A Nerd Explores the Roots of RAP…from the African American Studies Lecture
I do not own the license/copyright to any of the visual material included. I am including them here not solely for personal gain, but as an education demonstration. As a matter of fact, this comes directly from my African American Studies lectures.
A Nerd Exploring the Roots of RAP on a Sunday Morning
Does anyone understand the significance of RAP’s origin?
Though you are reading this on a Tuesday, I am typing this on a Sunday. I am having a nerd Sunday morning. I am not in church, but fumbling around with Google Drive, Google Images, Medium, and Unsplash while watching the Sunday morning political shows on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS!
Technically, I’m a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd. Of all the nerds you know, I’m probably the weirdest and the nerdiest. I can’t help it. Even when it comes to something as cool as RAP music, I come to it as a nerd. As I listened to the debates about mumble RAP versus old-school RAP over the summer, I could not help but wonder about the origins of hip hop.
RAP is almost an AARP member. Last summer, it officially turned 50 years old! On Malcolm X’s birthday in 1968 (May 19, 1968), Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson took a name from a South African poet, Keorapetse Kgositsile, and began performing poetry of the ongoing Black Arts Movement (BAM: an explanation of this movement and its ties to the Black Power Movement is a whole other post). Like the poetry of Black Nationalism, their lyrics were words of the people: politically charged, everyday complex, everyday simple, full of rage, full of sweetness, full of hate, and full of love.
Their eponymous album, The Last Poets, came out in 1970. They are considered the godfathers of RAP music. In fact, they basically invented the genre, so shouldn’t they be called fathers? They were guys with awesome Afros standing in front of a drum spitting out politically fiery rhetoric about the ensuing revolution that would come and change the world for oppressed people. Four guys, microphones, and a drum and the genre became rhythm with poetry. Most of us do not know that RAP is not even a word. It is an acronym that stands for: Rhythm & Poetry. At first, people did not know what to make of African Americans’ first literary artform to be born outside of the South. Perhaps it was a fad, some said. When it became a popular culture phenomenon in 1979, people labeled it as an offshoot of disco. The first RAP video looks like a gathering of young folk infected with disco fever.
I came to the Last Poets as a child, courtesy of my dad. The song, “When the Revolution Comes,” quite frankly, scared the Pure D Hell out of me. There need not be elaborate instrumentals: the repetition kept time and acted as the bass and the high pitched/feminine instruments. Where strings or woodwinds would be, there were the voices. It fills the listener with a sense of urgency still! When I was younger, I thought the revolution would be here in five minutes, and I would actually start crying (hey, I was like 10). Right now, I teach some of their poems to my students, and the artform is so foreign to young headbobbers that they have a hard time actually having to sit and listen to the poetry.
For young people, they have to hear how these songs form the backbone of RAP. Many RAPpers still sample from The Last Poets and related acts. In Common’s “The Corner,” the voice of the poet is that of a Last Poets member. In one of his most popular B-side songs, Biggie Smalls used a chorus with the words, “…party and bullshit.” That whole chorus was taken from a repeated line from “When the Revolution Comes,” a poem from the Last Poets’ debut album.
By far, though, one of the most sampled song from early RAP era is Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” RAPpers who are into the craft, meaning the poetry side, of Rhythm & Poetry sample this song as a way to pay homage to the early godfathers of RAP.
Now, here is Royce da 5'9" and guests paying homage to the craft of art and not just the beat. As the song commences, you hear the voice of Gil Scott-Heron accompanied by drums only.
While traditionally, the Black Arts Movement and all that are associated with it have been labeled as misogynist, I have to remind readers/students/critics that the BAM was saturated with women poets as well: Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Mari Evans to name a few. Sonia Sanchez, specifically, used music to inspire her poetry and her lyrics have been used heavily. Literary critics keep pronouncing the Black Arts Movement dead, or they stay it was the shortest-lived literary movement. Apparently, today’s RAPpers do not think so, and keep the movement going by paying homage.
But that’s another posting. If you like this literally nerd trip back to the future of RAP, clap back…Or, you could enroll in one of my classes. In Dr. Jay’s class, all roads lead to African American Studies, so it does not matter which class!
