Latest Hits from Rap and Hip-Hop

Urban Music Scene Exported Around the Globe

Spawned in the urban music scene, hip-hop and rap terms are used interchangeably for a singular music genre. Hip-hop defined the dance that accompanied the rap music style. Well before the mainstream marketed rap music and its hip-hop accoutrements to a wide audience, the genre was a standard in the urban underground. Early rappers claim the rap/hip-hop environment was conceived among the ghetto toughs in New York City as early as the mid 1970s. At the same time, rap’s chief influences, namely funk, disco, and rock and roll, were perfecting their own styles, borrowing without apology from each other. Rap was a creation of underground DJ innovation—electronic synthesis of beats and melody from each genre, over-dubbed with spoken word.

Rap Territory

Rappers comprised just one facet of the hip-hop movement that characterized the 80s and 90s bi-coastal, inner city experience and included both Hispanic and African American styles. Rap music has suffered critically from its inherent ties to gang warfare and the underground drug industry. Early rap artists that won mainstream appeal included Run DMC, MC Hammer and Mos Def. Rap’s short history is punctuated with highly visible gangland killings.

Music Style

Early rap dallied between house, funk and disco influences. DJs invented scratch tables and sounds never heard before. The digital age made electronic music viable, including rap. Musicians and DJs over-dubbed beat-heavy loops with stinging spoken word, simple melodies, and clothed bass and drum beats in edgy rhyme.

White rappers have typically drawn from more rock and roll roots. Artists like the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fatboy Slim articulate the gamut of white rap influence.

Contemporary Rap

Rap today cannot be pigeonholed. The genre has been unabashedly exported to international audiences and as a result artists in Japan, Australia and the UK poach the hip-hop style. Perhaps the most aggressive genre in the U.S., the contemporary melting pot of rap embraces both East and West Coast styles, Hispanic and African American among them. The genre also runs the gamut from violent gangsta to more mainstream, even positive rap styles. In fact rap has even influenced artists in the contemporary Christian music scene. Leading rap artists today include Nelly, Fifty Cent, Ja Rule, Snoop Dogg, and Akon.