What Was The First Rap Song?

Or... what was the first song to prominently include/feature rap-style lyrics in it?

Might be others. Chuck Berry's Too Much Monkey Business kinda sorta qualifies

i *think* that sort of launched Rap as we know it :shrug:

I was a teen at that time, and that was the first time I heard "rap" associated with a song.

Also, while Sub. Homesick Blues could be considered a rap song, I doubt that it inspired anybody to pick up a mic and start rapping. James Brown included many short 'raps' in his work throughout the 60's.

'Rappers Delight' seems to be the first rap song in the sense of what we know it today. Heck they even included the lyrics 'everybody put your hands in the air' and 'until the break of dawn.' THose tired phrases are still being used today!

that Rapper's Delight is the tune that introduced rap as a musical genre into american culture. A strong case can be made for the Dylan tune as well, but IMHO it is not rap.

"Cotton-Eyed Joe" or something.

Or "The Ballad of John H. Glenn" - he was that man!

I'll try to find a link for you arwladen. It is a Dylan tune.

talking blues style songs coming from folks like Woody Guthrie and others that came before him.

subterranian.

Look at all of woody's and pete seegers stuff. It is all talkin blues style. SHSB was something more.

The fact is that Dylan did not invent anything new or unheard of with that song. It's a great song, but to call it the first "rap" song is ridiculous.

talking-story and blues songs in the American south and also in the Carribean and other places that pre-dated Dylan.

Is all rap fast? Nope.

You're trying to build a single song into something it is not.

Caribbean/English pre-rappers or dub, I suspect. And I bet he got it from the generations before him.

It helps when one can actually understand what is being said, too.

But I can see that I'm wrong...

:hi:

:hi:

absolutely terrible.

released in 1970, vs Blondie's 'Rapture' released in 1980...saying 'Rapture' is the first rap song is like saying Elvis Presley was the first rock 'n roll musician. These things existed before white people did them, oddly enough.

I guess a case could be made for Dylan, but if you listen to the song by Eric Burden, it has much more of a rap cadence to it than "Homesick Blues".

They were the first group to meld percussion and poetry into a unique art form-- and get noticed for it.

There were also a number of toastmasters/rappers doing sets in the early 70s over DJs who mixed two instrumental tracks together: see DJ Cool Herc & his crew for reference.

The Sugarhill Gang were the first ones to chart on the Billboard charts with "Rapper's Delight".

Blondie were the first non-Rap act to have a top 40 hit with a song that contained a rap break ("Rapture"), but they were not the first group to have a successful rap record.

And is from 1978. Blondie's 'Rapture' is from 1980.

I was about to post the same thing. I can't believe you beat me to it since it's now such an obscure reference.

on African styles of much earlier origin, asth.

I'll dig around and see what I can find.

Good stuff.

The Last Poets can be heard on Common's latest CD, also good stuff.

The old Homeric tradition of rhythmic declaiming of significant texts: that's rap. It's been done all through whatever human history we know about.

Specifically to the recording industry, before there were records that were marketed as the emerging genre of rap, there were talking blues records, mostly novelty songs telling humorous stories in rhythmic cadences over musical accompaniment-- check out the old jug bands like Charlie Poole. Cab Calloway was once interviewed on the subject of contemporary hip-hop, and he said something about how he and his cohort had always done rhythmic speech for entertainment purposes. (Not much of that got recorded, in an era where a record was specifically defined as a three minute long catchy tune.) Fats Waller was one of many entertainers who'd insert spoken interludes into songs.

I'd love to start a band to specifically play old '50s and '60s era R&B novelty songs, specifically the ones with funny stories. Many of them had "melodies" so vestigial that they could well be considered rap. I've never heard a period recording of Lieber/Stoller's "Framed," but every version I've ever heard, the verse is essentially spoken. The more elaborate Chuck Berry songs verge on this style too, like "Too Much Monkey Business."

Dylan and the protest singers adapted the talking blues to their own purposes, to satirize the war and various other objectionable government policies. (Let me take yet another opportunity to plug Phil Ochs. His songs were terrific, many of them still thoroughly relevant today, unfortunately.)

Everybody Eats When They Come to My House....comes to mind, perhaps.


I love Calloway, he is way under-rated and was whip-smart.

Dave Frishberg (sp.) does some of what you are talking about, too, really well.

:hi:

or something by Grandmaster Flash.

wasn't that in the mid 70's?

The Aerosmith original was not a rap song. Run-DMC did a rap version of the song in the mid-80s, but it was not the first rap song by a loooong way.

What would you call the rap-interlude, then? I always wondered whether the first version of Aerosmith (that was popular in the mid 70's) was rap or not.

If you listen to it Steve Tyler is singing, not speaking. Compare the verses in the original to the Run DMC remake and you can tell the difference.

They rapped it before Run DMC covered it.

Some claim that "Rapper's Delight" is the first hip-hop single ever, but it was actually preceded by "King Tim III" by the Fatback Band. The term "rap" is also claimed to be derived from the title of Rapper's Delight. In addition, Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers claims that Sugarhill Gang member Big Bank Hank used his rhymes on "Rapper's Delight". This claim is attributed to the lyrics "I'm the C-A-S-AN the O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y," used by Big Bank Hank in the song. (At the time Grandmaster Caz regularly referred to himself as "Casanova Fly.") However, it is said that Grandmaster Caz wrote Big Bank Hank's lyrics for the entire song. But the Sugarhill Gang's place in music history seems secure as the first hip hop group to have a Gold single.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sugarhill_Gang

rap record. I was 16 living in Queens, NY at that time. They were played on black/urban radio and their song "King Tim III" never trickled into the top 40. That's probably why most people never heard of them.

Rap started as an underground movement, so the first real rap song is probably lost to the ages. There are, however, some songs that are looked at as being the "first song" to go public and get radio play.

"Rapper's Delight" is considered the "official first song" because of its play and how it set the standard for rap until the mid-1980s. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" are more like pre-rap songs, mixing some of the folk trends popular in the 1950s and 1960s with spoken-word poetry. Some consider Bill Cosby's "Don't Boogie on My Face" to be the "first song", although that was more of a comedy spoof and not really meant to be a song.

Going back farther, there is the skiffle (sp?) folk music of Britain in the 1950s, as well as some of the juke joint music from the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that could qualify. Even some early jazz tunes of the 1920s and 1930s featured staccato singing and hybrid forms of scat that sound like rapping.

I guess it all depends on how much of a purist you want to be, really.

Martin

Jamaican immigrants to New York brought in this style from the clubs in Jamaica.

For his intros, he'd create little hip-hop style tunes

Oh first Rap song. I was thinking worst.

How the fuck did this asshole sell ANY copies? :shrug:

"Cocaine is a hell of a drug"

was the first one I was conscious of (though it might not really be considered rap . . . . )

It sounds like talking, but that's just how Larry Blackmon sings/sang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_7Kp_TapA4

Da King ...

nt

"Greenback Dollar Bill."

Via his rhyming taunts.

in 1979. It was called King Tim III and was played on black/urban stations. I was a 16 and living in Queens, NY at the time.


Link to more info:
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_rap-oldsch.html