A glimpse at the history of rap

October 4, 2000
Issue 

Louder than a Bomb
Various artists
Compiled by Chuck D
Rhino records
Picture

BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS

This year is the 21st anniversary of the "birth" of rap as a commercial music. In 1979, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang was the first rap song to achieve chart success in the US.

Rap began in the streets of the Bronx, New York, a few years before this event. Its origins can be traced further back into the 1960s to poets like Gil Scott-Heron and the Watts Prophets, whose radical political lyrics were spoken to jazz and funk music.

In the mid-1970s, spontaneous street parties began, hosted by DJs with turntables and speaker systems. Kool Herc, one of the original rappers, called his speakers Herculoids. Often the power source for these sound systems was the nearest street light. The parties were like free, open-air festival concerts. These parties evolved and the DJs would rhyme or "rap" over the music they played. Picture

The founders of rap included Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash, Africa Bambaataa, Kool Herc and DJ Breakout. They competed with each other and had their own "territories."

A new musical form and culture was being made — passionate, angry — and oppressed African-American youth gained a way to express themselves.

Alongside rap's emergence were the vast changes occurring in US society. In 1980, right-winger Ronald Reagan was elected president and he reigned for eight years. There were big defeats for workers and the gains of the 1960s black civil rights movement were attacked.

For African-Americans and other oppressed minorities, there was a dwindling stock of affordable housing, few meaningful jobs and diminishing educational opportunities. The brutal, racist cops became more so. The oppression, scapegoating and incarceration of black and minority young people became endemic.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were also a time of upsurge of national liberation movements in Central America, Southern Africa and the Caribbean. The anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa inspired millions around the world and African-Americans identified with the South African people's struggle. They were outraged at Reagan's backing of the apartheid regime.

The central element of the new rap music was the rhythm produced by the "sampling" from records of drum beats and the throb of the bass guitar. Sampling involved isolating distinctive parts of records and playing them repeatedly, changing the context in which they were first recorded and creating a new unique music.

Records were also twirled around, producing a distinctive sound known as "scratching" which could be used as a catchy melody line or as variation to break up the beat.

The spoken lyrics, belted out at high velocity over the music, were in the form of a "toast", a bragging type of storytelling, sometimes politically militant but more often violent and sexist.

Male rappers rapped about black pride, the fight against racism in the US and in Africa and police brutality. Women performers hit out at the sexism of other rap artists and the wider community.

From the early '80s, rap music underwent a number of transformations. One was its commercialisation. The original street parties often required the payment of a minimal charge to keep the artist playing music. Many small record labels, some black-owned, dominated the scene. Of course, they were no less ruthless than the big companies. Rappers were ripped off by being paid small amounts to make records and being tied down by onerous contracts.

Once the enormous popularity of rap and hip-hop had become obvious, the big business record companies took over. Six companies control the world's record industry and rap has not escaped their grasp.

These days Coke, Pepsi and McDonald's use rap music to sell their crap. The US MTV channel, which refused to promote rap at first, in 1989 aired its Yo MTV rap show. The record companies trotted out manufactured mainstream performers, like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, in the same way as they churn out groups like the Spice Girls and Bardot today.

Rap spread across the US. Styles identified as "West Coast" and "East Coast" incorporated other black music forms popular in those areas (in New Orleans, there are rap groups that incorporate brass marching band sounds!). Some rap had an African feel, like the group De La Soul, while jazz and pop R&B was incorporated also.

A strong political form of rap was developed by acts like Public Enemy and KRS-One. Women rappers like Salt 'N' Pepa, MC Lyte and Queen Latifah, with her "Who ya calling a bitch", took on the gangstas' rap sexism and raised feminist issues using the medium of rap.

The "gangsta" rap of NWA, Ice-T and Ice-Cube, which was overwhelmingly misogynist and celebrated the lumpenisation of black youth, also fiercely attacked police brutality. Ice-T's classic "Fuck the police" is a great example.

As Chuck D — a leading member of the group that defined militant political rap, Public Enemy — writes in the liner notes of Louder than a Bomb: "Record companies endorse gangster rap more than music that speaks to the struggle. Why? Because they're threatened by the possibility of young blacks and whites discovering the facts."

Louder than a Bomb provides a refreshing reminder of what rap once was. It's a great collection of political rap music, mostly from rap's earlier years. It is full of passion, anger and black pride.

Run-DMC's "Proud to be Black" sets the scene. It tells of the contribution that black people have made. It praises Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

"A.F.R.C.A." by Stetsasonic, with its African drums, tells the story of the southern African frontline states — Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Botswana — "fighting rebels backed by Pretoria". It gets the blood boiling and the bum moving as the chant, "Free South Africa", rings out: "South Africa's not free, neither are we ... fight apartheid everybody."

Louder than a Bomb contains Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", two anthems that epitomise political rap. Dr Dre's "Day the Niggers Took Over" suggests that the LA riots are a model for black power. It includes a call for unity between the gangs, "Crips and Bloods on the same squad".

Paris, also known as P-Dog, proposes assassination in his fantasy rap "Bush Killer", written just after the 1991 Gulf War. Echoing Muhammad Ali's famous statement, P-Dog argues that African-Americans should not fight in the Gulf War because no "Iraqi ever called me nigger". "Brothers down south say fuck the police. I say no justice, no peace."

One large criticism of Louder than a Bomb is the absence of female rappers. The contribution to political rap of women performers like Queen Latifah has been immense. There is a song about abortion on the CD, but it takes an anti-choice position.

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