Rap
Rap — a technique involving lyrics performed in expressive and metrically complex ways — grew from a local fad among neighborhood musicians to one of the most popular musical techniques on the planet over the course of a few decades.
Hip Hop Culture
Rap is an element of hip hop culture, which comprises of several different forms of artistic expression:
- Rap or MCing is a technique involving the spoken performance of lyrics in expressive and metrically complex ways, usually over a recorded beat as accompaniment.
- Turntablism or DJing involves the control of spinning vinyl records to mix different songs and manipulate the recorded sound.
- Beatboxing is the performance of a percussion track using only sounds created by the mouth.
- Street Dancing is a collection of unique dance styles that emphasize exaggerated motion and acrobatics, including techniques like breakdancing, pop and lock and krumping.
- Graffiti is a visual art form which emphasizes spray paint techniques and which uses utilitarian surfaces in public areas as canvases.
Hip hop culture began in the New York City borough of the Bronx in the early 1970s. When providing music for neighborhood dance parties, DJs would operate two independent turntables as a means of blending one song to the next, and many began extending the short drum solos in funk songs — known as breaks — by manually dragging records with the needle still engaged in order to continually repeat the same phrase. Vocalists, referred to as MCs, would improvise spoken verses over these breaks using a rhythmic type of delivery that came to be known as rapping.
Elements of Rap
Rap consists of four important elements, each of which can vary among subgenres, rappers, or even individual performances.
Content
A rap's content is the subject matter of the rap. Common rap themes in hip hop culture center on urban life and rivalry.
Inner-City Culture
Rap lyrics will often reference unfortunately common facets of life in the impoverished neighborhoods where hip hop culture first formed, including racial disenfranchisement and persecution, particularly of Black residents; use of alcohol and recreational drugs, notably marijuana and cocaine; and violence, gun use and gang activity.
Sex
As with many other forms of music, raps will often focus on romantic relationships, though sexually explicit lyrics are common, often referencing sexual conquests and the objectification of women.
Competition
Early rappers would often perform in musical competitions, where performers would take turns demonstrating skill and credentials through improvised rapping. In many cases, a particular rapper might be defending their reputation, colleagues, fanbase, or even neighborhood. A common theme among successful rappers is money, especially as a show of success in comparison with rivals.
Elements of these raps might involve self-promotion, where a rapper might list their own feats, musical or otherwise, and express warnings for challengers. They may also perform diss tracks, in which a rapper will verbally berate or attack another artist.
These competitions are often good-natured and short-lived, but can sometimes stem from or exacerbate deeper rivalries. During the mid-1990s, a long-standing rivalry between groups of rappers in New York City and Los Angeles resulted in the drive-by shooting deaths of rappers Tupac Shakur, who performed as 2Pac, and Christopher George Latore Wallace, who performed as The Notorious B.I.G..
Flow
The flow of a rap encompasses several different aspects of how lyrics are set to the beat. It covers most of the lyrical and poetic elements of the performance, including rhythm and wordplay.
Scansion
While hip hop music very often includes singing, often in a song's chorus, rap itself describes a lyrical technique that combines spoken inflection in a strongly rhythmic framework. Thus, rap rhythms can usually be transcribed using rhythmic notation.
Some raps, especially early raps intended for general audiences, are rhythmically consistent, with even lines and predictable accents.
Others use more complicated rhythms and line lengths, making use of changing meters or conflicting beat patterns. Rappers will sometimes float between intentional rhythms and more naturally-paced speech.
Rhyme Scheme
Like poetry, rap can use rhyme in many different ways. Rhymes can have various strengths, from full rhymes where one or more of the final syllables have matching vowel sounds and consonants (for example, "inch," "pinch" and "flinch") to milder rhymes where only the vowel sound matches ("go," "phone" and "roll").
An end rhyme is the use of rhyming words at the ends of lines.
Lines can be subsequent, or the end of one line can call back to the end of a more previous line.
In addition to line-end rhymes, rappers will often make use of internal rhymes, which consist of repeated use of rhyming words — usually soft rhymes — within a single line, often in rapid succession and sometimes across multiple lines.
Rappers will sometimes use complicated combinations of internal rhymes, rhyming multiple syllables and overlapping and interspersing multiple rhymes in a single section of rap.
Punchlines
In rap, a punchline is any form of wordplay. Punchlines can be clearly delineated puns, or they can be subtle elements of semantic nuance that provide an almost subconscious layer of meaning.
Delivery
A rapper's delivery comprises the tone, affect and accent of the vocal performance. If we consider flow to be the rhythm and melody of the rap, delivery is somewhat analogous to timbre.
Delivery can be influenced by a number of factors. Rappers will naturally be affected by local performers; for example, within the United States, west coast rappers as a group tend to use a wider pitch range than east coast rappers. Beastie Boys had a distinctive rapping style that was rooted in its members' previous membership in hardcore punk bands, and Aitch's delivery clearly portrays his Mancunian accent.
Rappers will sometimes change their delivery for a particular song, such as Lil Nas X adopting a Texan drawl for his rap cover of Billy Ray Cyrus's country song Old Town Road. As part of the group The Digital Underground, rapper Shock G performed some songs as the character "Humpty Hump," dressing in colorful clothes, wearing a false nose and rapping with an exaggerated, nasal delivery.
Beat
Rappers almost always perform over a beat. In hip hop music, a beat can be any musical accompaniment, but is almost always repetitive so that the listener's focus is on the rap itself.
The beats for early rappers were usually provided by live turntablists who, in the role of DJs, would take funk vinyl records and manually manipulate the turntable platters to continuously replay the drum breaks. These repeated sections would provide the backdrop for an MC to rap over in a live environment.
Modern rappers often still perform with DJs, especially in live, improvisatory environments, but pre-recorded beats are now also common. Modern beats very commonly sample other songs, using either short segments or larger sections of the original piece.
Subgenres of Rap
Rap's popularity, combined with its focus on local music scenes, has resulted in many subgenres, each with its own individual characteristics and practices. Subgenres are often borne of and centered around specific geographic locations, but can be based on other elements such as instrumentation or subject matter.
Gangsta Rap
One of the first significant subgenres of rap, gangsta rap emerged in the late 1980s and featured contraversial, politically-charged subject matter centered upon street life, gang activity, and anti-police violence. Artists pioneering the genre were Schooly D, Ice-T, and the group N.W.A.; at the height of its popularity, the subgenre included artists like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill and Jay-Z.
Trap
Like gangsta rap, trap music, a subgenre which originated in the 1990s in and around Atlanta, focuses on urban life, violence and drug use, but has a characteristic sound based in synthesized beats, especially those of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. The subgenre reached mainstream popularity in the 2010s and features artists like Drake, Gucci Mane, XXXTentacion, Young Thug, Travis Scott, Cardi B and Post Malone.
Drill
Another subgenre which draws from both gangsta rap and trap music, drill, originated on the south side of Chicago in the early 2010s. The subgenre features dark, violent and realistic topics and grim, filtered vocal flows by artists like Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, Chief Keef and Young Chop.
Mumble Rap
A further subgenre of trap music, mumble rap was a derogatory term used for rappers with deliberately unclear diction and a heavier use of neutral syllables like "aah" or "mmm" which was eventually reclaimed by the artists. Rather than being centered around a geographic area, mumble rap came to prominence on the online music distribution site SoundCloud, and is alternatively referred to as SoundCloud rap. Notable mumble rap artists include Future, 6ix9ine, and Playboi Carti, as well as trap artists like XXXTentacion and Young Thug.
Intersections with Other Genres
Many subgenres of rap are hybrids with other genres. Pop rap combines rap with the melodic focus of pop music, and tends to embrace milder topics to appeal to larger audiences. Popular pop rap artists include MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Black Eyed Peas and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Rap metal is a fusion of rap with elements of heavy metal, consisting of heavy guitar use and metal vocal techniques, popularized by artists like 311, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, and Linkin Park. Rap has notably intersected with musical theater in Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2015 production Hamilton: An American Musical, which retells the story of the founding of the United States using a racially diverse cast rapping and singing in multiple popular styles.
Other Subgenres
The musical techniques and even attitudes of rap, including rap battles and even urban life and violence, have been appropriated by unrelated social groups for shock or comedic value. Nerdcore artists like MC Frontalot rap about geek culture, covering topics like technology, science fiction and role-playing games. Chap hop is a subgenre of rap delivered in British accents and devoted to Victorian-era men's fashion and steampunk, and features artists like Professor Elemental and Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer.
Rap: Summary
- Hip hop culture consists of a wide variety of artistic expression:
- Rap is a expressive and metrically complex spoken performance over a recorded beat.
- Turntablism is the manual control of record players to mix and manipulate recorded music.
- Beatboxing is the performance of a percussion using only the performer's mouth.
- Street Dancing is a collection of dance styles which emphasize exaggerated motion and acrobatics.
- Graffiti is a visual art form usually centered around spray paint on public utilitarian surfaces.
- Hip hop culture began in the Bronx in the 1970s when DJs at neighborhood dance parties would extend the drum breaks in funk recordings by using turntablist techniques and MCs would rap over the breaks to engage the audience.
- Rap consists of four elements:
- Content is the subject matter of the rap, which can often center around urban culture, sex, violence, drugs, competition and self-promotion.
- Flow is the rhythmic setting of the lyrics, including scansion, rhyme scheme, and punchlines (wordplay and other semantic nuance).
- Delivery is the tone, affect and accent of the vocal performance.
- A rap's beat is the accompaniment for the rap, which might be a live turntable performance or a prerecorded track, often sampling other songs.
- Many subgenres of rap exist, with variations in content, flow, delivery and beat; subgenres can emerge around geographical musical cultures or other types of cultural touchpoints.