In the early 1970s, a Jamaican deejay known as Kool Herc moved to the Bronx in New York and introduced the musical innovations that developed into the popular music style known as rap. Using two turntables, he manipulated records to create longer dance segments while shouting out comments to the dancers during the instrumental breaks. Soon urban deejays began to team with so-called rappers, and the shouts developed into rhyming, rhythmic patter that was spoken or chanted over the percussive backing music, which came to be known as hip hop. For years a popular technique of club deejays such as Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, rap finally reached the airwaves in 1979 with the Sugar Hill Gang's ‘Rapper's Delight'. Originally confined to predominantly African American neighborhoods in New York City, rap broke into the mainstream in the 1980s with the popularity of such performers as L.L. Cool J, Run-D.M.C., Hammer, and Will Smith. They kept the genre open and upbeat, moving toward the so-called “alternative” rap of De La Soul, the Fugees, TLC, and others whose work was made accessible to wide audiences through the fusion of rap, pop, and soul. Lauryn Hill, a member of the Fugees, dominated the 1999 Grammy awards, winning five trophies for her solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Other rap acts used their music to take advantage of the political power of the spoken word. Among the earliest rap acts to make an overtly political statement was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Their groundbreaking song ‘The Message' (1982) opened the door for the angry, militant rap of such performers as N.W.A. and Public Enemy, who recorded the landmark albums It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990). These groups blurred the line between music and politics, using rap to speak directly of the rebellious mood of the disenfranchised. Aggressive, and sometimes misogynist, militant rap in turn influenced so-called “gangsta” rap, which graphically depicts (and some say glorifies) the brutal arena of urban drug dealers and gang violence. Many gangsta rappers apparently adhere to the violent code of guns and death feuds that they describe in their music; two popular performers, Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., were shot and killed within six months of each other in 1996–97. |