“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.
you’re talking hip hop with the scratching and sampling.
Rapping existed long before that.
plugging into a streetlamp for power and rhyming on the fly over the thump and scratch of vinyl”
thanks for mentioning that. this is a very important element.
I have to insert here, perhaps dangerously on FR, but perhaps this thread is safer :)
But as the author/star of Hamilton on broadway said, Hamilton really is a hip hop story. What he means by that is, Hamilton was orphaned, found his way to NYC, and then worked feverishly hard, really trading in the proliferation of words (wrote like he was running out of time). He also had an edginess to his personality in that he was utterly fearless, because he had so little to lose. (His bayonet charge at Yorktown for example). And of course his attitude towards a lawless British government who was repressing people....well....that is an element of hip hop and has been from the beginning. Now all of us would not really accept the notion that the British government and white cops in NYC are really the same...but...you get the point, and it’s part of the human experience in those urban centers where they did feel that way, rightly or wrongly. (And, it is, actually undeniable, that the LA police department around the time OJ killed two people did in fact have some lawless and racist pockets).
I don’t want this thread taken over by politics....and I don’t like Lin Manual Miranda’s politics, either.
But his work, Hamilton, is a national treasure which we all do well to admire. And knowing what we can of the story of hip hop is part of that.
Ultimately, hip hop is just....human. It’s ok not to “like” it. I always tell students tastes are real, and you don’t really get to argue with someone else’s tastes. But we all do well to acknowledge true creative, complex, deeply historical cultural phenomena when we encounter them. Hip hop is certainly that; AND it is utterly American.