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"THE (OLD) SCHOOL OF HIP HOP"
Rap, Rap, Rap [1981]
LAST SUMMER, when Kurtis Blow’s ‘The Breaks’ was’ the sound of New York City, sceptics said it was a novelty hit and that ‘rapping’ would never last. They were wrong.
Naturally enough Kurtis Blow’s album turned out to be a disappointment – he records for a major label, and major labels still think in terms of albums. Rapping is a music made for singles. 12” singles, whose liberating opportunities for stretching out and riding a beat the form fully explores.
As is so often the case with something black and streetwise, it took a white interpretation (white wash?) to make it palatable for mass consumption, So Blondie’s ‘Rapture’ hitting the top of the pop charts in the States finally pushed rap music over the line that divides minority cults from true pop crazes. Suddenly, rap is the thing to dance to, to play at parties, to be curious about. A form instigated by black teenagers in the South Bronx is becoming indispensable for blacks and whites catching up to the new funk.
Blondie at least had the decency to acknowledge their debt. “Flash is fast, Flash is cool” la Harry murmurs, introducing her rap.
The line refers to Grandmaster Flash, the leading light of rap, the king of the quick mix, the Bronx’s fastest fingers on the turntables. The man is fast and cool, so cool he’s even cold to pass interviews. Three times I had been set to meet him and the Furious Five, and three times they had cancelled.
The third time, I called Flash at home in the Bronx to make sure he was coming. A man identifying himself as “Flash’s secretary” took the call. “Can you send a car up here for us?” he wanted to know. I explained that I had no car.
“Well you know we ain’t even getting paid to do this?” Flash’s secretary said. I said they were getting paid in ink.
“In ink?”
READ MORE AT DJHISTORY.COM
LAST SUMMER, when Kurtis Blow’s ‘The Breaks’ was’ the sound of New York City, sceptics said it was a novelty hit and that ‘rapping’ would never last. They were wrong.
Naturally enough Kurtis Blow’s album turned out to be a disappointment – he records for a major label, and major labels still think in terms of albums. Rapping is a music made for singles. 12” singles, whose liberating opportunities for stretching out and riding a beat the form fully explores.
As is so often the case with something black and streetwise, it took a white interpretation (white wash?) to make it palatable for mass consumption, So Blondie’s ‘Rapture’ hitting the top of the pop charts in the States finally pushed rap music over the line that divides minority cults from true pop crazes. Suddenly, rap is the thing to dance to, to play at parties, to be curious about. A form instigated by black teenagers in the South Bronx is becoming indispensable for blacks and whites catching up to the new funk.
Blondie at least had the decency to acknowledge their debt. “Flash is fast, Flash is cool” la Harry murmurs, introducing her rap.
The line refers to Grandmaster Flash, the leading light of rap, the king of the quick mix, the Bronx’s fastest fingers on the turntables. The man is fast and cool, so cool he’s even cold to pass interviews. Three times I had been set to meet him and the Furious Five, and three times they had cancelled.
The third time, I called Flash at home in the Bronx to make sure he was coming. A man identifying himself as “Flash’s secretary” took the call. “Can you send a car up here for us?” he wanted to know. I explained that I had no car.
“Well you know we ain’t even getting paid to do this?” Flash’s secretary said. I said they were getting paid in ink.
“In ink?”
READ MORE AT DJHISTORY.COM
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