When I was seven years old, I already knew who Tupac Shakur was, by eight I could name several names of rappers from the East and West Coast, and at the age of 11 I knew the words to Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” by heart. I barely remember life without hip-hop, and this does not mean that I am a wildly advanced listener or a devoted connoisseur of the genre. Hip-hop has long entered the mainstream; since the mid-1980s, the expansion of the genre has not stopped for a second, but in the last couple of years it has taken on truly impressive proportions.
Just ten years ago, the stage and the hearts of young music lovers belonged to pop icons, and competition for the title of best-selling artist of the year took place within the same genre: Britney Spears competed with Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin competed with Chris Martin. Taylor Swift has completely different rivals - she has to fight for views with Iggy Azalea and Nicki Minaj, and Kanye West has no equal at all. It must be said that Taylor herself, despite her status as a pop princess, builds her hits on flirtations with hip-hop in one form or another.
Open any influential music publication - home page The Fader takes Tyler, The Creator, Pitchfork's best track of the week is "Ice Princess" by Azealia Banks, and Noisey posts documentary about a 13-year-old rap prodigy. All in all, hip-hop is definitely ruling the music world. From time to time we wonder: when will the rap craze end? We turned to professionals for the answer.
Oleg Sobolev
musical critic
The fashion for hip-hop to expropriate pop music will end exactly when hip-hop itself ceases to be popular. That is, given hip-hop's innate ability to mutate over time, never. This is an old story - white people have always been attracted to black music. Suffice it to recall the group The Rolling Stone s, who played black R&B covers early in their career, or, to go even further, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first recorded jazz group in the world made up entirely of white people. R&B and jazz eventually went out of fashion, but hip-hop is much more tenacious - and as long as it lives, it will be in great demand in the context of pop music.
As for things more general, extra-musical, it seems to me that these are very domestic American matters. There is now a black president, a bunch of notable black celebrities, a huge increase in the popularity of local sports, in which the rules are also dictated by black athletes. The incredible growth of political activism and civic engagement on the part of blacks - remember the story with the city of Ferguson. In short, it is now black people who rule America in every way. That's why culture strives for black things - sports, for example (even Taylor Swift is photographed with the New York Knicks). In England, for example, it’s a little different: if we take music, then their most important pop stars - Adele or Sam Smith - also live in black music, but from the 1960s, and are infinitely far from the current state of American pop culture .
Andrey Bukharin
music reviewer
It seems to me that this is an incorrect formulation of the question. Hip-hop was introduced into the mainstream by Malcolm McLaren in 1982 with his first solo album. The fashion for it began towards the end of the decade, at the same time the first white rappers appeared (Beastie Boys and such a funny character as Vanilla Ice). In the 1990s, rap began to flourish, it occupied MTV and even then became mainstream, and its elements began to be used with might and main in pop music and new dance music. Even in Russia, hip-hoppers appeared (“Bachelor Party”, Bad Balance, Mister Maloy, Bogdan Titomir). What is happening at the current stage is not called fashion, it is simply widespread - rap is read in Kapotnya and the slums of Madras, in Cape Town and Bucharest - in all languages of the world. Hip-hop is the folk urban music of the world, the easiest to produce and does not require any special talents. Here, hip-hop also penetrates everywhere and booms in every car, replacing for the boys in the area the old chanson that was left to the older generation. When will this end? Whether we like it or not (I don’t like it at all, although I used rap during its heroic period), this is clearly not going to end soon. In any case, until something equally simple and effective for self-expression is invented simple guy, who has no other chance in this best of all worlds.
Andrey Gorokhov
The question “when will the widespread fashion for hip-hop end?” put me in a stupor, as any leading question should. Answering this, I want to start making excuses that, excuse me, I’m catastrophically behind fashion and life and I don’t really see the fashion for hip-hop, especially everywhere around me (in Berlin, Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk - in the cities where I was in the last three months) there has been no fashion for hip-hop. You can complain about a stupid question, but I will speak as a cultural nerd. In 100 years, hip-hop will most likely exist in some other form, but even that I doubt. It is quite possible that the wave of hip-hop will move between ghettos in third world countries, like an eternal echo bouncing off the walls. Hip-hop is a global phenomenon, and it doesn't go away, even if your neighborhood has recovered from it. When will blue jeans go away? What about football? What about black metal and punk rock? What about heartfelt songs with guitar? What about thrash? What about porn?
In my memory, that is, over the past 15 years, only in Germany there have been several waves of hip-hop that are different from each other: aggro-hop, that is, aggressive macho rap with criminal twists, is something different from indie hip-hop , and hip-hop with beats is completely different than hip-hop with acoustic guitar or minimal electronics. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in Stuttgart or Hamburg a couple of dozen people still wear huge ports at half-mast and listen to homemade mixtapes. And from there a wave of “new” sound can come again. These are viruses, and viruses do not spread in waves.
Alexander Kondukov
editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone Russia
In fact, there is no trend for hip-hop, there is a trend for making money. Hip-hop is an illustration of all the commercial endeavors a musical artist can undertake. Hip-hop stars have always been after money, they advertise everything from supermarkets to sneakers. Therefore, in modern business, when nothing particularly sells, everyone consciously reaches for money. A similar story happened when commercial hip-hop first emerged as a trend. I feel like there's something new happening in alternative hip-hop right now. There are more collaborations between artists than ever before, everyone supports each other very closely, they record on each other’s albums. There was no such unity in the 1990s. Therefore, everyone instinctively approaches the hip-hop camp in order to stick together against the backdrop of monstrous musical processes, which lead to the fact that musicians earn money exclusively from corporate performances and tours, but not from sales of musical media.
Now there are no canonical hip-hop stars who can be idolized and put on the cover without beating. Try to compare Tupac Shakur with Drake - they are completely different people. I don't think Kendrick Lamar would have become famous in 1995. The then LL Cool J would have dwarfed him. Now there are no dominant, super-powerful people on the scene, so all the laurels go to those who have minimal charisma. What can we talk about if the main rock band in the world remains U2? There hasn't been any significant progress. If you go over iconic rock bands in your head, you will again have a bias towards Radiohead and The Rolling Stones. Therefore, angular rappers look brighter against this background, and those people who want to somehow earn money go to collaborations and work with them. Although I'm sure no one has any absolute knowledge of where commercial music can lead. This is why these crazy U2 and Beats album deals are happening. by Apple. In a general crisis, everyone tries to be the first in some segment, because no one knows what will actually happen. Anything can shoot, I hope it won’t be Russian rock or new album Boris Grebenshchikov and tribute to Bashlachev.
The word “rap” comes from the English rap, rapping, which is usually translated as “knock, hit.” It is not difficult to draw an analogy between knocking (and tapping the rhythm) and the rhythmicity of pronouncing song lyrics. Of course, there are also theories that rap is nothing more than an abbreviation. So, it was deciphered both as “Radical American Poetry” (Radical American Poetry) and as “Rhythm and Poetry” (Rhythm and Poetry) ... and as soon as they were deciphered, but such theories arose among the non-English-speaking population, and the word never was written in capital letters, so the first definition of rap most accurately reflects its entire essence.
And thanks to The Sugarhill Gang’s track “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), the word “rapper” also appeared and became widespread. Earlier, even before the appearance modern name rap artists, they were called spinners. This name takes its roots from the English spin - to rotate - initially the rapper's work was limited to manipulating the player's disk.
But enough of the terms. What is rap and what is its essence? Well, rap is a form of dance music that is characterized by short musical phrases, simple harmonies and choppy rhythms. In his modern form rap appeared in the 70s. His birthplace was the American Bronx, and his ancestors were the black population of the country. But rap was brought to America by visiting Jamaicans. It was the symbiosis of African traditions and Jamaican music that led to what began to be called rap in the 70s.
The spread of rap was greatly influenced by black amateur radio, which played this type of music every now and then. In those years, African-Americans had severely limited rights compared to the white population, to the point that there were establishments only for whites. Therefore, blacks had fun as best they could, including actively rapping. But more for pleasure, not for profit.
At first, rap was heard in black clubs in New York. It was mainly disc jockeys who specialized in this music and selected the repertoire for dancing. At this time, even minimal musical skills were not required to perform it. In addition, rap is almost the only type of music in which vocals were absent; they were replaced by a special form of singing - recitative.
Later, in 1977, rap reached the streets and became breakdancing. And the passion of young people for the music of Parliament, Chic, Sly And The Family Stone and James Brown led to the merging of rap with some other styles in which these performers also worked.
Soon rap went beyond the ghetto and gradually began to conquer the minds of white Americans. And such artists as Ice Cube, Ice-T, Run DMC and Public Enemy made significant changes in the stylistic coloring of this music, which led to the use of some of its elements in all directions of rock, from techno to hard rock and from house to soul .
But rap went even further than just conquering the white population of America, it began to conquer the rest of the world, even to the point that it reached Russia. So, in the 80s, with the advent of the first discos and disc jockeys in the USSR, this musical direction began to spread. And it is to rap and its influence that we owe the song “Carnival” by Sergei Minaev, which contains some of its elements.
Rhyming couplets
Among music lovers, there are many who are fans of rhythmic recitative called rap. How did this trend originate and who was the very first rapper in the world?
Rap appeared a little over 40 years ago. It arose in the early 1970s. in the southern areas of the American Bronx, that is, where African Americans lived, so it is no coincidence that the performance of rhyming chants remains the prerogative of blacks to this day. The founder of this trend is considered to be the Jamaican DJ Cool Herc (Clive Campbell). Cool in the late 1960s. moved to New York and became one of the first DJs in the Bronx.
From his homeland, the first rapper brought with him the so-called Jamaican tradition of “ignition”: he composed rhymes on the go and shouted them to a reggae backing track. Since people liked what he was doing, other DJs picked up this innovation, rapping simple rhyming couplets to the music own composition, addressed to the audience. The new movement immediately acquired its name, but at that time it was called not rap, but Mcing.
Rap spread
Spreading rap in to a large extent Amateur black radio, which played music that was popular with African Americans at the time, contributed to this, and the new movement began to gain more and more fans. The name of the style and its performers - rap and rappers, respectively - was firmly entrenched in the direction in 1979, when the single appeared The group Sugarhill Gang called "Rapper's Delight".
By the way, this particular composition is considered to be the very first rap, since it contained typical rhymes and fundamental themes of modern hip-hop: details of everyday life, sex, MC competitions, mockery, ostentatious vanity. Since the general American public first became aware of the existence of rap with the appearance of this group and their debut single, Jack Gibson, former radio host and now founder and lead singer of The Sugarhill Gang, was officially awarded the title of the world's very first rapper. Jack Gibson later became the organizer of one of the very first rap conventions.
21st century art
Very often, especially in colloquial speech, the term “hip-hop” is used as a synonym for rap style, but this is not entirely correct. Hip-hop is musical form, one of the elements of which is rap, and in the not-so-distant 1980s. it really came to represent the entire genre. However, in the 21st century, rap has turned into a real art, which has many facets, and today rhythmic recitative is widely used in other musical styles: drum and bass, alternative rock, modern rhythm and blues, nu metal, raggamuffin, pop rap, it can even be heard in some types of hardcore music, so consider “rap” and “hip-hop” synonyms it won't be entirely correct.
Dinosaurs movement
The “dinosaurs” of the movement, who made an invaluable contribution to the development of rap and hip-hop, are considered, first of all, to be Grandmaster Flash and Africa Bombata, incredibly popular artists 1980s , however, now their work already belongs to the “old school”. Contemporary performers, for example, Eminem, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and others are now reading a completely different rap, which is very different from what it was at the very beginning; rap as a movement has already taken on a completely different, new life.
It remains to be said that rap came to Russia in the 1980s, when discos became popular in the USSR and the activities of DJs began to develop. Well, the very first rap album was recorded in Kuibyshev in 1984 by DJ Alexander Astrov.
Rap is a style of music in which rhymed lines are set to a melody that is rhythmic and filled with beats.Rap is music of African-American origin. Initially, rap was performed by black musicians who tried to convey to listeners the problems of “street” life in the “black” neighborhoods of US cities. The South Bronx, a poor neighborhood of New York, is considered to be the birthplace of rap. It was here, in the early seventies, that he first began to use cyclic playback of breaks - a place in a composition where only drums, or drums and bass, are heard. From under his hands came one continuous rhythm, to which it was very convenient to break dance, which was what they did with pleasure on the dance floors at that time.
The founder of modern rap is considered to be Grandmaster Flash, who adopted the Kool Herc technique and improved it. In the late nineties, he began to engage in scratching, thereby achieving very interesting sound effects. He soon decided that he could use a vocalist. The experiment was a success and a new movement was launched.
In 1968, African-American intellectuals founded the group Last Poets and recorded a couple of rap albums that are considered revolutionary in rap culture.
Run DMC are rightfully considered the kings of rap. The group released their first album in 1984, which immediately went gold. After that there was a super popular single “Walk This Way”, recorded together with Aerosmith, and the album “Raising’ Hell” became the first rap album to go platinum.
In the nineties, gangsta rap emerged, replete with profanity and a more aggressive sound. It was more autobiographical and focused mainly on crime topics. Bands that performed in this style attracted the attention of law enforcement because they emphasized sex, violence and a criminal lifestyle.
Next in the music style rap was invented new genre- G-funk. Its founder was Dr. Dre. This style, which combined a slow rhythm, funky guitar parts, female backing vocals and deep bass, was liked by many, both performers and listeners. Dr. Dre later became a producer and gave the world such stars as Snoop Dog, Eminen and Tupac Shakur.
Rap is considered a component of hip-hop culture; b-boys most often break out and perform their amazing dances to the rhythms of rap. The main styles of rap are Old School Rap, although it is considered outdated, it continues to live, Southern Rap, Underground Rap, Pop-Rap, Political Rap, Party Rap, Jazz-Rap, Gangsta Rap, East Coast Rap - this is an incomplete list of types of rap .
Voca-Beat vocal school tells you about musical genre Rap.
Vocal training at the Voca-Beat vocal school will help you discover the world of music from a new side, and most importantly, find yourself in it.
Rap (English rap, rapping) is rhythmic text or poetry that is read to music, usually with a heavy beat. A person who raps is a rapper, or MC.
Rap is considered one of the most important components of hip-hop; Many people consider the terms “rap” and “hip-hop” to be synonymous. However, rap is used in the most different genres music, for example, drum and bass, rock music (rapcore, nu metal, alternative rock, alternative rap). Rap is also often an element of pop and R-n-B compositions.
When rap was just emerging in the African and Latino communities of the Bronx, New York, in the first half of the 1970s, it was party music.
It was created by disc jockeys (DJs), and often their work came down to repeating someone else’s music dance composition. Over time, local DJs began selling cassette tapes of party routines that cleverly combined rhythms and bass lines filmed from various compositions, and the MCs would rap over them. At that time (1974 - 1978) there were no studios or official releases of rap compositions: this activity was amateur.
The first recording in the rap style is considered to be the single “Rapper’s Delight” performed by “The Sugarhill Gang”, released in the USA in 1979. It was thanks to this 11-minute track that the American general public learned about the phenomenon of hip-hop. This composition made a splash in the American popular music market, but most people believed that this genre would not develop further.
However, by the mid-1980s. hip-hop has changed: it no longer focuses exclusively on parties, rappers began to raise serious topics in their lyrics.
Rap by the end of the 1980s. has reached high level popularity, it can be compared with the level of popularity of rock, country and pop. MC Hammer, Kris Kross and others became the personification of this popularity. They addressed their music to a wide audience, and this served as the basis for more greater development hip-hop.
There is a well-known rivalry between rappers from the West and East coasts of the United States that began in the mid-1990s. It ended with the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., representatives of both sides. This outcome of the confrontation caused a wide resonance in the media, and therefore rap gained even greater popularity: throughout 1997, rappers occupied the top lines of the US charts. During this same period, there was intense commercialization of hip-hop. It is often associated with the name of rapper Puff Daddy, who promoted a glamorous lifestyle. At the end of the 20th century, the white rapper Eminem gained fame, who tried to revive the charge of provocation and social protest in hip-hop music.
In 2004, for the first time in history, the Grammy Award in the most prestigious “super-genre” category - “for best album"- was awarded to rap artists - the duo OutKast.
Rap appeared in Russia in 1984, when in Kuibyshev disc jockey Alexander Astrov, together with the group Chas Rik, recorded a 25-minute program, which was soon distributed throughout the country.
Hip-hop in Russia gained wide popularity in the second half of the 1980s, when the passion for breakdancing began. The first Russian-language group, Bad Balance, appeared in the 1989s. This group is rightfully considered legendary. The Russian hip-hop industry was formed only in the late 1990s, at which time many groups of this genre appeared.
Many of the Russian rappers compared the life of African Americans in the ghetto with the difficult times in Russia, most often the 90s. Russian and American rap are somewhat similar, but Russian hip-hop has a different history, more lyrical digressions. In today's Russia, hip-hop is widespread among young people and continues to develop.
Sources:
www.rapcity.com.ua
Wikipedia