vanilla Ice are new white rap acts
with promise. 
The time is near when all of America will be bopping to rap. Rap has already shown signs
of crossing over to a new audience. A Grammy category was added for rap music in 1989.
D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were the first winners for their single, Parents
Just Don't Understand. In 1990 Young MC took home the prize for Bust a Move. And with
real
proof that rap is reaching more people, Tone Loc became the first rapper ever to reach
number one on the pop charts. He did it with his hit single Wild Thing in 1989. Of
course, there
are still plenty who are afraid of rap and won't listen to it's message. 
Along with the birth and growth of rap comes censorship. This has become a big issue
within the music industry, and rap music is at the center of the controversy. Some people
want to
put warning labels on certain rappers' albums and newspapers and magazines have been
printing articles about the bad influence that some rappers have on kids. What is it
about the
music that people find so troubling? Some rappers use strong language. Others are accused
of writing racist lyrics, or lyrics that are insulting to women. As with all kinds of
music, the
more popular it becomes, the more likely you are to find both good and bad sides. But the
positive side of rap greatly outweighs the negative. And its positive messages seem to
be
spreading. The number of new rappers that grows everyday will bring about new forms of
rap and constant changes on the "old school" versions of the music. With these new
versions
and variations comes new fans and renewed faith from old fans. Regardless of how many rap
artists land in jail or end up dead, this music will live on. The fans will make sure of
it.
Sources Consulted
Nelson, Havelock and Michael A. Gonzales. Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and
Hip-Hip Culture. New York: Harmony Books, 1991. 
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover,
Wesley University Press, 1994. 
Shomari, Hashim A. (William A. Lee, III). From the Underground: Hip-Hop Culture as an
Agent of Social Change. Mt. Vernon, NY: X-Factor Publications, 1995. 
Small, Michael. Break It Down: The Inside Story from the New Leaders of Rap. Secaucus,
New Jersey: Carol Publishers, 1992.
www.aolnetsearch.com. Rap Music