Word: songe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Clive to throw a party. Back in Kingston, Jamaica, his hometown, Clive used to watch dance-hall revelers. He loved reggae, Bob Marley and Don Drummond and the Skatalites. He loved the big sound systems the deejays had, the way they'd "toast" in a singsong voice before each song. When he moved to the U.S. at age 13, he used to tear the speakers out of abandoned cars and hook them onto a stereo in his room...
Things happened fast. This is the remix. There were start-up labels like Sugar Hill and Tommy Boy. Then in 1979 came Rapper's Delight--the first rap song most people remember. Grandmaster Flash warned, "Don't touch me 'cause I'm close to the edge." Then there was Run-D.M.C. rocking the house, and the Beastie Boys hollering, "You gotta fight for your right--to party!" and Public Enemy saying, "Don't believe the hype," and Hammer's harem-style balloon pants. Then gangsta rap: N.W.A. rapping "F____ tha police"; Snoop drawling "187 on an undercover...
...roots in the black community--jazz, rock, even gospel--faced criticism early on. Langston Hughes, in 1926, defended the blues and jazz from cultural critics. Hardcore rap has triumphed commercially, in part, because rap's aesthetic of sampling connects it closely to what is musically palatable. Some of the songs hard-core rappers sample are surprisingly mainstream. DMX raps about such subjects as having sex with bloody corpses. But one of his songs, I Can Feel It, is based on Phil Collins' easy-listening staple In the Air Tonight. Jay-Z's hit song Hard-Knock Life draws from...
...underlying message is this: the violence and misogyny and lustful materialism that characterize some rap songs are as deeply American as the hokey music that rappers appropriate. The fact is, this country was in love with outlaws and crime and violence long before hip-hop--think of Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde--and then think of the movie Bonnie and Clyde, as well as Scarface and the Godfather saga. In the movie You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks even refers to the Godfather trilogy as the perfect guide to life, the I-Ching for guys. Rappers seem to agree...
Already the white b-boy has become an iconic figure--ridiculed in movies like Can't Hardly Wait and the forthcoming Go, and in songs like Offspring's Pretty Fly (for a White Guy). In Pretty Fly the punk band Offspring mocks whites who adopt hip-hop styles, singing, "He may not have a clue/ And he may not have style/ But everything he lacks/ Well he makes up in denial." Irish-American rap-rocker Everlast, whose new CD, Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, has proved to be a commercial hit, says the song makes him laugh: "They...