District Assessment 2012

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.