Author’s Note: The current essay is for the PSD
District Assessment 2012. As the author of this essay I am informing the reader
on how the music genre “Rap” has changed over the years.
I believe that when rap
started it wasn’t about anything else but having fun, and now it’s
about getting money, being cool, and being considered a “gangster”. A lot of
rappers today are just really egotistical, and they don’t rap for the love of
it, only for the money.
Rapping is basically speaking
or chanting with rhyming lyrics, often set to a beat. The rhyming the rappers
use is considered by many people, a very sophisticated style of poetry. In many
rap songs the lyrics have to do with the rappers previous, present, or future
life. More than a century before rap was exposed to the world, West African
musicians were telling stories rhythmically, with just the beat of a single
drum. Indeed, these West African musicians were the base for modern day American
rap music.
Rapping became popular to the
U.S. in the 1970’s as a form of street art. But it wasn’t until 1979, when the
Sugarhill gang released their hit, ‘Rappers Delight’. After record producers
started to notice the interest in it, groups such as Run DMC and N.W.A. became
a part of the rapping business, and its audience rapidly started growing. It
wasn’t just African American rappers getting in on the act; groups like The
Beastie Boys and Salt-n-Pepa were reaching to the top of the charts.
By the 1990’s, rap evolved
from an old- school style rap with very simple lyrics to a new- school style
rap with more complex lyrics. Rappers such as Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Dogg, and
Tupac ruled the rapping world at this time, as did Eminem- one of the most
popular white rappers of all time.
Today rap is still flowing
all around the world through fans’ ears. The lyrics haven’t changed that much
from the 90’s, although some of their voices really just irritate me so much. I
have grown a passion for some rappers and their deep lyrics, not so much for
others. I still feel that a lot of rappers today rap only for the money and
nothing else.
