About this Book

In 1998, the Spice Girls were barred from the No. 1 spot by Run DMC. Rap is back. Rap is a form of music and spoken rhyme which first came to prominence in 1979 through The Sugarhill Gang's chart hit Rapper's Delight. Rap, along with all the other features of hip hop culture, originated in New York's Harlem and the South Bronx. This book takes hip hop culture as its central focus for an investigation of African-American rapping in all its forms. It begins with the music's African roots and ends with the global acceptance of rap as both commercial pop genre and voice of rage, a journey which encompasses West African griots, doo wop groups, jazz singers like Slim Gaillard, soul rappers from Millie Jackson to James Brown, old-school rappers Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, new-school rebels like Roxanne Shante and Run DMC, all the way to Public Enemy, De La Soul, NWA, the pop rap of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice and the gangstas Tupac Shakur, Notorious BIG, Puff Daddy and Snoop Doggy Dog.