Rap: The Movement

The Beginnings

Rap is a musical subculture ofthe African diaspora that fused Black American, Afro-Latino, and Black Caribbean oral and musical traditions with Japanese-made technology. Rap and hip-hop developed in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx in New York City, in the context of poverty and community destabilization through urban renewal programs and expansion of the suburbs. In the midst of abandonment and blighted neighborhoods, Black and Latino youth wanted to have fun and express themselves. They played music, rapped, danced, and painted.

Jamaican toasting (a practice of making elaborate toasts over music), the dozens (a Black American form of competitive humor), and other aspects of the Black oral and literary traditions are rap's precursors. Rappers began speaking about fun and parties as well as the poverty, crime, and social injustices they saw around them. Sylvia Robinson and Sugar Hill Records' recording of The SugarHill Gang's, “Rapper's Delight” (1979), propelled rap from a local pastime into the mainstream because now audiences far removed from the Bronx could purchase the song or hear it on the radio.

The 1980s

Once record companies began releasing rap records, its sound and style sold fast. By the 1980s, rap and hip-hop had traveled to urban areas throughout the United States, and kids far removed from the Black and Latino boroughs of New York City began hearing rap. In 1984, the rap group Run-DMC recorded Run DMC, which became the first gold rap record. Radio stations started adopting rap formats in the mid-1980s as stars like LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, Big Daddy Kane, Whodini, and the Fat Boyz began selling tens of thousands of records, despite a lack of radio airplay and little promotion. In the late 1980s, rap music became popular and spread internationally with MTV's launch of the first music show dedicated to rap, “Yo! MTV Raps.” Hosted by Doctor Dré, Ed Lover, and Fab 5 Freddy and airing from August 1988 to August 1995, “Yo! MTV Raps” was the primary media outlet that fostered rap music permanently into U.S. and global popular culture.

Although there was a hip-hop scene on the East Coast that involved emcee (rappers) battling, graffiti writing, breakdancing, fashion, and DJ-ing, many communities in Los Angeles were experiencing a gang scene. Rappers on the West Coast were rapping about what they were experiencing living in or near gang territory. West Coast raps told about gang life, violence, drugs, and abusive police tactics.

Schoolly D (from Philadelphia), along with the Rappers Ice-T (from Compton, California) and Too Short (from Oakland) are credited with creating the gangsta style of rap, however rap group Niggaz With [Page 1124]Attitude (NWA) popularized “gangsta rap.” The high-selling album Straight Outta Compton (1988), earned them notoriety and attacks by law enforcement agencies and their sympathizers. In many ghettos and barrios of the United States, the young Black and Brown victims of urban decay and racism identified with the words and attitude of NWA. Gangsta rap developed quickly, and by the early 1990s, it became the dominant force in rap with the likes of superstars including Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Warren G, Dr. Dre, Tha Dogg Pound, and Snoop Doggy Dogg all selling millions of records.

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