Get your own Free Home PageRap is an art form unlike any other. It is an unique blend of music and expression. The problem is many people don't consider it music and many people don't care for what these rap artists have to express. These type of people consider rap as noise, just a beat with someone talking over it. These people also don't like what these rap artists have to say because they believe that all their lyrics do is cause violence and hatred throughout the community. Some rap artists do portray this image but it is only a small percentage compared to the ones who don't, but because of this negative image, many people won't look past it to realize this.
To understand rap a little better, we need to look at a brief but concise history of how it started and how it has evolved through the years. Rap first started out in the late seventies in the discos simply with a person giving shout outs to each other over an instrumental. The first official rap song to be put on record was "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang back in 1979. This set off a trend of rap artists, including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and the Treacherous Three, to release records of their own in the early eighties. Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" was considered one of the first rap records with an actual message in it, talking about living conditions in the ghetto(Zook, p. 520). During this time, rap wasn't taken seriously. It was seen as just a fad that would die out just like disco music did a few years earlier.
Rap would make a dramatic change in 1983 when the group Run-DMC came onto the scene. With a style different than any of the previous rap artists, like the Fearless Four and Kurtis Blow, Run-DMC would change the face of rap and make it more of a street sound than it ever was. With their first single "It's Like That", rap fans began to realize the potential this new group had. "Rock Box" became their first successful single when it was the first rap video to air on MTV. Songs "King of Rock" and "My Adidas" propelled them even higher into the mainstream. When Run-DMC teamed up with Aerosmith to do a remake of "Walk This Way", not only did it reach number four on the pop charts but it helped saved Aerosmith's career too. Run-DMC's album "Raising Hell", which sold over four million copies, became the first platinum rap album.
Even though Run-DMC became very popular, it still wasn't enough for rap to be accepted as more than just a fad. Run-DMC's style was a brag and boast style that had been reproduced and evolved in the years following their debut. In 1986, a rapper named Ice-T started what would later be known as gangsta rap with songs like "6 in the Morning" and "Dog'N the Wax". These songs were about gangs, drugs, and the police, common topics of future gangsta rap songs.
While Ice-T was forming his rhyme syndicate and creating gangsta rap in L.A., New York was forming a new renaissance of rap artists themselves. These artists rhymed about topics never touched before on a rap record. New styles were created and "disses" on records became a common thing. Lyrics were the main factor in this new direction of rap. Rap artists were coming from all cities in New York, including Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Long Island.
In 1986, three of the most influential albums in rap were released from this group of New York rappers. "Paid in Full" by Eric B and Rakim, "Criminal Minded" by Boogie Down Productions, and "Yo! Bumrush the Show" by Public Enemy were albums that would change the face of rap forever. "Paid in Full" was the first album to concentrate on lyrical content. Rakim, because of this album, would forever be seen as the lyrical king of hip-hop. "Criminal Minded" relied on knowledge to get its point across and introduced the teacher Blastmaster KRS-One. KRS-One rapped on songs "Poetry" and "Criminal Minded" how knowledge is the key and wisdom is the power. He even proved this point by the meaning of the acronym in his name, Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. "Yo! Bumrush the Show" was one of the first rap albums to be revolutionary. Members Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and Terminator X started on this album what they would later perfect on future albums, political rap.
In 1988, Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy would evolve even more, establishing the styles they would be most famous for. When Boogie Down Productions' DJ Scott LaRock was gunned down and killed in early 1988, KRS-One decided to finish and release their second album, "By All Means Necessary". Along with knowledge, KRS-One added consciousness and politics to the album. He rapped about black problems in America, corrupt governments, and black on black crime on songs like "My Philosophy", "Illegal Business", and "Stop the Violence". Public Enemy's second album, "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back", created and defined the way political rap would always be seen as. Public Enemy rapped about black revolution, blacks in jail because they dodged the draft, how blacks are seen in America and many other revolutionary topics on songs like "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", "Don't Believe the Hype", and "Rebel Without a Pause". Around this time, MTV would start their fairly popular music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Back in L.A., while Ice-T was perfecting gangsta rap, a new group would come onto the scene that would bring it into the spotlight. Dr. Dre along with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and the D.O.C.(an honorary member) would form the gangsta rap group NWA(Niggaz with Attitudes). This controversial group would rap about police brutality, gang violence, murders and other violent topics. Songs like "____ tha Police" and "Straight Outta Compton" caused major controversies among the police and parents because of its explicit lyrics and violent content.
1989 also saw the release of 2 Live Crew's "As Nasty as They Wanna Be". A sexually explicit album that degraded women and labeled them as bitches constantly throughout the album. 2 Live Crew were arrested and taken to court because of the album, in the process, denying them of their free speech rights. These free speech rights were what caused 2 live Crew to win their case and to have all charges dropped. This album forced the Parents Music Resource Center(PMRC) to take notice and to look at rap albums differently from now on. Any album that had explicit content in it, got labeled with a "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics" sticker. No one under 18 was able to buy these albums with the warning label on it. What looked like a problem for the rap industry actually made rap even more popular than it was. The warning label actually attracted people to the album and out of curiosity, bought the album to find out what the controversy was all about.
1990, what may to some people look like a pretty decent year for rap music, was to most rap fans a year they rather forget. This was the year rap was brought to the mainstream with the likes of Tone Loc, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Young MC, and Fresh Prince. MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice along produced number one hits on the pop charts and many people who were not interested in rap before, now were. This was the era of soft, dance rap that many hardcore rap artists and fans despised. They didn't care for these soft rap artists because they brought rap into the mainstream under false pretenses. Hardcore rap artists were starting to lose credibility because of all the soft rap that was getting popular. They felt that all these soft rap artists were not real and true to the game and that they were selling out to the white mainstream.
What these hardcore artists really wanted to do was to become popular without having to change their style. This was exactly what happened when in 1991, NWA released their second full length album, minus Ice Cube, "Efil4zaggin"(Niggaz4Life backwards). This album reached number one on the pop charts on its first week of release. As hardcore as any gangsta rap album, half of the album was filled with gang killings and violence while the other half was filled with sexually explicit rhymes degrading women, it still gained mass appeal.
Gangsta rap would remain popular for quite a while until the mid-nineties. Albums like Dr. Dre's "The Chronic", Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Doggystyle", Ice Cube's "Lethal Injection", and the "Murder was the Case Soundtrack" sold millions of albums finally making rap music as popular as any other music out there today.
Lately, though, gangsta rap had been abandoned for more different, unique styles of rap such as the jazzy styles of Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest, the mafioso styles of Wu-Tang Clan and Nas, and the quick-tongued, singing style of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Coming to the end of its second decade, rap has evolved into many different forms and will continue evolving straight into the 21st century, proving that it was never just a fad.
Chuck D once said that rap is the black person's CNN. What he meant by this was that most black people find out what is going on in their neighborhood and in their lives by listening to rap music. If this is true, then you could consider Chuck D the Walter Kronkite of rap. Chuck D, with his group Public Enemy, lets his people know how it really is going down in their neighborhood. He raps on a range of topics from corrupt governments to how malt liquor companies focus their product mainly on black communities. Chuck D is even quoted as saying, "A Black Nationalist attitude is protection against a system that keeps us back,"(Zook, p. 518). His Black Nationalist attitude keeps his people informed and lets them know what to expect for the future. Public Enemy didn't create political rap but they were the ones who set the standard by which all political rap should be judged. The group has redefined the political terrain of rap music, helping to fuel the Malcolm X revival and political fashion while speaking out against the moral and economic decay of the inner city(Perkins, p. 21).
Rap is mainly looked at in a negative light but there is also positive images in rap depending on your viewpoint. Public Enemy's music might be seen as negative to some people but to black people, their music is a message, a political message filled with the negativity that governments show towards the black community. White people might see this as negative because they may believe in their government more than a black person would. Also they would see this as negative because if enough people were to listen to the message Public Enemy is making, they might take a stand and rebel against the government. Granted what Public Enemy say is mainly speculation and their opinion but if they were to obtain enough factual backing on their opinions, many people might wake up and stand up for themselves, causing revolutions and riots in the process. This is what some white people and governments find frightening and why they consider Public Enemy or any political rapper negative and dangerous.
The type of rap music that is labeled with the most negativity is gangsta rap. Rap artists like NWA, Ice-T, and the Geto Boys have filled their lyrics with anger, hatred, violence, and brutality, yet gangsta rap has become very popular. Although it may be very hard to find any positive images in gangsta rap songs, you can find some. Gangsta rap is a form of self expression for black people who have a lot of anger and hatred towards the way society is treating them. Instead of actually going out and causing the violence, they choose the more legal and safe method, by rapping about it. This way they can look tough without actually having to commit the crimes they rap about. Even though their lyrics are negative, they are releasing their anger in a positive way instead of a violent way.
The irony is that gangsta rap became popular because of its negativity. Young fans saw a toughness in the lyrics that expressed how they felt and how they wish they could be. This was what scared parents and why the PMRC made gangsta rap a major target in their campaign to ban music like this. If you look at some of the lyrics in the NWA song "____ tha Police", you could get a better understanding of why parents and the PMRC want gangsta rap extinct.
F--- tha police, coming straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brown
And not the other color, some police think
They have the authority to kill a minority
If you were to look at Ice Cube's verse at the beginning of this song, you might be able to see why parents have a problem with gangsta rap. What I see, however, is a different perspective than what most parents see. The point Ice Cube is trying to make in this particular lyric is that they are fed up with the police and the way they treat black people just because their skin is brown. In actuality, this song is nothing more than a big "dis" towards the police, even though most of the lyrics in the song are about violence against the police. For example, Ice Cube raps:
A young nigga on the warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a blood bath
Of cops dying in L.A.
Yo, Dre, I got something to say
Even though these lyrics are very violent in their nature, to me, they are nothing more than what you would see in a movie about the Italian Mafia. Since the gangsters in these movies are more organized and mainly just kill off their own people, nobody complains about the content in them. Hardly any parent complains when their children see these movies but when their children listens to a gangsta rap song, it is a whole different story. Maybe since it is black people rapping these violent songs, they feel that they are to be taken more seriously because the mindset of most white people in America is that blacks are a violent race. They hear all about the black on black gang violence in L.A. from the media and then they feel that these songs are a bad influence on their children.
Although I would like to think that this is not true, there are a few fans of rap who ruin it for everybody else. Violent to begin with, the gangsta rap songs they listen to just increases their intent to cause more violence. This is proven most when during a rap concert, a couple of individuals have to ruin the show when they start a violent confrontation. This violence at rap concerts gives a bad reputation to rap itself. It was so bad that back in 1989, venue availability for rap tours was down 33% because buildings were limiting rap shows(Rose, p. 533).
Rap music since 1990 has constantly been a top selling form of music, yet many people are still on a campaign to get it off the shelves. Ice Cube has said that rap has brought black and white kids closer together and that rap has given white kids a better understanding and a new respect for black culture, so what's the problem(Jackson, p. 159)? What I think the problem is that there is still a racist mindset in the country and that many white people don't want their children to associate with black people or to learn anything about black culture, especially some of the violent parts that rap music portrays. Another problem is that many white fans have gone so far as to start dressing and acting like black people, becoming wanna-be's(Ledbetter, p.540-41). This has angered the white race even more and has made them more negative towards the music because they don't want their children acting black.
Many rap artists, though, don't help this negative image that rap has been labeled with. Rappers like 2Pac and Snoop Doggy Dogg have gone beyond what they rap about and have actually been involved with violent acts. Snoop and his bodyguard were arrested for killing someone in self defense but were later acquitted of the charges. 2Pac, a tragic case, had been arrested several times for many different offenses. He supposedly shot at a couple of police officers and he was found guilty of sexual assault. 2Pac was a strong believer in backing up his words. Before going into jail, 2Pac was shot at several times. He was hit but survived the incident. However, a year and a half later, he was shot at again four times in the chest and died seven days later. Flavor Flav of Public Enemy has been arrested several times for drug possession and physical assault on his girlfriend. Slick Rick has been in and out of jail since 1991 because of the attempted murder of his cousin.
Gangsta rap wasn't the only form of rap music that was attacked by the PMRC. Sexually explicit rap or "booty rap" created by 2 Live Crew has been heavily attacked also(Perkins, p. 24). 2 Live Crew's sexual lyrics talked about degrading women and treating them as sex objects. These songs have caused a chain reaction of groups to create their music similar to 2 Live Crew. Groups like Tag Team and 95 South, famous for the songs "Whoot! There it is" and "Whoomp! There it is", have imitated their style to sound like 2 Live Crew, using girls in scantily clad clothing in their videos and treating them as sex objects.
Male rappers aren't the only ones who use sexually explicit raps to make money. The female group BWP(Bytches With Problems) created an album that rivaled 2 Live Crew's "As Nasty as They Wanna Be"(perry, p. 525). Their song "Two Minute Brother" was the female answer to any 2 Live Crew song.
Damn! You said you was a good lover
But you's a two minute brother
Nigga, I ain't even broke a sweat
Not to mention, I ain't even came yet
This particular verse is just a mild part compared to the rest of the lyrics in the song. It is songs like these that cause parents to have conniption fits and force them to start organizations like the PMRC. All these examples prove why parents despise rap music and want it off the market but because of this negativity, most parents are blind to the positive songs that some rap artists have created.
A number of gangsta rappers, including NWA and King Tee, came together to create a song called "We're All in the Same Gang". This song was a rap dedicated to stopping black on black crime. It let the young fans know how dangerous it is to lead a gangsta life and how quick your life would be if you were to lead one. The surprising thing is the fact that Dr. Dre, producer of NWA, was the one to come up with the concept for this song along with an ex real gangsta. NWA realized that they are nothing more than studio gangstas and they try to use their image to give a positive message to their fans but because of their past records of negative songs, no one would take this positive side seriously. People are so focused on the negative side that they pay no attention to whenever a rap artist does something good for the community.
KRS-One, of Boogie Down Productions, is a good example of a rap artist who does a lot of positive things for his people. Back in 1990, KRS-One was one of the main supporters of the Stop the Violence Movement. He, along with a number of other rappers, including Public Enemy and Doug E. Fresh, released a song called "Self Destruction". This song, just like "We're All in the Same Gang", was about black on black crime. Each rapper in their own way rapped on how the violence should stop. The video for the song featured statistics about black on black crimes to let people know how horrible it really is. Although the song was pretty popular to rap fans at the time, its popularity quickly died out, bringing the positive message of the song with it.
None of the rap discriminators ever bother looking at this song when they are making their cases on why rap should be banned. It is the same scenario that rock and roll faced back in the fifties. Parents back then didn't like rock and roll because they felt it was just noise and nonsense. The problem is by its twentieth year, rock and roll was well established and well respected in the community. Rap is quickly coming to its twentieth year, but it still has a long way to go before it gains the full respect that rock and roll was able to achieve. Slowly more and more people are beginning to accept it for the way it is but it will never be fully accepted.
Maybe if someone were to look at some of the positive lyrics that some rap songs have instead of looking at songs by NWA or Ice-T, they might be able to see rap in a different light. If someone were to look at the lyrics to this particular KRS-One song off the album "By All Means Necessary", they might see a different meaning in rap.
This might sound a little strange to you
But here's the reason I came to you
We got to put our heads together and stop the violence
'Cause real bad boys move in silence
When you're in a club you come to chill out
Not watch someone's blood spill out
That's what these other people want to see
Another race fight endlessly(Rose, p. 252)
These lyrics are filled with positive messages. KRS-One wants his people to stop the violence and at the same time he lets his people know that their violence is what the other races want to see. By doing this, he alerts his people that it's not just a black on black thing but that it's also a race thing. He educates and warns his people at the same time.
Rap music has had its share of negativity but along with the negative, they've managed to do some positive things too. Unfortunately, the negative outweighs the positive and that is all that the people tend to focus on. It will be hard for rap music to fully achieve the respect it deserves. The reason for this is that rap is a black form of music and the majority of America is white. Many white people are scared of the threat that rap music poses and they won't let it become as respectful as other forms of music. They will always classify it as music filled with noise, nonsense, and unnecessary explicit content. America is filled with racial tension and until this tension is broken, rap will be looked at in a negative light and this is really unfortunate for rap as a whole.
Jackson, O'Shea(Ice Cube) (1990) "Black Culture is Still Getting a Bum Rap," Rap On Rap: Straight-up Talk on hip-Hop Culture. Ed. Adam Sexton. New York: Dell Publishing. 158-160. Ledbetter, James (1992) "Imitation of Life," Gender, Race and Class in Media. Ed. Gail Dines & Jean
Humez. Vol. 1 London: Sage Publishing. 61: 540-544. Perkins, William E. (1996) "The Rap Attack: An Introduction," Droppin' Science: Cultural Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. Ed. William Perkins. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1: 1- 45.
Perry, Imani (1995) "It's My Thang and I'll Swing It the Way that I Feel!: Sexuality and Black Women Rappers," Gender, Race and Class in Media. Ed. Gail Dines & Jean Humez. Vol. 1 London: Sage Publications. 59: 524-530.
Rose, Tricia (1991) "Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990's," Gender, Race and Class in Media. Ed. Gail Dines & Jean Humez. Vol.1 London: Sage Publications. 60: 531-539.
Rose, Tricia (1996) "Hidden Politics: Discursive and Institutional Policing of Rap Music," Droppin' Science: Cultural Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. Ed. William Perkins. Philadlephia: Temple University Press. 10: 236-257.
Zook, Kristal (1992) "Reconstructions of Nationalist Thought in Black Music and Culture," Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Ed. Gail Dines & Jean Humez. Vol. 1 London: Sage Publications. 58: 518-523.
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