Rap
The use of the word to describe quick speech or repartee long predates the musical form,[1] meaning originally "to hit".[2] The word had been used in British English since the 16th century, and specifically meaning "to say" since the 18th. It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style.[3]
Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area among speech, prose, poetry, and song. Rap is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting. It also has precedents in traditional Celtic music. Modern rap battles, for instance, bear a striking resemblance to the Limerick Game, a traditional Gaelic drinking game in which people compete for notoriety by making up insulting limericks about each other, the loser having to buy the next round of drinks. Likewise, puirt a beul, a form of Scottish mouth music was incorporated into Appalachian music and is an early ancestor of modern mouth percussion, or beatboxing. The influence of Scottish and Irish music on hip hop is not direct, since virtually all of the originators of hip hop culture were African American, but were transferred indirectly by way of American roots music.[citation needed] Roots music was created out of the fusion of African and Celtic music in the American South and is typified by the combination of African rhythms, Gaelic melodies, and (occasionally) vocal improvisation. It forms the basis of virtually all American musical styles from bluegrass to the blues, jazz, rock, funk, and country. Hip hop grew out of this same tradition; stripping down the melody, emphasizing the rhythm, and incorporating mouth music, battling, and vocal improvisation.
Rapping developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 70s by Jamaican expatriate Kool Herc and others. The parties introduced dancehall and the practice of having a "Master of Ceremonies," or MC, get up on stage with the DJ and shout encouragements to the crowd in a practice known as ’toasting’. Over time, those shouts of encouragement became longer and more complex and cross-pollinated with the spoken-word poetry scene to evolve into rap. It’s believed that the first rapper to actually call himself an MC was Melle Mel from Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. He is also credited as being the first Hip Hop MC to rap in a traditional verse/chorus format. From the beginning hip hop culture has been syncretic, incorporating sounds and elements from radically divergent sources. While Funk breaks formed the backbone of early hip hop, Kraftwerk and other early techno artists were widely sampled as well.
