Rap

The term is used in popular culture to describe a musical genre that has grown up in the United States in recent decades, a predominantly Black form of social and political commentary that is rhythmically accentuated and uses provocative language. Rap became part of Black slang around 1900, meaning “to chat freely,” subsequently acquiring the sense of “to talk rapidly, rhythmically, vividly, and boastfully,” a style much associated with the braggadocio utterances of the boxer Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay). It also has the sense of ritualized repartee associated with sounding and playing the dozens.

Curiously these modern meanings are an extension of rap in the old British English sense of “to utter sharp words or an oath,” recorded from the sixteenth century: “I am wont sometime to rap out an oath,” confessed Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1541. By the eighteenth century a related sense of “to swear” was in vogue: “I scorn to rap against a lady” says a character in Henry Fielding’s novel Amelia (1752, II x 1). Francis Grose defined “to rap” in his slang dictionary (1785) as “to take a false oath; also to curse. He rapped out a volley; i.e. he swore a whole volley of oaths.” According to the English Dialect Dictionary (ca. 1900) rap developed related northern dialect senses including “to speak angrily and quickly; to use bad language.”

The contemporary usage gained recognition in 1983 when some inner-city high-school students from the borough of Queens in New York styled themselves “Run DMC” and produced “It’s Like That,” which sold 500,000 copies. Initially rap involved improvising rhymes chanted over a playing record. It has since become recognized as a major independent and lucrative genre. Artists and practitioners who can be included in this category are “Ice T,” “easy E,” “LL cool J,” and “Eminem” in the United States and “Beeny Man,” “Bounty Killer,” and “Elephant Man” in Jamaica. As with most cultural forms, success creates a double standard: the prestige of recognition is counterbalanced by increasing outrageousness. The British rap artist and poet Benjamin Zephania rejected the award of the O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) in 2003 with the words “Stick it, Mrs. Queen.” The language of the lyrics initially went unnoticed until increasingly flagrant chauvinism, advocacy of drug use, and hostility to authority provoked controversy, especially at the time of awards. A sample from “easy E” runs:

I said “Fuck it, I know what should be done.
Just pull down your panties and I’ll fuck the biggest one.
And then I’ll get the other pussy and put it in the freezer
So I can always have my own hostesser.”

In June 1990 the rap group “2 Live Crew” were arrested by a Florida sheriff on charges of obscenity. Their album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be , carried the warning “Explicit Language Contained” and included numbers with titles such as “Bad Ass Bitch” and “Get The Fuck Out of My House (Bitch).” Other groups, by choosing names like “Niggaz with Attitude,” show a new kind of Black Pride. In recent years some rap artists have provoked further controversy by explicitly homophobic material. “Eminem” (Marshall Bruce Mathers III), the winner of several awards including an Emmy, was the first of these. He has been the object of a number of complaints and lawsuits by GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination). In 2003 the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and the former Solicitor General Lord Falconer took the view that it was feasible to prosecute singers who incite homophobic violence.