Rap History

Rap music originated as a cross-cultural product. Most of its important early practitioners-including Kool

Herc, D.J. Hollywood, and Afrika Bambaataa-were either first- or second-generation Americans of

Caribbean ancestry. Herc and Hollywood are both credited with introducing the Jamaican style of cutting

and mixing into the musical culture of the South Bronx. By most accounts Herc was the first DJ to buy two

copies of the same record for just a 15-second break (rhythmic instrumental segment) in the middle. By

mixing back and forth between the two copies he was able to double, triple, or indefinitely extend the

break. In so doing, Herc effectively deconstructed and reconstructed so-called found sound, using the

turntable as a musical instrument.

While he was cutting with two turntables, Herc would also perform with the microphone in Jamaican

toasting style-joking, boasting, and using myriad in-group references. Herc's musical parties eventually

gained notoriety and were often documented on cassette tapes that were recorded with the relatively new

boombox, or blaster, technology. Taped duplicates of these parties rapidly made their way through the

Bronx, Brooklyn, and uptown Manhattan, spawning a number of similar DJ acts. Among the new breed of

DJs was Afrika Bambaataa, the first important Black Muslim in rap. (The Muslim presence would become

very influential in the late 1980s.) Bambaataa often engaged in sound-system battles with Herc, similar to

the so-called cutting contests in jazz a generation earlier. The sound system competitions were held at

city parks, where hot-wired street lamps supplied electricity, or at local clubs. Bambaataa sometimes

mixed sounds from rock-music recordings and television shows into the standard funk and disco fare that

Herc and most of his followers relied upon. By using rock records, Bambaataa extended rap beyond the

immediate reference points of contemporary black youth culture. By the 1990s any sound source was

considered fair game and rap artists borrowed sounds from such disparate sources as Israeli folk music,

bebop jazz records, and television news broadcasts.

In 1976 Grandmaster Flash introduced the technique In 1979 the first two rap records appeared: "King

Tim III (Personality Jock)," recorded by the Fatback Band, and "Rapper's Delight," by Sugarhill Gang. A

series of verses recited by the three members of Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight" became a national

hit, reaching number 36 on the Billboard magazine popular music charts. The spoken content, mostly

braggadocio spiced with fantasy, was derived largely from a pool of material used by most of the earlier

rappers. The backing track for "Rapper's Delight" was supplied by hired studio musicians, who replicated

the basic groove of the hit song "Good Times" (1979) by the American disco group Chic. Perceived as

novel by many white Americans, "Rapper's Delight" quickly inspired "Rapture" (1980) by the new-wave

band Blondie, as well as a number of other popular records. In 1982 Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock"

became the first rap record to use synthesizers and an electronic drum machine. With this recording, rap

artists began to create their own backing tracks rather than simply offering the work of others in a new

context. A year later Bambaataa introduced the sampling capabilities of synthesizers on "Looking for the

Perfect Beat" (1983).of quick mixing, in which sound bites as short as one or two seconds are combined

for a collage effect. Quick mixing paralleled the rapid-editing style of television advertising used at the

time. Shortly after Flash introduced quick mixing, his partner Grandmaster Melle Mel composed the first

extended stories in rhymed rap. Up to this point, most of the words heard over the work of disc jockeys

such as Herc, Bambaataa, and Flash had been improvised phrases and expressions. In 1978 DJ Grand

Wizard Theodore introduced the technique of scratching to produce rhythmic patterns.

Sampling brought into question the ownership of sound. Some artists claimed that by sampling

recordings of a prominent black artist, such as funk musician James Brown, they were challenging white

corporate America and the recording industry's right to own black cultural expression. More problematic

was the fact that rap artists were also challenging Brown's and other musicians' right to own, control, and

be compensated for the use of their intellectual creations. By the early 1990s a system had come about

whereby most artists requested permission and negotiated some form of compensation for the use of

samples. Some commonly sampled performers, such as funk musician George Clinton, released

compact discs (CDs) containing dozens of sound bites specifically to facilitate sampling. One effect of

sampling was a newfound sense of musical history among black youth. Earlier artists such as Brown and

Clinton were celebrated as cultural heroes and their older recordings were reissued and repopularized.

During