MUSIC: Tracing the Transformation of Rap

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Dec 16 1997 (IPS) - Anyone in the music business knows only too well that trends move very quickly. Frank Sinatra’s heyday as a singer was quickly replaced by that of Elvis Presley, who in turn was to be surprised by the rise of the Beatles a scant few years later.

Few musical genres, however, have had such rapid turnover of top stars as rap. Most of today’s biggest names, whether Mason ‘Mase’ Betha or Wyclef Jean, were virtually unknown just two years ago, while the two biggest stars of 1996 – Tupac Shakur and Christopher ‘Biggie Smalls’ Wallace – are now dead.

As a result, when Rhino Records decided to come up with a series commemorating an era of rap now forgotten by most listeners, it didn’t have to go far back at all: its new three- album set, ‘Beats and Rhymes: Hip-Hop of the ’90s’, features music spanning the years 1990 to 1992.

Rap detractors might take the fact that songs which are sometimes only five years old are now rarities to demonstrate how ephemeral, and ultimately unmemorable, rap hits are. But the three albums, each of which tackles a year’s worth of rap hits, shows the opposite: the songs are actually surprisingly good, and reveal much of how rap – and African American life – have changed in recent years.

For one thing, ‘Beats and Rhymes’ offers almost no examples of the violent, obscenity-laced ‘gangsta rap’ style which has come to dominate the genre commercially from 1993 onward.

“Hip-hop was not all about gangstas, East Coast vs West Coast, and makin’ the almighty dollar,” compilation producer Quincy Nowell says. “It was bigger than that – it had a reason, it brought people together, made us laugh, made us stop and think.”

In fact, one of the most revelatory things about ‘Beats and Rhymes’ is the sheer range of subject matter open to rappers in the early 1990s, before the ‘gangsta’ era prodded many companies to emphasise the roughest aspects of ghetto life.

There are some songs that tackle the lure of easy money and drug-dealing, but most of them – from Boogie Down Production’s ‘Love’s Gonna Get’Cha (Material Love)’, a tale of gangster life gone terribly wrong, to Run-DMC’s ‘The Ave’, about police brutality in the ghetto – are pessimistic rather than glamourous looks at street life.

On the other hand, the clever group Main Source complains about a relationship gone bad, and a woman who’s “shooting up my life like Shaft,” in ‘Looking at the Front Door’. Kool G Rap, Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane talk about race relations in an often comical diatribe, ‘Erase Racism’, while MC Lyte (‘Poor Georgie’) and Brand Nubian (‘Slow Down’) warn of the evils of cocaine.

More importantly, some of the rap hits of just a few years ago tackle issues that would seem ‘soft’ today: school life (Leaders of the New School’s ‘Case of the PTA’), prying parents (K-Solo’s ‘Your Mom’s in My Business’) and the joys of summer barbecues (DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s ‘Summertime’).

Throughout, the emphasis is on clever metaphors and tricky internal rhymes. “I’ve been through more crews than the flu,” Naughty by Nature rapper Treach boasts. The Brooklyn-based group Black Moon uses gun violence as a metaphor for rhyming skills, while Special Ed drops references to James Bond and ‘Mission: Impossible’ in his spy narrative, ‘The Mission’.

The early 1990s was in fact a period in which rappers were being encouraged to say anything at all: Rap, initially a New York- based club music, was at that point being promoted for the first time by major conglomerates like Time/Warner and Sony. As Carlton (Chuck D) Ridenhour put it, rap had become “Black America’s CNN.”

As a result, many of the songs on the collection articulate a sense of racial solidarity and pride which all but disappeared in the gangsta rap era. Digital Underground – where Tupac Shakur started as a rapper – admonish African Americans not to change their appearances in the funny ‘No Nose Job’, while YZ and Poor Righteous Teachers espouse black nationalism on their songs.

Main Source’s ‘Fakin’ the Funk’ predicted what would happen next: “You’re fakin’ the funk/ Talkin’ that extra-hard-core junk/ You must be a punk.” By 1993, the huge commercial following behind rap pushed companies to seek ever-more-lurid tales of sex and violence, culminating in the rise of California-based rappers like Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg. Soon, the “extra-hard-core junk” that Main Source decried was everywhere – while most of the rappers on the ‘Beats and Rhymes’ collection had disappeared.

Of course, trends come and go. This year has seen the rise of rap companies, like New York’s Bad Boy, that soften the gangsta rhetoric with soul and disco music. Meanwhile, the toughest of the gangsta labels, the Los Angeles-based Death Row, is being investigated for mob ties, while its owner, Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, is in jail.

Perhaps most significantly of all, some of the rappers of the Rhino compilation are back on the charts for the first time in years, including the clever mystic Rakim and the cheerful rapper- actor Will Smith (of ‘Independence Day’ and ‘Men in Black’ fame). One of the songs on ‘Beats and Rhymes’, by Maxwell ‘Grand Puba’ Dixon, puts it best: “What goes around, comes back around.”