[Cecily]

When rap was fun and easy on the ears.

[DIRTYSECRET]

It was easy on the eyes when an mtv rap video was about stepping in dog s—t.

[a fool in paradise]

Bullsh@t.

Pigmeat Markham rapped at Chess Records a decade earlier and appeared as a celebrity on Laugh In.

The Judge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRS62nccwmw

And Pigmeat didn’t invent rap.

Neither did Johnny Otis (who was a mover at the beginning of rock and roll, “discovering” Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, and Little Richard). here’s Johnny rapping in the 60
(NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNDwvncWRyQ

and Art Carney didn’t invent rap either but here he is in the 1950s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hz1EIpfvLY

[Big Red Badger]

Rapture,,,

[P.O.E.]

I would think Homer reciting the Iliad would’ve been earlier. Not sure about his dance moves. Maybe he had the Stevie Wonder / Ray Charles sway thing going on.

[Stingray51]

It has a good beat but sad they could not make it to the end of the song without talking about penises and sperm. Rap has always been a gutter genre which arises from a broken culture.

[TalBlack]

“Rap” is specifically an electronic age folk form. While many people before the late 70s talked over a rhythm track, it was kids, on street corners, plugging into a streetlamp for power and rhyming on the fly over the thump and scratch of vinyl. A folk form like “Doo Wop” a generation before.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

My favorite ‘Rapper?’ Blondie! (Deborah Harry)

‘Rapture’ 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g

[Leep]

Needs a little more base and a few more expletives and viola you have a rap song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38aDWDUjlOY

[treetopsandroofs]

Hated the song at the time, and even more now at what became afterwards.

[Hot Tabasco]

I thought it was Starland Vocal Band.....

[setter]

Grandmaster Flash “The Message” every dorm room in 1980-81 has this song playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PobrSpMwKk4

[mellow velo]

I visited some friends at Glassboro State (now Rowan) back when this song first came out and Sugar Hill Gang performed there. They did Rapper's Delight 3 times!

One of the most memorable bass lines of all time, lifted from Chic's Good Times, by the late, great Bernard Edwards.

[hoagy62]

Just being me, but I cannot stand that song. Nor 99% of rap of any kind.

[xp38]

Rappers Delight is significant over earlier rap like offerings because it led to the hip hop rap genre we have today. The earlier ones didn’t. It’s like why Columbus arriving in the Americas was significant while the earlier Vikings weren’t. Columbus led to other Europeans arriving while the Vikings didn’t. The same argument has been made about Elvis. He wasn’t the first to make a rock and roll record but truly the rock era began during his foray into the Sun studio in Memphis.

[Yo-Yo]

Here is a truism: Every generation comes out with a style of music that upsets the previous generation.

[IronJack]

1979 Song Introduced Rap To A Mass Audience

And Music took a giant step back into the jungle.

[ealgeone]

Rap has become the scourge of music.

[SamAdams76]

I remember that "Rapper's Delight" song. Whatever you think of rap today, that song would get everybody out on the dance floor in any nightclub the latter part of 1979. I also got into a little Beastie Boys a few years later. But by and large, the rap genre is just too angry and negative for me to get into.

I can listen to almost any type of music but can only take so much of lyrics that constantly talk about "bitches" and killing cops and so on.

[SamAdams76]

Also, I should point out that Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango from 1972 probably has a credible case for being the first "rap" song to hit the charts.

And forget about Blondie's "Rapture". I like Blondie but 90 seconds of rapping about eating cars (Suburus included) doesn't make it a rap song.

[wardaddy]

Bullshit

Dylan

Blondie

And most of all Gil Scott Heron introduced spoken word to a beat

https://youtu.be/QnJFhuOWgXg

A beat they didn’t copy ver batim btw