As a middle-aged person from the Kootenay area of B.C. and now rural Alberta, I may not seem like the obvious choice to discuss rap or hip-hop music. That may be true, but I'd like to think I have some experience. Back in the day, I had several rap CDs and even saw Public Enemy live in concert back in 1991 or so. Yeah, I got to the front and high-fived Flavor Flav!
Rap/hip-hop music has for a long time been a means for young black men usually from urban areas to express themselves and their culture. Rap started in the 1970s with Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five and the Sugarhill Gang. But rap really didn't become mainstream until the 1980s with bands like Run-DMC (singing with Aerosmith!), NWA and Public Enemy. Run-DMC sang mostly about their sneakers and hanging out, while Public Enemy wanted to Fight the Power and NWA was about having attitude.
Run-DMC was probably the first big rap band with its breakout/crossover hit Walk This Way with Aerosmith. That song basically moved rap into the mainstream. Following in the positive vein was the Fresh Prince, a.k.a. Will Smith, whose biggest problem was that Parents Just Don't Understand. Vanilla Ice had a big hit with Ice Ice Baby but then faced negative backlash when people found out he a regular non-gangster guy named Robert Van Winkle. He now fixes homes on TV.
NWA came Straight out of Compton and began the gangster rap movement. Core members Ice Cube, Eazy E and Dr. Dre all went solo soon after and had big success. Ice Cube rapped about Today was a Good Day about a typical day in the life of a gangster in South Central Los Angeles. He then moved on to an acting career in movies like Anaconda, Boyz in the Hood and Fist Fight. Eazy E, the yin to Ice Cube's yang, went solo with Eazy-Duz-It and We Want Eazy. Sadly, he died in 1995 at age 31 of AIDS.
Dr. Dre was more known as a producer until he put out The Chronic, which included the mega-hit Nothing but a G Thang featuring a young Snoop Doggy Dogg. Snoop, who mostly sang about parties and pharmaceuticals, hit it big as a solo artist and eventually changed his name to Snoop Dogg then Snoop Lion and then back to Snoop Dogg.
Dre also introduced the world to Mr. Marshall Mathers a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady. Eminem would become the biggest rapper in the world with his self-reflective, violent and often self-deprecating mega-hits like My Name Is, The Real Slim Shady and his current hit River featuring, oddly enough, Ed Sheeran.
The 1990s saw more gangster rap and East Coast vs. West Coast with the emergence of the Notorious BIG, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, and Tupac Shukar. The two were quite different: Biggie was a very larger than life man from the East Coast, while Tupac was young and handsome and from the West Coast. Biggie's big album was, prophetically called Ready to Die. His hit songs included Mo Money, Mo Problems and Hypnotize from his posthumous album Life after Death. Tupac's big double album was All Eyez on Me, which featured the monster hit California Love, which featured Dr. Dre. Fun fact: Tupac used to be a roadie for goofy hip-hop band Digital Underground, who did Doowutchyalike and the Humpty Dance.
Sadly, Tupac was shot to death in 1996 in Las Vegas following a Mike Tyson fight. The killer was never found. Many thought that Notorious BIG was behind it due to their East-West Coast beef. Nothing was ever proven and Biggie was shot to death in a similar fashion less than a year later.
I'm running out of time. Let's just say from those ashes sprung a number of great hip-hop acts such as: Beastie Boys, who started as young party boys with Fight for your Right to Party and became serious Tibetan Monk fans; female rap pioneers Salt 'n Pepa; MC Hammer; Eminem protege 50 Cent; free-styler Lil Wayne and Atlanta band Outkast who hit big with Hey Ya. Along with Eminem, the top rappers today include veteran Jay-Z and the much maligned Kanye West as well as relative newcomers Kendrick Lamar and Canada's own Drake.
Rap has gone from humble inner city beginnings to widespread appeal – and is today a major force in modern music.
– Lindsay is the Mountain View Gazette reporter
