What was the first rap song that you heard?

[Khephra]

This one will shock people, but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before the Beastie Boys were doing white rap, someone else was doing it.

BLONDIE.

RAPTURE:

Toe to toe
Dancing very slow
Barely breathing
Almost comatose
Wall to wall
People hypnotised
And they're stepping lightly
Hang each night in Rapture

Back to back
Sacrailiac
Spineless movement
And a wild attack

Face to face
Sadly solitude
And it's finger popping
Twenty-four hour shopping in Rapture

Fab Five Freddie told me everybody's high
DJ's spinnin' are savin' my mind
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
Francois sez fas, Flashe' no do
And you don't stop, sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and you drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars
And you try to run but he's got a gun
And he shoots you dead and he eats your head
And then you're in the man from Mars
You go out at night, eatin' cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subarus
And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars
Then, when there's no more cars
You go out at night and eat up bars where the people meet
Face to face, dance cheek to cheek
One to one, man to man
Dance toe to toe
Don't move to slow, 'cause the man from Mars
Is through with cars, he's eatin' bars
Yeah, wall to wall, door to door, hall to hall
He's gonna eat 'em all
Rapture, be pure
Take a tour, through the sewer
Don't strain your brain, paint a train
You'll be singin' in the rain
I said don't stop, do punk rock

Well now you see what you wanna be
Just have your party on TV
'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars when the TV's on
And now he's gone back up to space
Where he won't have a hassle with the human race
And you hip-hop, and you don't stop
Just blast off, sure shot
'Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin' cars and eatin' bars
And now he only eats guitars, get up!

[unblock]

1. ah, blondie, paving the way for vanilla ice ice baby....

yeah, as if she invented it....

[Khephra]

5. Yeah, I know

But Blondie got into people's heads who weren't in major urban areas. I was living around farms when I heard "Rapture" for the first time. The song, in itself, may not be great, but I'll bet that I'm not the only white boy turned onto rap because of that song.

[jjmalonejr]

2. Yeah, Rapture was the first rap song I'd ever heard, too.

We're dating ourselves.

[Khephra]

6. My mom used to hate that song

cause I'd listen to it with my headphones on and forget that people could hear me singing to the song.

[MikeG]

3. I have that eight-track.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. Funky Cold Medina

nah I guess Rapture was before that wasn't it...

[MajorFlaw]

7. I don't remember the song, but the first "rap" I heard was The Last Poets

back in the 60's.

[parasim]

8. For me it was Gil Scott-Heron

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised


on edit: or perhaps Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues could be considered an early rap tune.

[LincolnMcGrath]

9. Breaks Kurtis Blow

[AntiCoup2K4]

10. First white rapper was a Jewish kid from New York (but NOT the Beasties)

...well ok technically he was from Minnesota, but he was working out of New York. I refer to, of course, one Mr Robert Zimmerman......

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doin' it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin' for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D. A.
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try "No Doz"
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You're gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin' for a new fool
Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles

[Khephra]

13. True...so true.

[unblock]

11. does 'walk this way' count?

i mean the original, aerosmith version.
sure, run dmc helped make it more of a rap song, but i think it always qualified as rap.

[taxidriver]

12. how's about being 7 years old and hearing "Me so Horny" by 2livecru

[seventhson]

14. Dolomite (But modern style really started with the Last Poets)

origial rap was a spoken word rhythmic art form and has been for generations and really goes back to the Arfican Griot narratives and deep southern African slave traditions as well.


The Dolomite stories came out of this tradition and became very popularized as racey comedy in the 60's or earlier. Staggolee was a similar story line and goes back a century or more with myriad variations.

The Last Poets (and Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott Heron) emerged from the political background and style of the Beat poets (Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka) - but merged with the nationalistic and revolutionary styles in Baraka and around the late 1960's (the beats started in the 50's with the post WWII avantgarde growing somewhat from Andre Breton's surrealist poetry movement in Europe and Baraka was a Beat Poet too) the Last Poets (aptly named) appeared and began to put the Conga rythmn and some music (but minimal) into their grooves. Musical poets with revolutionary fervor and minimal music.

I would have to say even Walt Whitman was probably influenced by the African rap (oral/spoken word) rhythms over a hundred years ago. He certainly would have been exposed to it and you can sense it in some of his verse. Bobby Dylan too (no doubt about that because the staggole=like prose ballads in the blues traditions were what he was imitating/honoring and using right at the start of his career)

Rap follows the same rhythms and meters as Shakespeare if you are paying attention (Iambic pentameter and all those fancy names for rhyming and prosing in rhythm are all there in everybody from eminem to ludacris to Chuck D and my fave Mos Def). It is a high art form in oral traditional modalities -- often complex and highly creative and stylized (like NYC grafitti art)

Many people denounce or crap on rap or hip hop as an art form but they just miss the fact that it is another form of expression which evolved from centuries of multicultural experience and the universal colors of language, prose and song. It is as rich in many ways in its European influences as it is in its American and African ones.

I love the French African rap artists too and the Latin ones.

So Blondie, like eminem, was part of a trend that has its roOts in AFRICAN CULTURE, IT ALSO HAS ITS ROOTS IN THE SOUL OF AMERICA from slavery, to the depression to Vietnam and Malcolm X (whose speeches are damn near lyrical poems) the civil righhts and Black power movement and urban resistance to oppression today.

I will shut up and go listen to my Mos Def CD now. G'Night!