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Welcome to Our Generation USA!
This Web Page covers the Culture
(and Music) of both
Rap and Hip-Hop,
including the many influential Artists it has spawned since the beginning of this Musical Genre!
Rapping
- YouTube Video: How To Start Rapping In 10 Easy Steps [How To Rap For Beginners]
- YouTube Video: Briefcase Joe: Eminem Teaches Jimmy Kimmel to Rap
- YouTube Video: Best Rap Songs Of Each Year [1979 - 2018]
Rapping (or rhyming, spitting, emceeing, MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular", which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment.
The components of rap include "content" (what is being said), "flow" (rhythm, rhyme), and "delivery" (cadence, tone). Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed in time to musical accompaniment. Rap being a primary ingredient of hip hop music, it is commonly associated with that genre in particular; however, the origins of rap precede hip-hop culture.
The earliest precursor to modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which "oral historians", or "praise-singers", would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their rhetorical techniques for gossip or to "praise or critique individuals."
Griot traditions connect to rap along a lineage of black verbal reverence, through James Brown interacting with the crowd and the band between songs, to Muhammad Ali's verbal taunts and the poems of The Last Poets.
Therefore, rap lyrics and music are part of the "Black rhetorical continuum", and aim to reuse elements of past traditions while expanding upon them through "creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies". The person credited with originating the style of "delivering rhymes over extensive music", that would become known as rap, was Anthony "DJ Hollywood" Holloway from Harlem, New York.
Rap is usually delivered over a beat, typically provided by a DJ, turntablist, beatboxer, or performed a cappella without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, prose, poetry, and singing.
The word, which predates the musical form, originally meant "to lightly strike", and is now used to describe quick speech or repartee. The word had been used in British English since the 16th century.
It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style. Today, the term rap is so closely associated with hip-hop music that many writers use the terms interchangeably.
History:
See also:
The English verb rap has various meanings, these include "to strike, especially with a quick, smart, or light blow", as well "to utter sharply or vigorously: to rap out a command".
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives a date of 1541 for the first recorded use of the word with the meaning "to utter (esp. an oath) sharply, vigorously, or suddenly". Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang gives the meaning "to speak to, recognize, or acknowledge acquaintance with someone", dated 1932, and a later meaning of "to converse, esp. in an open and frank manner".
It is these meanings from which the musical form of rapping derives, and this definition may be from a shortening of repartee. A rapper refers to a performer who "raps". By the late 1960s, when Hubert G. Brown changed his name to H. Rap Brown, rap was a slang term referring to an oration or speech, such as was common among the "hip" crowd in the protest movements, but it did not come to be associated with a musical style for another decade.
Rap was used to describe talking on records as early as 1971, on Isaac Hayes' album Black Moses with track names such as "Ike's Rap", "Ike's Rap II", "Ike's Rap III", and so on. Hayes' "husky-voiced sexy spoken 'raps' became key components in his signature sound".
Del the Funky Homosapien similarly states that rap was used to refer to talking in a stylistic manner in the early 1970s: "I was born in '72 ... back then what rapping meant, basically, was you trying to convey something—you're trying to convince somebody. That's what rapping is, it's in the way you talk."
Roots:
Rapping can be traced back to its African roots. Centuries before hip-hop music existed, the griots of West Africa were delivering stories rhythmically, over drums and sparse instrumentation. Such connections have been acknowledged by many modern artists, modern day "griots", spoken word artists, mainstream news sources, and academics.
Blues music, rooted in the work songs and spirituals of slavery and influenced greatly by West African musical traditions, was first played by black Americans, and later by some white Americans, in the Mississippi Delta region of the United States around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Grammy-winning blues musician/historian Elijah Wald and others have argued that the blues were being rapped as early as the 1920s. Wald went so far as to call hip hop "the living blues." A notable recorded example of rapping in blues music was the 1950 song "Gotta Let You Go" by Joe Hill Louis.
Jazz, which developed from the blues and other African-American and European musical traditions and originated around the beginning of the 20th century, has also influenced hip hop and has been cited as a precursor of hip hop. Not just jazz music and lyrics but also jazz poetry. According to John Sobol, the jazz musician and poet who wrote Digitopia Blues, rap "bears a striking resemblance to the evolution of jazz both stylistically and formally".
Boxer Muhammad Ali anticipated elements of rap, often using rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry, both for when he was trash talking in boxing and as political poetry for his activism outside of boxing, paving the way for The Last Poets in 1968, Gil Scott-Heron in 1970, and the emergence of rap music in the 1970s.
Precursors also exist in non-African/African-American traditions, especially in vaudeville and musical theater. One such tradition is the patter song exemplified by Gilbert and Sullivan but that has origins in earlier Italian opera.
"Rock Island" from Meridith Wilson's The Music Man is wholly spoken by an ensemble of travelling salesmen, as are most of the numbers for British actor Rex Harrison in the 1964 Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady. Glenn Miller's "The Lady's in Love with You" and "The Little Man Who Wasn't There" (both 1939), each contain distinctly rap-like sequences set to a driving beat as does the 1937 song "Doin' the Jive".
In musical theater, the term "vamp" is identical to its meaning in jazz, gospel, and funk, and it fulfills the same function. Semi-spoken music has long been especially popular in British entertainment, and such examples as David Croft's theme to the 1970s' sitcom Are You Being Served? have elements indistinguishable from modern rap.
In classical music, semi-spoken music was popular stylized by composer Arnold Schoenberg as Sprechstimme, and famously used in Ernst Toch's 1924 Geographical Fugue for spoken chorus and the final scene in Darius Milhaud's 1915 ballet Les Choéphores.
In the French chanson field, irrigated by a strong poetry tradition, such singer-songwriters as Léo Ferré or Serge Gainsbourg made their own use of spoken word over rock or symphonic music from the very beginning of the 1970s. Although these probably did not have a direct influence on rap's development in the African-American cultural sphere, they paved the way for acceptance of spoken word music in the media market.
With the decline of disco in the early 1980s rap became a new form of expression. Rap arose from musical experimentation with rhyming, rhythmic speech. Rap was a departure from disco. Sherley Anne Williams refers to the development of rap as "anti-Disco" in style and means of reproduction.
The early productions of Rap after Disco sought a more simplified manner of producing the tracks they were to sing over. Williams explains how Rap composers and DJ's opposed the heavily orchestrated and ritzy multi-tracks of Disco for "break beats" which were created from compiling different records from numerous genres and did not require the equipment from professional recording studios.
Professional studios were not necessary therefore opening the production of rap to the youth who as Williams explains felt "locked out" because of the capital needed to produce Disco records.
More directly related to the African-American community were items like schoolyard chants and taunts, clapping games, jump-rope rhymes, some with unwritten folk histories going back hundreds of years across many nationalities. Sometimes these items contain racially offensive lyrics. A related area that is not strictly folklore is rhythmical cheering and cheerleading for military and sports.
Proto-rap:
In his narration between the tracks on George Russell's 1958 jazz album New York N.Y., the singer Jon Hendricks recorded something close to modern rap, since it all rhymed and was delivered in a hip, rhythm-conscious manner. Art forms such as spoken word jazz poetry and comedy records had an influence on the first rappers.
Coke La Rock, often credited as hip-hop's first MC cites the Last Poets among his influences, as well as comedians such as Wild Man Steve and Richard Pryor.
Comedian Rudy Ray Moore released under the counter albums in the 1960s and 1970s such as This Pussy Belongs To Me (1970), which contained "raunchy, sexually explicit rhymes that often had to do with pimps, prostitutes, players, and hustlers", and which later led to him being called "The Godfather of Rap".
Gil Scott-Heron, a jazz poet/musician, has been cited as an influence on rappers such as Chuck D and KRS-One. Scott-Heron himself was influenced by Melvin Van Peebles, whose first album was 1968's Brer Soul.
Van Peebles describes his vocal style as "the old Southern style", which was influenced by singers he had heard growing up in South Chicago. Van Peebles also said that he was influenced by older forms of African-American music: "... people like Blind Lemon Jefferson and the field hollers. I was also influenced by spoken word song styles from Germany that I encountered when I lived in France."
During the mid-20th century, the musical culture of the Caribbean was constantly influenced by the concurrent changes in American music. As early as 1956, deejays were toasting (an African tradition of "rapped out" tales of heroism) over dubbed Jamaican beats. It was called "rap", expanding the word's earlier meaning in the African-American community—"to discuss or debate informally."
The early rapping of hip-hop developed out of DJ and Master of Ceremonies' announcements made over the microphone at parties, and later into more complex raps. Grandmaster Caz states: "The microphone was just used for making announcements, like when the next party was gonna be, or people's moms would come to the party looking for them, and you have to announce it on the mic. Different DJs started embellishing what they were saying.
I would make an announcement this way, and somebody would hear that and they add a little bit to it. I'd hear it again and take it a little step further 'til it turned from lines to sentences to paragraphs to verses to rhymes."
One of the first rappers at the beginning of the hip hop period, at the end of the 1970s, was also hip hop's first DJ, DJ Kool Herc. Herc, a Jamaican immigrant, started delivering simple raps at his parties, which some claim were inspired by the Jamaican tradition of toasting.
However, Kool Herc himself denies this link (in the 1984 book Hip Hop), saying, "Jamaican toasting? Naw, naw. No connection there. I couldn't play reggae in the Bronx. People wouldn't accept it.
The inspiration for rap is James Brown and the album Hustler's Convention". Herc also suggests he was too young while in Jamaica to get into sound system parties: "I couldn't get in. Couldn't get in. I was ten, eleven years old," and that while in Jamaica, he was listening to James Brown: "I was listening to American music in Jamaica and my favorite artist was James Brown. That's who inspired me. A lot of the records I played were by James Brown."
However, in terms of what we identify in the 2010s as "rap" the source came from Manhattan. Pete DJ Jones said the first person he heard rap was DJ Hollywood, a Harlem (not Bronx) native who was the house DJ at the Apollo Theater. Kurtis Blow also says the first person he heard rhyme was DJ Hollywood.
In a 2014 interview, Hollywood said: "I used to like the way Frankie Crocker would ride a track, but he wasn't syncopated to the track though. I liked [WWRL DJ] Hank Spann too, but he wasn't on the one. Guys back then weren't concerned with being musical. I wanted to flow with the record".
And in 1975, he ushered in what became known as the Hip Hop style by rhyming syncopated to the beat of an existing record uninterruptedly for nearly a minute. He adapted the lyrics of Isaac Hayes "Good Love 6-9969" and rhymed it to the breakdown part of "Love is the Message". His partner Kevin Smith, better known as Lovebug Starski, took this new style and introduced it to the Bronx Hip Hop set that until then was composed of DJing and B-boying, with traditional "shout out" style rapping.
The style that Hollywood created and his partner introduced to the Hip Hop set quickly became the standard. What actually did Hollywood do? He created "flow." Before then all MCs rhymed based on radio DJs. This usually consisted of short patters that were disconnected thematically; they were separate unto themselves.
But by Hollywood using song lyrics, he had an inherent flow and theme to his rhyme. This was the game changer. By the end of the 1970s, artists such as Kurtis Blow and The Sugarhill Gang were just starting to receive radio airplay and make an impact far outside of New York City, on a national scale. Blondie's 1981 single, "Rapture", was one of the first songs featuring rap to top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Old-school hip hop:
Main article: Old-school hip hop
Old school rap (1979–84) was "easily identified by its relatively simple raps" according to AllMusic, "the emphasis was not on lyrical technique, but simply on good times", one notable exception being Melle Mel, who set the way for future rappers through his socio-political content and creative wordplay.
Golden age:
Main article: Golden age hip hop
Golden age hip hop (the mid-1980s to early '90s) was the time period where hip-hop lyricism went through its most drastic transformation – writer William Jelani Cobb says "in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time" and Allmusic writes, "rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, and Rakim basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".
The golden age is considered to have ended around 1993–94, marking the end of rap lyricism's most innovative period.
Flow:
"Flow" is defined as "the rhythms and rhymes" of a hip-hop song's lyrics and how they interact – the book How to Rap breaks flow down into rhyme, rhyme schemes, and rhythm (also known as cadence). 'Flow' is also sometimes used to refer to elements of the delivery (pitch, timbre, volume) as well, though often a distinction is made between the flow and the delivery.
Staying on the beat is central to rap's flow – many MCs note the importance of staying on-beat in How to Rap including the following:
MCs stay on beat by stressing syllables in time to the four beats of the musical backdrop. Poetry scholar Derek Attridge describes how this works in his book Poetic Rhythm – "rap lyrics are written to be performed to an accompaniment that emphasizes the metrical structure of the verse". He says rap lyrics are made up of, "lines with four stressed beats, separated by other syllables that may vary in number and may include other stressed syllables.
The strong beat of the accompaniment coincides with the stressed beats of the verse, and the rapper organizes the rhythms of the intervening syllables to provide variety and surprise".
The same technique is also noted in the book How to Rap, where diagrams are used to show how the lyrics line up with the beat – "stressing a syllable on each of the four beats gives the lyrics the same underlying rhythmic pulse as the music and keeps them in rhythm ... other syllables in the song may still be stressed, but the ones that fall in time with the four beats of a bar are the only ones that need to be emphasized in order to keep the lyrics in time with the music".
In rap terminology, 16-bars is the amount of time that rappers are generally given to perform a guest verse on another artist's song; one bar is typically equal to four beats of music.
History of flow:
Old school flows were relatively basic and used only few syllables per bar, simple rhythmic patterns, and basic rhyming techniques and rhyme schemes. Melle Mel is cited as an MC who epitomizes the old school flow – Kool Moe Dee says, "from 1970 to 1978 we rhymed one way [then] Melle Mel, in 1978, gave us the new cadence we would use from 1978 to 1986".
He's the first emcee to explode in a new rhyme cadence, and change the way every emcee rhymed forever. Rakim, The Notorious B.I.G., and Eminem have flipped the flow, but Melle Mel's downbeat on the two, four, kick to snare cadence is still the rhyme foundation all emcees are building on".
Artists and critics often credit Rakim with creating the overall shift from the more simplistic old school flows to more complex flows near the beginning of hip hop's new school – Kool Moe Dee says, "any emcee that came after 1986 had to study Rakim just to know what to be able to do. Rakim, in 1986, gave us flow and that was the rhyme style from 1986 to 1994. from that point on, anybody emceeing was forced to focus on their flow".
Kool Moe Dee explains that before Rakim, the term 'flow' wasn't widely used – "Rakim is basically the inventor of flow. We were not even using the word flow until Rakim came along. It was called rhyming, it was called cadence, but it wasn't called flow. Rakim created flow!" He adds that while Rakim upgraded and popularized the focus on flow, "he didn't invent the word".
Kool Moe Dee states that Biggie introduced a newer flow which "dominated from 1994 to 2002", and also says that Method Man was "one of the emcees from the early to mid-'90s that ushered in the era of flow ... Rakim invented it, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, and Kool G Rap expanded it, but Biggie and Method Man made flow the single most important aspect of an emcee's game". He also cites Craig Mack as an artist who contributed to developing flow in the '90s.
Music scholar Adam Krims says, "the flow of MCs is one of the profoundest changes that separates out new-sounding from older-sounding music ... it is widely recognized and remarked that rhythmic styles of many commercially successful MCs since roughly the beginning of the 1990s have progressively become faster and more 'complex'". He cites "members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, AZ, Big Pun, and Ras Kass, just to name a few" as artists who exemplify this progression.
Kool Moe Dee adds, "in 2002 Eminem created the song that got the first Oscar in Hip-Hop history [Lose Yourself] ... and I would have to say that his flow is the most dominant right now (2003)".
Styles:
There are many different styles of flow, with different terminology used by different people – stic.man of Dead Prez uses the following terms –
Alternatively, music scholar Adam Krims uses the following terms –
RhymeMCs use many different rhyming techniques, including complex rhyme schemes, as Adam Krims points out – "the complexity ... involves multiple rhymes in the same rhyme complex (i.e. section with consistently rhyming words), internal rhymes, [and] offbeat rhymes". There is also widespread use of multisyllabic rhymes, by artists such as Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Big L, Nas and Eminem.
It has been noted that rap's use of rhyme is some of the most advanced in all forms of poetry – music scholar Adam Bradley notes, "rap rhymes so much and with such variety that it is now the largest and richest contemporary archive of rhymed words. It has done more than any other art form in recent history to expand rhyme's formal range and expressive possibilities".
In the book How to Rap, Masta Ace explains how Rakim and Big Daddy Kane caused a shift in the way MCs rhymed: "Up until Rakim, everybody who you heard rhyme, the last word in the sentence was the rhyming [word], the connection word. Then Rakim showed us that you could put rhymes within a rhyme ... now here comes Big Daddy Kane — instead of going three words, he's going multiple".
How to Rap explains that "rhyme is often thought to be the most important factor in rap writing ... rhyme is what gives rap lyrics their musicality.
Rhythm:
Many of the rhythmic techniques used in rapping come from percussive techniques and many rappers compare themselves to percussionists. How to Rap 2 identifies all the rhythmic techniques used in rapping such as triplets, flams, 16th notes, 32nd notes, syncopation, extensive use of rests, and rhythmic techniques unique to rapping such as West Coast "lazy tails", coined by Shock G. Rapping has also been done in various time signatures, such as 3/4 time.
Since the 2000s, rapping has evolved into a style of rap that spills over the boundaries of the beat, closely resembling spoken English. Rappers like MF Doom and Eminem have exhibited this style, and since then, rapping has been difficult to notate. The American hip-hop group Crime Mob exhibited a new rap flow in songs such as "Knuck If You Buck", heavily dependent on triplets.
Rappers including Drake, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy and more have included this influence in their music. In 2014, an American hip-hop collective from Atlanta, Migos, popularized this flow, and is commonly referred to as the "Migos Flow" (a term that is contentious within the hip-hop community).
Rap notation and flow diagrams:
The standard form of rap notation is the flow diagram, where rappers line-up their lyrics underneath "beat numbers". Different rappers have slightly different forms of flow diagram that they use: Del the Funky Homosapien says, "I'm just writing out the rhythm of the flow, basically. Even if it's just slashes to represent the beats, that's enough to give me a visual path.",
Vinnie Paz states, "I've created my own sort of writing technique, like little marks and asterisks to show like a pause or emphasis on words in certain places.", and Aesop Rock says, "I have a system of maybe 10 little symbols that I use on paper that tell me to do something when I'm recording."
Hip-hop scholars also make use of the same flow diagrams: the books How to Rap and How to Rap 2 use the diagrams to explain rap's triplets, flams, rests, rhyme schemes, runs of rhyme, and breaking rhyme patterns, among other techniques. Similar systems are used by PhD musicologists Adam Krims in his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity and Kyle Adams in his academic work on flow.
Because rap revolves around a strong 4/4 beat, with certain syllables said in time to the beat, all the notational systems have a similar structure: they all have the same 4 beat numbers at the top of the diagram, so that syllables can be written in-line with the beat numbers.
This allows devices such as rests, "lazy tails", flams, and other rhythmic techniques to be shown, as well as illustrating where different rhyming words fall in relation to the music.
Performance:
To successfully deliver a rap, a rapper must also develop vocal presence, enunciation, and breath control. Vocal presence is the distinctiveness of a rapper's voice on record.
Enunciation is essential to a flowing rap; some rappers choose also to exaggerate it for comic and artistic effect. Breath control, taking in air without interrupting one's delivery, is an important skill for a rapper to master, and a must for any MC. An MC with poor breath control cannot deliver difficult verses without making unintentional pauses.
Raps are sometimes delivered with melody. West Coast rapper Egyptian Lover was the first notable MC to deliver "sing-raps". Popular rappers such as 50 Cent and Ja Rule add a slight melody to their otherwise purely percussive raps whereas some rappers such as Cee-Lo Green are able to harmonize their raps with the beat.
The Midwestern group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was one of the first groups to achieve nationwide recognition for using the fast-paced, melodic and harmonic raps that are also practiced by Do or Die, another Midwestern group. Another rapper that harmonized his rhymes was Nate Dogg, a rapper part of the group 213. Rakim experimented not only with following the beat, but also with complementing the song's melody with his own voice, making his flow sound like that of an instrument (a saxophone in particular).
The ability to rap quickly and clearly is sometimes regarded as an important sign of skill. In certain hip-hop subgenres such as chopped and screwed, slow-paced rapping is often considered optimal. The current record for fastest rapper is held by Spanish rapper Domingo
Edjang Moreno, known by his alias Chojin, who rapped 921 syllables in one minute on December 23, 2008.
Emcees:
In the late 1970s, the term Emcee, MC or M.C. became an alternative title for a rapper, and for their role within hip-hop music and culture. An MC uses rhyming verses, pre-written or ad lib ('freestyled'), to introduce the DJ with whom they work, to keep the crowd entertained or to glorify themselves.
As hip hop progressed, the title MC acquired backronyms such as 'mike chanter' 'microphone controller', 'microphone checker', 'music commentator', and one who 'moves the crowd'. Some use this word interchangeably with the term rapper, while for others the term denotes a superior level of skill and connection to the wider culture.
MC can often be used as a term of distinction; referring to an artist with good performance skills. As Kool G Rap notes, "masters of ceremony, where the word 'M.C.' comes from, means just keeping the party alive" Sic. Many people in hiphop including DJ Premier and KRS-One feel that James Brown was the first MC.
James Brown had the lyrics, moves, and soul that greatly influenced a lot of rappers in Hip-Hop, and arguably even started the first MC rhyme.
For some rappers, there was a distinction to the term, such as for MC Hammer who acquired the nickname "MC" for being a "Master of Ceremonies" which he used when he began performing at various clubs while on the road with the Oakland As and eventually in the military (United States Navy). It was within the lyrics of a rap song called "This Wall" that Hammer first identified himself as M.C. Hammer and later marketed it on his debut album Feel My Power.
Uncertainty over the acronym's expansion may be considered evidence for its ubiquity: the full term "Master of Ceremonies" is very rarely used in the hip-hop scene. This confusion prompted the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest to include this statement in the liner notes to their 1993 album Midnight Marauders:
The use of the term MC when referring to a rhyming wordsmith originates from the dance halls of Jamaica. At each event, there would be a master of ceremonies who would introduce the different musical acts and would say a toast in style of a rhyme, directed at the audience and to the performers.
He would also make announcements such as the schedule of other events or advertisements from local sponsors. The term MC continued to be used by the children of women who moved to New York City to work as maids in the 1970s. These MCs eventually created a new style of music called hip-hop based on the rhyming they used to do in Jamaica and the break-beats used in records. MC has also recently been accepted to refer to all who engineer music.
Subject matter:
"Party rhymes", meant to pump up the crowd at a party, were nearly the exclusive focus of old school hip hop, and they remain a staple of hip-hop music to this day. In addition to party raps, rappers also tend to make references to love and sex.
Love raps were first popularized by Spoonie Gee of the Treacherous Three, and later, in the golden age of hip hop, Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, and LL Cool J would continue this tradition. Hip-hop artists such as KRS-One, Hopsin, Public Enemy, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie), and dead prez are known for their sociopolitical subject matter.
Their West Coast counterparts include Emcee Lynx, The Coup, Paris, and Michael Franti. Tupac Shakur was also known for rapping about social issues such as police brutality, teenage pregnancy, and racism.
Other rappers take a less critical approach to urbanity, sometimes even embracing such aspects as crime. Schoolly D was the first notable MC to rap about crime.Early on KRS-One was accused of celebrating crime and a hedonistic lifestyle, but after the death of his DJ, Scott La Rock, KRS-One went on to speak out against violence in hip hop and has spent the majority of his career condemning violence and writing on issues of race and class.
Ice-T was one of the first rappers to call himself a "playa" and discuss guns on record, but his theme tune to the 1988 film Colors contained warnings against joining gangs. Gangsta rap, made popular largely because of N.W.A, brought rapping about crime and the gangster lifestyle into the musical mainstream.
Materialism has also been a popular topic in hip-hop since at least the early 1990s, with rappers boasting about their own wealth and possessions, and name-dropping specific brands: liquor brands Cristal and Rémy Martin, car manufacturers Bentley and Mercedes-Benz and clothing brands Gucci and Versace have all been popular subjects for rappers.
Various politicians, journalists, and religious leaders have accused rappers of fostering a culture of violence and hedonism among hip-hop listeners through their lyrics. However, there are also rappers whose messages may not be in conflict with these views, for example Christian hip hop. Others have praised the "political critique, innuendo and sarcasm" of hip-hop music.
In contrast to the more hedonistic approach of gangsta rappers, some rappers have a spiritual or religious focus. Christian rap is currently the most commercially successful form of religious rap. With Christian rappers like Lecrae, Thi'sl and Hostyle Gospel winning national awards and making regular appearances on television, Christian hip hop seem to have found its way in the hip-hop family.
Aside from Christianity, the Five Percent Nation, an Islamic esotericist religious/spiritual group, has been represented more than any religious group in popular hip hop. Artists such as Rakim, the members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, X-Clan and Busta Rhymes have had success in spreading the theology of the Five Percenters.
Literary technique:
Rappers use the literary techniques of double entendres, alliteration, and forms of wordplay that are found in classical poetry. Similes and metaphors are used extensively in rap lyrics; rappers such as Fabolous and Lloyd Banks have written entire songs in which every line contains similes, whereas MCs like Rakim, GZA, and Jay-Z are known for the metaphorical content of their raps. Rappers such as Lupe Fiasco are known for the complexity of their songs that contain metaphors within extended metaphors.
Diction and dialect:
Many hip-hop listeners believe that a rapper's lyrics are enhanced by a complex vocabulary. Kool Moe Dee claims that he appealed to older audiences by using a complex vocabulary in his raps. Rap is famous, however, for having its own vocabulary—from international hip-hop slang to regional slang.
Some artists, like the Wu-Tang Clan, develop an entire lexicon among their clique. African-American English has always had a significant effect on hip-hop slang and vice versa. Certain regions have introduced their unique regional slang to hip-hop culture, such as:
The Nation of Gods and Earths, aka The Five Percenters, has influenced mainstream hip-hop slang with the introduction of phrases such as "word is bond" that have since lost much of their original spiritual meaning.
Preference toward one or the other has much to do with the individual; GZA, for example, prides himself on being very visual and metaphorical but also succinct, whereas underground rapper MF DOOM is known for heaping similes upon similes. In still another variation, 2Pac was known for saying exactly what he meant, literally and clearly.
Rap music's development into popular culture in the 1990s can be accredited to the album Niggaz4life by artists Niggaz With Attitude, the first rap group to ever take the top spot of the Billboard's Top 200 in 1991, in the United States. With this victory, came the beginning of an era of popular culture guided by the musical influences of hip-hop and rap itself, moving away from the influences of rock music.
As rap continued to develop and further disseminate, it went on to influence clothing brands, movies, sports, and dancing through popular culture. As rap has developed to become more of a presence in popular culture, it has focused itself on a particular demographic, adolescent and young adults. As such, it has had a significant impact on the modern vernacular of this portion of the population, which has diffused throughout society.
The effects of rap music on modern vernacular can be explored through the study of semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, or the study of language as a system. French literary theorist Roland Barthes furthers this study with this own theory of myth.
He maintains that the first order of signification is language and that the second is "myth", arguing that a word has both its literal meaning, and its mythical meaning, which is heavily dependent on socio-cultural context. To illustrate, Barthes uses the example of a rat: it has a literal meaning (a physical, objective description) and it has a greater socio-cultural understanding. This contextual meaning is subjective and is dynamic within society.
Through Barthes' semiotic theory of language and myth, it can be shown that rap music has culturally influenced the language of its listeners, as they influence the connotative message to words that already exist. As more people listen to rap, the words that are used in the lyrics become culturally bound to the song, and then are disseminated through the conversations that people have using these words.
Most often, the terms that rappers use are pre-established words that have been prescribed new meaning through their music, that are eventually disseminated through social spheres.
This newly contextualized word is called a neo-semanticism. Neo-semanticisms are forgotten words that are often brought forward from subcultures that attract the attention of members of the reigning culture of their time, then they are brought forward by the influential voices in society – in this case, these figures are rappers.
To illustrate, the acronym YOLO was popularized by rapper, actor and RNB singer Drake in 2012 when he featured it in his own song, The Motto. That year the term YOLO was so popular that it was printed on t-shirts, became a trending hashtag on Twitter, and was even considered as the inspiration for several tattoos.
However, although the rapper may have come up with the acronym, the motto itself was in no way first established by Drake. Similar messages can be seen in many well-known sayings, or as early as 1896, in the English translation of La Comédie Humaine, by Honoré de Balzac where one of his free-spirited characters tells another, "You Only Live Once!".
Another example of a neosemanticism is the word "broccoli". Rapper E-40 initially uses the word "broccoli" to refer to marijuana, on his hit track Broccoli in 1993. In contemporary society, artists D.R.A.M. and Lil Yachty are often accredited for this slang on for their hit song, also titled Broccoli.
With the rise in technology and mass media, the dissemination of subcultural terms has only become easier. Dick Hebdige, author of Subculture: The Meaning of Style, merits that subcultures often use music to vocalize the struggles of their experiences. As rap is also the culmination of a prevalent sub-culture in African-American social spheres, often their own personal cultures are disseminated through rap lyrics.
It is here that lyrics can be categorized as either historically influenced or (more commonly) considered as slang. Vernon Andrews, the professor of the course American Studies 111: Hip-Hop Culture, suggests that many words, such as "hood", "homie", and "dope", are historically influenced. Most importantly, this also brings forward the anarchistic culture of rap music.
Common themes from rap are anti-establishment and instead, promote black excellence and diversity. It is here that rap can be seen to reclaim words, namely, "nigga", a historical term used to subjugate and oppress Black people in America. This word has been reclaimed by Black Americans and is heavily used in rap music. Niggaz With Attitude embodies this notion by using it as the first word of their influential rap group name.
Freestyle and battle:
There are two kinds of freestyle rap: one is scripted (recitation), but having no particular overriding subject matter, the second typically referred to as "freestyling" or "spitting", is the improvisation of rapped lyrics.
When freestyling, some rappers inadvertently reuse old lines, or even "cheat" by preparing segments or entire verses in advance. Therefore, freestyles with proven spontaneity are valued above generic, always usable lines. Rappers will often reference places or objects in their immediate setting, or specific (usually demeaning) characteristics of opponents, to prove their authenticity and originality.
Battle rapping, which can be freestyled, is the competition between two or more rappers in front of an audience. The tradition of insulting one's friends or acquaintances in rhyme goes back to the dozens, and was portrayed famously by Muhammad Ali in his boxing matches.
The winner of a battle is decided by the crowd and/or pre-selected judges. According to Kool Moe Dee, a successful battle rap focuses on an opponent's weaknesses, rather than one's own strengths.
Television shows such as MTV's DFX and BET's 106 and Park host weekly freestyle battles live on the air. Battle rapping gained widespread public recognition outside of the African-American community with rapper Eminem's movie 8 Mile.
The strongest battle rappers will generally perform their rap fully freestyled. This is the most effective form in a battle as the rapper can comment on the other person, whether it be what they look like, or how they talk, or what they wear. It also allows the rapper to reverse a line used to "diss" him or her if they are the second rapper to battle. This is known as a "flip". Jin The Emcee was considered "World Champion" battle rapper in the mid-2000s.
Derivatives and influence:
Throughout hip hop's history, new musical styles and genres have developed that contain rapping. Entire genres, such as rap rock and its derivatives rapcore and rap metal (rock/metal/punk with rapped vocals), or hip house have resulted from the fusion of rap and other styles.
Many popular music genres with a focus on percussion have contained rapping at some point; be it disco (DJ Hollywood), jazz (Gang Starr), new wave (Blondie), funk (Fatback Band), contemporary R&B (Mary J. Blige), reggaeton (Daddy Yankee), or even Japanese dance music (Soul'd Out). UK garage music has begun to focus increasingly on rappers in a new subgenre called grime which emerged in London in the early 2000s and was pioneered and popularized by the MC Dizzee Rascal.
Increased popularity with the music has shown more UK rappers going to America as well as tour there, such as Sway DaSafo possibly signing with Akon's label Konvict. Hyphy is the latest of these spin-offs. It is typified by slowed-down atonal vocals with instrumentals that borrow heavily from the hip-hop scene and lyrics centered on illegal street racing and car culture.
Another Oakland, California group, Beltaine's Fire, has recently gained attention for their Celtic fusion sound which blends hip-hop beats with Celtic melodies. Unlike the majority of hip-hop artists, all their music is performed live without samples, synths, or drum machines, drawing comparisons to The Roots and Rage Against the Machine.
Bhangra, a widely popular style of music from Punjab, India has been mixed numerous times with reggae and hip-hop music. The most popular song in this genre in the United States was "Mundian to Bach Ke" or "Beware the Boys" by Panjabi MC and Jay-Z. Although "Mundian To Bach Ke" had been released previously, the mixing with Jay-Z popularized the genre further.
Although the majority of rappers are male, there have been a number of female rap stars, including:
There is also deaf rap artist Signmark.
See also:
The components of rap include "content" (what is being said), "flow" (rhythm, rhyme), and "delivery" (cadence, tone). Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed in time to musical accompaniment. Rap being a primary ingredient of hip hop music, it is commonly associated with that genre in particular; however, the origins of rap precede hip-hop culture.
The earliest precursor to modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which "oral historians", or "praise-singers", would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their rhetorical techniques for gossip or to "praise or critique individuals."
Griot traditions connect to rap along a lineage of black verbal reverence, through James Brown interacting with the crowd and the band between songs, to Muhammad Ali's verbal taunts and the poems of The Last Poets.
Therefore, rap lyrics and music are part of the "Black rhetorical continuum", and aim to reuse elements of past traditions while expanding upon them through "creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies". The person credited with originating the style of "delivering rhymes over extensive music", that would become known as rap, was Anthony "DJ Hollywood" Holloway from Harlem, New York.
Rap is usually delivered over a beat, typically provided by a DJ, turntablist, beatboxer, or performed a cappella without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, prose, poetry, and singing.
The word, which predates the musical form, originally meant "to lightly strike", and is now used to describe quick speech or repartee. The word had been used in British English since the 16th century.
It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style. Today, the term rap is so closely associated with hip-hop music that many writers use the terms interchangeably.
History:
See also:
- African-American music,
- Music of the United States,
- History of poetry,
- Jamaican music,
- and Talking blues
The English verb rap has various meanings, these include "to strike, especially with a quick, smart, or light blow", as well "to utter sharply or vigorously: to rap out a command".
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives a date of 1541 for the first recorded use of the word with the meaning "to utter (esp. an oath) sharply, vigorously, or suddenly". Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang gives the meaning "to speak to, recognize, or acknowledge acquaintance with someone", dated 1932, and a later meaning of "to converse, esp. in an open and frank manner".
It is these meanings from which the musical form of rapping derives, and this definition may be from a shortening of repartee. A rapper refers to a performer who "raps". By the late 1960s, when Hubert G. Brown changed his name to H. Rap Brown, rap was a slang term referring to an oration or speech, such as was common among the "hip" crowd in the protest movements, but it did not come to be associated with a musical style for another decade.
Rap was used to describe talking on records as early as 1971, on Isaac Hayes' album Black Moses with track names such as "Ike's Rap", "Ike's Rap II", "Ike's Rap III", and so on. Hayes' "husky-voiced sexy spoken 'raps' became key components in his signature sound".
Del the Funky Homosapien similarly states that rap was used to refer to talking in a stylistic manner in the early 1970s: "I was born in '72 ... back then what rapping meant, basically, was you trying to convey something—you're trying to convince somebody. That's what rapping is, it's in the way you talk."
Roots:
Rapping can be traced back to its African roots. Centuries before hip-hop music existed, the griots of West Africa were delivering stories rhythmically, over drums and sparse instrumentation. Such connections have been acknowledged by many modern artists, modern day "griots", spoken word artists, mainstream news sources, and academics.
Blues music, rooted in the work songs and spirituals of slavery and influenced greatly by West African musical traditions, was first played by black Americans, and later by some white Americans, in the Mississippi Delta region of the United States around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Grammy-winning blues musician/historian Elijah Wald and others have argued that the blues were being rapped as early as the 1920s. Wald went so far as to call hip hop "the living blues." A notable recorded example of rapping in blues music was the 1950 song "Gotta Let You Go" by Joe Hill Louis.
Jazz, which developed from the blues and other African-American and European musical traditions and originated around the beginning of the 20th century, has also influenced hip hop and has been cited as a precursor of hip hop. Not just jazz music and lyrics but also jazz poetry. According to John Sobol, the jazz musician and poet who wrote Digitopia Blues, rap "bears a striking resemblance to the evolution of jazz both stylistically and formally".
Boxer Muhammad Ali anticipated elements of rap, often using rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry, both for when he was trash talking in boxing and as political poetry for his activism outside of boxing, paving the way for The Last Poets in 1968, Gil Scott-Heron in 1970, and the emergence of rap music in the 1970s.
Precursors also exist in non-African/African-American traditions, especially in vaudeville and musical theater. One such tradition is the patter song exemplified by Gilbert and Sullivan but that has origins in earlier Italian opera.
"Rock Island" from Meridith Wilson's The Music Man is wholly spoken by an ensemble of travelling salesmen, as are most of the numbers for British actor Rex Harrison in the 1964 Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady. Glenn Miller's "The Lady's in Love with You" and "The Little Man Who Wasn't There" (both 1939), each contain distinctly rap-like sequences set to a driving beat as does the 1937 song "Doin' the Jive".
In musical theater, the term "vamp" is identical to its meaning in jazz, gospel, and funk, and it fulfills the same function. Semi-spoken music has long been especially popular in British entertainment, and such examples as David Croft's theme to the 1970s' sitcom Are You Being Served? have elements indistinguishable from modern rap.
In classical music, semi-spoken music was popular stylized by composer Arnold Schoenberg as Sprechstimme, and famously used in Ernst Toch's 1924 Geographical Fugue for spoken chorus and the final scene in Darius Milhaud's 1915 ballet Les Choéphores.
In the French chanson field, irrigated by a strong poetry tradition, such singer-songwriters as Léo Ferré or Serge Gainsbourg made their own use of spoken word over rock or symphonic music from the very beginning of the 1970s. Although these probably did not have a direct influence on rap's development in the African-American cultural sphere, they paved the way for acceptance of spoken word music in the media market.
With the decline of disco in the early 1980s rap became a new form of expression. Rap arose from musical experimentation with rhyming, rhythmic speech. Rap was a departure from disco. Sherley Anne Williams refers to the development of rap as "anti-Disco" in style and means of reproduction.
The early productions of Rap after Disco sought a more simplified manner of producing the tracks they were to sing over. Williams explains how Rap composers and DJ's opposed the heavily orchestrated and ritzy multi-tracks of Disco for "break beats" which were created from compiling different records from numerous genres and did not require the equipment from professional recording studios.
Professional studios were not necessary therefore opening the production of rap to the youth who as Williams explains felt "locked out" because of the capital needed to produce Disco records.
More directly related to the African-American community were items like schoolyard chants and taunts, clapping games, jump-rope rhymes, some with unwritten folk histories going back hundreds of years across many nationalities. Sometimes these items contain racially offensive lyrics. A related area that is not strictly folklore is rhythmical cheering and cheerleading for military and sports.
Proto-rap:
In his narration between the tracks on George Russell's 1958 jazz album New York N.Y., the singer Jon Hendricks recorded something close to modern rap, since it all rhymed and was delivered in a hip, rhythm-conscious manner. Art forms such as spoken word jazz poetry and comedy records had an influence on the first rappers.
Coke La Rock, often credited as hip-hop's first MC cites the Last Poets among his influences, as well as comedians such as Wild Man Steve and Richard Pryor.
Comedian Rudy Ray Moore released under the counter albums in the 1960s and 1970s such as This Pussy Belongs To Me (1970), which contained "raunchy, sexually explicit rhymes that often had to do with pimps, prostitutes, players, and hustlers", and which later led to him being called "The Godfather of Rap".
Gil Scott-Heron, a jazz poet/musician, has been cited as an influence on rappers such as Chuck D and KRS-One. Scott-Heron himself was influenced by Melvin Van Peebles, whose first album was 1968's Brer Soul.
Van Peebles describes his vocal style as "the old Southern style", which was influenced by singers he had heard growing up in South Chicago. Van Peebles also said that he was influenced by older forms of African-American music: "... people like Blind Lemon Jefferson and the field hollers. I was also influenced by spoken word song styles from Germany that I encountered when I lived in France."
During the mid-20th century, the musical culture of the Caribbean was constantly influenced by the concurrent changes in American music. As early as 1956, deejays were toasting (an African tradition of "rapped out" tales of heroism) over dubbed Jamaican beats. It was called "rap", expanding the word's earlier meaning in the African-American community—"to discuss or debate informally."
The early rapping of hip-hop developed out of DJ and Master of Ceremonies' announcements made over the microphone at parties, and later into more complex raps. Grandmaster Caz states: "The microphone was just used for making announcements, like when the next party was gonna be, or people's moms would come to the party looking for them, and you have to announce it on the mic. Different DJs started embellishing what they were saying.
I would make an announcement this way, and somebody would hear that and they add a little bit to it. I'd hear it again and take it a little step further 'til it turned from lines to sentences to paragraphs to verses to rhymes."
One of the first rappers at the beginning of the hip hop period, at the end of the 1970s, was also hip hop's first DJ, DJ Kool Herc. Herc, a Jamaican immigrant, started delivering simple raps at his parties, which some claim were inspired by the Jamaican tradition of toasting.
However, Kool Herc himself denies this link (in the 1984 book Hip Hop), saying, "Jamaican toasting? Naw, naw. No connection there. I couldn't play reggae in the Bronx. People wouldn't accept it.
The inspiration for rap is James Brown and the album Hustler's Convention". Herc also suggests he was too young while in Jamaica to get into sound system parties: "I couldn't get in. Couldn't get in. I was ten, eleven years old," and that while in Jamaica, he was listening to James Brown: "I was listening to American music in Jamaica and my favorite artist was James Brown. That's who inspired me. A lot of the records I played were by James Brown."
However, in terms of what we identify in the 2010s as "rap" the source came from Manhattan. Pete DJ Jones said the first person he heard rap was DJ Hollywood, a Harlem (not Bronx) native who was the house DJ at the Apollo Theater. Kurtis Blow also says the first person he heard rhyme was DJ Hollywood.
In a 2014 interview, Hollywood said: "I used to like the way Frankie Crocker would ride a track, but he wasn't syncopated to the track though. I liked [WWRL DJ] Hank Spann too, but he wasn't on the one. Guys back then weren't concerned with being musical. I wanted to flow with the record".
And in 1975, he ushered in what became known as the Hip Hop style by rhyming syncopated to the beat of an existing record uninterruptedly for nearly a minute. He adapted the lyrics of Isaac Hayes "Good Love 6-9969" and rhymed it to the breakdown part of "Love is the Message". His partner Kevin Smith, better known as Lovebug Starski, took this new style and introduced it to the Bronx Hip Hop set that until then was composed of DJing and B-boying, with traditional "shout out" style rapping.
The style that Hollywood created and his partner introduced to the Hip Hop set quickly became the standard. What actually did Hollywood do? He created "flow." Before then all MCs rhymed based on radio DJs. This usually consisted of short patters that were disconnected thematically; they were separate unto themselves.
But by Hollywood using song lyrics, he had an inherent flow and theme to his rhyme. This was the game changer. By the end of the 1970s, artists such as Kurtis Blow and The Sugarhill Gang were just starting to receive radio airplay and make an impact far outside of New York City, on a national scale. Blondie's 1981 single, "Rapture", was one of the first songs featuring rap to top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Old-school hip hop:
Main article: Old-school hip hop
Old school rap (1979–84) was "easily identified by its relatively simple raps" according to AllMusic, "the emphasis was not on lyrical technique, but simply on good times", one notable exception being Melle Mel, who set the way for future rappers through his socio-political content and creative wordplay.
Golden age:
Main article: Golden age hip hop
Golden age hip hop (the mid-1980s to early '90s) was the time period where hip-hop lyricism went through its most drastic transformation – writer William Jelani Cobb says "in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time" and Allmusic writes, "rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, and Rakim basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".
The golden age is considered to have ended around 1993–94, marking the end of rap lyricism's most innovative period.
Flow:
"Flow" is defined as "the rhythms and rhymes" of a hip-hop song's lyrics and how they interact – the book How to Rap breaks flow down into rhyme, rhyme schemes, and rhythm (also known as cadence). 'Flow' is also sometimes used to refer to elements of the delivery (pitch, timbre, volume) as well, though often a distinction is made between the flow and the delivery.
Staying on the beat is central to rap's flow – many MCs note the importance of staying on-beat in How to Rap including the following:
- Sean Price,
- Mighty Casey,
- Zion I,
- Vinnie Paz,
- Fredro Starr,
- Del The Funky Homosapien,
- Tech N9ne,
- People Under The Stairs,
- Twista,
- B-Real,
- Mr Lif,
- 2Mex,
- and Cage.
MCs stay on beat by stressing syllables in time to the four beats of the musical backdrop. Poetry scholar Derek Attridge describes how this works in his book Poetic Rhythm – "rap lyrics are written to be performed to an accompaniment that emphasizes the metrical structure of the verse". He says rap lyrics are made up of, "lines with four stressed beats, separated by other syllables that may vary in number and may include other stressed syllables.
The strong beat of the accompaniment coincides with the stressed beats of the verse, and the rapper organizes the rhythms of the intervening syllables to provide variety and surprise".
The same technique is also noted in the book How to Rap, where diagrams are used to show how the lyrics line up with the beat – "stressing a syllable on each of the four beats gives the lyrics the same underlying rhythmic pulse as the music and keeps them in rhythm ... other syllables in the song may still be stressed, but the ones that fall in time with the four beats of a bar are the only ones that need to be emphasized in order to keep the lyrics in time with the music".
In rap terminology, 16-bars is the amount of time that rappers are generally given to perform a guest verse on another artist's song; one bar is typically equal to four beats of music.
History of flow:
Old school flows were relatively basic and used only few syllables per bar, simple rhythmic patterns, and basic rhyming techniques and rhyme schemes. Melle Mel is cited as an MC who epitomizes the old school flow – Kool Moe Dee says, "from 1970 to 1978 we rhymed one way [then] Melle Mel, in 1978, gave us the new cadence we would use from 1978 to 1986".
He's the first emcee to explode in a new rhyme cadence, and change the way every emcee rhymed forever. Rakim, The Notorious B.I.G., and Eminem have flipped the flow, but Melle Mel's downbeat on the two, four, kick to snare cadence is still the rhyme foundation all emcees are building on".
Artists and critics often credit Rakim with creating the overall shift from the more simplistic old school flows to more complex flows near the beginning of hip hop's new school – Kool Moe Dee says, "any emcee that came after 1986 had to study Rakim just to know what to be able to do. Rakim, in 1986, gave us flow and that was the rhyme style from 1986 to 1994. from that point on, anybody emceeing was forced to focus on their flow".
Kool Moe Dee explains that before Rakim, the term 'flow' wasn't widely used – "Rakim is basically the inventor of flow. We were not even using the word flow until Rakim came along. It was called rhyming, it was called cadence, but it wasn't called flow. Rakim created flow!" He adds that while Rakim upgraded and popularized the focus on flow, "he didn't invent the word".
Kool Moe Dee states that Biggie introduced a newer flow which "dominated from 1994 to 2002", and also says that Method Man was "one of the emcees from the early to mid-'90s that ushered in the era of flow ... Rakim invented it, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, and Kool G Rap expanded it, but Biggie and Method Man made flow the single most important aspect of an emcee's game". He also cites Craig Mack as an artist who contributed to developing flow in the '90s.
Music scholar Adam Krims says, "the flow of MCs is one of the profoundest changes that separates out new-sounding from older-sounding music ... it is widely recognized and remarked that rhythmic styles of many commercially successful MCs since roughly the beginning of the 1990s have progressively become faster and more 'complex'". He cites "members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, AZ, Big Pun, and Ras Kass, just to name a few" as artists who exemplify this progression.
Kool Moe Dee adds, "in 2002 Eminem created the song that got the first Oscar in Hip-Hop history [Lose Yourself] ... and I would have to say that his flow is the most dominant right now (2003)".
Styles:
There are many different styles of flow, with different terminology used by different people – stic.man of Dead Prez uses the following terms –
- "The Chant", which he says is used by Lil Jon and Project Pat
- "The Syncopated Bounce", used by Twista and Bone Thugs N Harmony
- "Straight Forward", used by Scarface, 2Pac, Melle Mel, KRS-One circa Boogie Down Productions era, Too Short, Jay-Z, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg
- "The Rubik's Cube", used by Nas, Black Thought of The Roots, Common, Kurupt, and Lauryn Hill
- "2-5-Flow", a pun of Kenya's calling code "+254", used by Camp Mulla
Alternatively, music scholar Adam Krims uses the following terms –
- "sung rhythmic style", used by Too Short, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, and the Beastie Boys[80]
- "percussion-effusive style", used by B-Real of Cypress Hill[81]
- "speech-effusive style", used by Big Pun[81]
- "offbeat style", used by E-40, Outkast
RhymeMCs use many different rhyming techniques, including complex rhyme schemes, as Adam Krims points out – "the complexity ... involves multiple rhymes in the same rhyme complex (i.e. section with consistently rhyming words), internal rhymes, [and] offbeat rhymes". There is also widespread use of multisyllabic rhymes, by artists such as Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Big L, Nas and Eminem.
It has been noted that rap's use of rhyme is some of the most advanced in all forms of poetry – music scholar Adam Bradley notes, "rap rhymes so much and with such variety that it is now the largest and richest contemporary archive of rhymed words. It has done more than any other art form in recent history to expand rhyme's formal range and expressive possibilities".
In the book How to Rap, Masta Ace explains how Rakim and Big Daddy Kane caused a shift in the way MCs rhymed: "Up until Rakim, everybody who you heard rhyme, the last word in the sentence was the rhyming [word], the connection word. Then Rakim showed us that you could put rhymes within a rhyme ... now here comes Big Daddy Kane — instead of going three words, he's going multiple".
How to Rap explains that "rhyme is often thought to be the most important factor in rap writing ... rhyme is what gives rap lyrics their musicality.
Rhythm:
Many of the rhythmic techniques used in rapping come from percussive techniques and many rappers compare themselves to percussionists. How to Rap 2 identifies all the rhythmic techniques used in rapping such as triplets, flams, 16th notes, 32nd notes, syncopation, extensive use of rests, and rhythmic techniques unique to rapping such as West Coast "lazy tails", coined by Shock G. Rapping has also been done in various time signatures, such as 3/4 time.
Since the 2000s, rapping has evolved into a style of rap that spills over the boundaries of the beat, closely resembling spoken English. Rappers like MF Doom and Eminem have exhibited this style, and since then, rapping has been difficult to notate. The American hip-hop group Crime Mob exhibited a new rap flow in songs such as "Knuck If You Buck", heavily dependent on triplets.
Rappers including Drake, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy and more have included this influence in their music. In 2014, an American hip-hop collective from Atlanta, Migos, popularized this flow, and is commonly referred to as the "Migos Flow" (a term that is contentious within the hip-hop community).
Rap notation and flow diagrams:
The standard form of rap notation is the flow diagram, where rappers line-up their lyrics underneath "beat numbers". Different rappers have slightly different forms of flow diagram that they use: Del the Funky Homosapien says, "I'm just writing out the rhythm of the flow, basically. Even if it's just slashes to represent the beats, that's enough to give me a visual path.",
Vinnie Paz states, "I've created my own sort of writing technique, like little marks and asterisks to show like a pause or emphasis on words in certain places.", and Aesop Rock says, "I have a system of maybe 10 little symbols that I use on paper that tell me to do something when I'm recording."
Hip-hop scholars also make use of the same flow diagrams: the books How to Rap and How to Rap 2 use the diagrams to explain rap's triplets, flams, rests, rhyme schemes, runs of rhyme, and breaking rhyme patterns, among other techniques. Similar systems are used by PhD musicologists Adam Krims in his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity and Kyle Adams in his academic work on flow.
Because rap revolves around a strong 4/4 beat, with certain syllables said in time to the beat, all the notational systems have a similar structure: they all have the same 4 beat numbers at the top of the diagram, so that syllables can be written in-line with the beat numbers.
This allows devices such as rests, "lazy tails", flams, and other rhythmic techniques to be shown, as well as illustrating where different rhyming words fall in relation to the music.
Performance:
To successfully deliver a rap, a rapper must also develop vocal presence, enunciation, and breath control. Vocal presence is the distinctiveness of a rapper's voice on record.
Enunciation is essential to a flowing rap; some rappers choose also to exaggerate it for comic and artistic effect. Breath control, taking in air without interrupting one's delivery, is an important skill for a rapper to master, and a must for any MC. An MC with poor breath control cannot deliver difficult verses without making unintentional pauses.
Raps are sometimes delivered with melody. West Coast rapper Egyptian Lover was the first notable MC to deliver "sing-raps". Popular rappers such as 50 Cent and Ja Rule add a slight melody to their otherwise purely percussive raps whereas some rappers such as Cee-Lo Green are able to harmonize their raps with the beat.
The Midwestern group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was one of the first groups to achieve nationwide recognition for using the fast-paced, melodic and harmonic raps that are also practiced by Do or Die, another Midwestern group. Another rapper that harmonized his rhymes was Nate Dogg, a rapper part of the group 213. Rakim experimented not only with following the beat, but also with complementing the song's melody with his own voice, making his flow sound like that of an instrument (a saxophone in particular).
The ability to rap quickly and clearly is sometimes regarded as an important sign of skill. In certain hip-hop subgenres such as chopped and screwed, slow-paced rapping is often considered optimal. The current record for fastest rapper is held by Spanish rapper Domingo
Edjang Moreno, known by his alias Chojin, who rapped 921 syllables in one minute on December 23, 2008.
Emcees:
In the late 1970s, the term Emcee, MC or M.C. became an alternative title for a rapper, and for their role within hip-hop music and culture. An MC uses rhyming verses, pre-written or ad lib ('freestyled'), to introduce the DJ with whom they work, to keep the crowd entertained or to glorify themselves.
As hip hop progressed, the title MC acquired backronyms such as 'mike chanter' 'microphone controller', 'microphone checker', 'music commentator', and one who 'moves the crowd'. Some use this word interchangeably with the term rapper, while for others the term denotes a superior level of skill and connection to the wider culture.
MC can often be used as a term of distinction; referring to an artist with good performance skills. As Kool G Rap notes, "masters of ceremony, where the word 'M.C.' comes from, means just keeping the party alive" Sic. Many people in hiphop including DJ Premier and KRS-One feel that James Brown was the first MC.
James Brown had the lyrics, moves, and soul that greatly influenced a lot of rappers in Hip-Hop, and arguably even started the first MC rhyme.
For some rappers, there was a distinction to the term, such as for MC Hammer who acquired the nickname "MC" for being a "Master of Ceremonies" which he used when he began performing at various clubs while on the road with the Oakland As and eventually in the military (United States Navy). It was within the lyrics of a rap song called "This Wall" that Hammer first identified himself as M.C. Hammer and later marketed it on his debut album Feel My Power.
Uncertainty over the acronym's expansion may be considered evidence for its ubiquity: the full term "Master of Ceremonies" is very rarely used in the hip-hop scene. This confusion prompted the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest to include this statement in the liner notes to their 1993 album Midnight Marauders:
The use of the term MC when referring to a rhyming wordsmith originates from the dance halls of Jamaica. At each event, there would be a master of ceremonies who would introduce the different musical acts and would say a toast in style of a rhyme, directed at the audience and to the performers.
He would also make announcements such as the schedule of other events or advertisements from local sponsors. The term MC continued to be used by the children of women who moved to New York City to work as maids in the 1970s. These MCs eventually created a new style of music called hip-hop based on the rhyming they used to do in Jamaica and the break-beats used in records. MC has also recently been accepted to refer to all who engineer music.
Subject matter:
"Party rhymes", meant to pump up the crowd at a party, were nearly the exclusive focus of old school hip hop, and they remain a staple of hip-hop music to this day. In addition to party raps, rappers also tend to make references to love and sex.
Love raps were first popularized by Spoonie Gee of the Treacherous Three, and later, in the golden age of hip hop, Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, and LL Cool J would continue this tradition. Hip-hop artists such as KRS-One, Hopsin, Public Enemy, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie), and dead prez are known for their sociopolitical subject matter.
Their West Coast counterparts include Emcee Lynx, The Coup, Paris, and Michael Franti. Tupac Shakur was also known for rapping about social issues such as police brutality, teenage pregnancy, and racism.
Other rappers take a less critical approach to urbanity, sometimes even embracing such aspects as crime. Schoolly D was the first notable MC to rap about crime.Early on KRS-One was accused of celebrating crime and a hedonistic lifestyle, but after the death of his DJ, Scott La Rock, KRS-One went on to speak out against violence in hip hop and has spent the majority of his career condemning violence and writing on issues of race and class.
Ice-T was one of the first rappers to call himself a "playa" and discuss guns on record, but his theme tune to the 1988 film Colors contained warnings against joining gangs. Gangsta rap, made popular largely because of N.W.A, brought rapping about crime and the gangster lifestyle into the musical mainstream.
Materialism has also been a popular topic in hip-hop since at least the early 1990s, with rappers boasting about their own wealth and possessions, and name-dropping specific brands: liquor brands Cristal and Rémy Martin, car manufacturers Bentley and Mercedes-Benz and clothing brands Gucci and Versace have all been popular subjects for rappers.
Various politicians, journalists, and religious leaders have accused rappers of fostering a culture of violence and hedonism among hip-hop listeners through their lyrics. However, there are also rappers whose messages may not be in conflict with these views, for example Christian hip hop. Others have praised the "political critique, innuendo and sarcasm" of hip-hop music.
In contrast to the more hedonistic approach of gangsta rappers, some rappers have a spiritual or religious focus. Christian rap is currently the most commercially successful form of religious rap. With Christian rappers like Lecrae, Thi'sl and Hostyle Gospel winning national awards and making regular appearances on television, Christian hip hop seem to have found its way in the hip-hop family.
Aside from Christianity, the Five Percent Nation, an Islamic esotericist religious/spiritual group, has been represented more than any religious group in popular hip hop. Artists such as Rakim, the members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, X-Clan and Busta Rhymes have had success in spreading the theology of the Five Percenters.
Literary technique:
Rappers use the literary techniques of double entendres, alliteration, and forms of wordplay that are found in classical poetry. Similes and metaphors are used extensively in rap lyrics; rappers such as Fabolous and Lloyd Banks have written entire songs in which every line contains similes, whereas MCs like Rakim, GZA, and Jay-Z are known for the metaphorical content of their raps. Rappers such as Lupe Fiasco are known for the complexity of their songs that contain metaphors within extended metaphors.
Diction and dialect:
Many hip-hop listeners believe that a rapper's lyrics are enhanced by a complex vocabulary. Kool Moe Dee claims that he appealed to older audiences by using a complex vocabulary in his raps. Rap is famous, however, for having its own vocabulary—from international hip-hop slang to regional slang.
Some artists, like the Wu-Tang Clan, develop an entire lexicon among their clique. African-American English has always had a significant effect on hip-hop slang and vice versa. Certain regions have introduced their unique regional slang to hip-hop culture, such as:
- the Bay Area (Mac Dre, E-40),
- Houston (Chamillionaire, Paul Wall),
- Atlanta (Ludacris, Lil Jon, T.I.),
- and Kentucky (Nappy Roots).
The Nation of Gods and Earths, aka The Five Percenters, has influenced mainstream hip-hop slang with the introduction of phrases such as "word is bond" that have since lost much of their original spiritual meaning.
Preference toward one or the other has much to do with the individual; GZA, for example, prides himself on being very visual and metaphorical but also succinct, whereas underground rapper MF DOOM is known for heaping similes upon similes. In still another variation, 2Pac was known for saying exactly what he meant, literally and clearly.
Rap music's development into popular culture in the 1990s can be accredited to the album Niggaz4life by artists Niggaz With Attitude, the first rap group to ever take the top spot of the Billboard's Top 200 in 1991, in the United States. With this victory, came the beginning of an era of popular culture guided by the musical influences of hip-hop and rap itself, moving away from the influences of rock music.
As rap continued to develop and further disseminate, it went on to influence clothing brands, movies, sports, and dancing through popular culture. As rap has developed to become more of a presence in popular culture, it has focused itself on a particular demographic, adolescent and young adults. As such, it has had a significant impact on the modern vernacular of this portion of the population, which has diffused throughout society.
The effects of rap music on modern vernacular can be explored through the study of semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, or the study of language as a system. French literary theorist Roland Barthes furthers this study with this own theory of myth.
He maintains that the first order of signification is language and that the second is "myth", arguing that a word has both its literal meaning, and its mythical meaning, which is heavily dependent on socio-cultural context. To illustrate, Barthes uses the example of a rat: it has a literal meaning (a physical, objective description) and it has a greater socio-cultural understanding. This contextual meaning is subjective and is dynamic within society.
Through Barthes' semiotic theory of language and myth, it can be shown that rap music has culturally influenced the language of its listeners, as they influence the connotative message to words that already exist. As more people listen to rap, the words that are used in the lyrics become culturally bound to the song, and then are disseminated through the conversations that people have using these words.
Most often, the terms that rappers use are pre-established words that have been prescribed new meaning through their music, that are eventually disseminated through social spheres.
This newly contextualized word is called a neo-semanticism. Neo-semanticisms are forgotten words that are often brought forward from subcultures that attract the attention of members of the reigning culture of their time, then they are brought forward by the influential voices in society – in this case, these figures are rappers.
To illustrate, the acronym YOLO was popularized by rapper, actor and RNB singer Drake in 2012 when he featured it in his own song, The Motto. That year the term YOLO was so popular that it was printed on t-shirts, became a trending hashtag on Twitter, and was even considered as the inspiration for several tattoos.
However, although the rapper may have come up with the acronym, the motto itself was in no way first established by Drake. Similar messages can be seen in many well-known sayings, or as early as 1896, in the English translation of La Comédie Humaine, by Honoré de Balzac where one of his free-spirited characters tells another, "You Only Live Once!".
Another example of a neosemanticism is the word "broccoli". Rapper E-40 initially uses the word "broccoli" to refer to marijuana, on his hit track Broccoli in 1993. In contemporary society, artists D.R.A.M. and Lil Yachty are often accredited for this slang on for their hit song, also titled Broccoli.
With the rise in technology and mass media, the dissemination of subcultural terms has only become easier. Dick Hebdige, author of Subculture: The Meaning of Style, merits that subcultures often use music to vocalize the struggles of their experiences. As rap is also the culmination of a prevalent sub-culture in African-American social spheres, often their own personal cultures are disseminated through rap lyrics.
It is here that lyrics can be categorized as either historically influenced or (more commonly) considered as slang. Vernon Andrews, the professor of the course American Studies 111: Hip-Hop Culture, suggests that many words, such as "hood", "homie", and "dope", are historically influenced. Most importantly, this also brings forward the anarchistic culture of rap music.
Common themes from rap are anti-establishment and instead, promote black excellence and diversity. It is here that rap can be seen to reclaim words, namely, "nigga", a historical term used to subjugate and oppress Black people in America. This word has been reclaimed by Black Americans and is heavily used in rap music. Niggaz With Attitude embodies this notion by using it as the first word of their influential rap group name.
Freestyle and battle:
There are two kinds of freestyle rap: one is scripted (recitation), but having no particular overriding subject matter, the second typically referred to as "freestyling" or "spitting", is the improvisation of rapped lyrics.
When freestyling, some rappers inadvertently reuse old lines, or even "cheat" by preparing segments or entire verses in advance. Therefore, freestyles with proven spontaneity are valued above generic, always usable lines. Rappers will often reference places or objects in their immediate setting, or specific (usually demeaning) characteristics of opponents, to prove their authenticity and originality.
Battle rapping, which can be freestyled, is the competition between two or more rappers in front of an audience. The tradition of insulting one's friends or acquaintances in rhyme goes back to the dozens, and was portrayed famously by Muhammad Ali in his boxing matches.
The winner of a battle is decided by the crowd and/or pre-selected judges. According to Kool Moe Dee, a successful battle rap focuses on an opponent's weaknesses, rather than one's own strengths.
Television shows such as MTV's DFX and BET's 106 and Park host weekly freestyle battles live on the air. Battle rapping gained widespread public recognition outside of the African-American community with rapper Eminem's movie 8 Mile.
The strongest battle rappers will generally perform their rap fully freestyled. This is the most effective form in a battle as the rapper can comment on the other person, whether it be what they look like, or how they talk, or what they wear. It also allows the rapper to reverse a line used to "diss" him or her if they are the second rapper to battle. This is known as a "flip". Jin The Emcee was considered "World Champion" battle rapper in the mid-2000s.
Derivatives and influence:
Throughout hip hop's history, new musical styles and genres have developed that contain rapping. Entire genres, such as rap rock and its derivatives rapcore and rap metal (rock/metal/punk with rapped vocals), or hip house have resulted from the fusion of rap and other styles.
Many popular music genres with a focus on percussion have contained rapping at some point; be it disco (DJ Hollywood), jazz (Gang Starr), new wave (Blondie), funk (Fatback Band), contemporary R&B (Mary J. Blige), reggaeton (Daddy Yankee), or even Japanese dance music (Soul'd Out). UK garage music has begun to focus increasingly on rappers in a new subgenre called grime which emerged in London in the early 2000s and was pioneered and popularized by the MC Dizzee Rascal.
Increased popularity with the music has shown more UK rappers going to America as well as tour there, such as Sway DaSafo possibly signing with Akon's label Konvict. Hyphy is the latest of these spin-offs. It is typified by slowed-down atonal vocals with instrumentals that borrow heavily from the hip-hop scene and lyrics centered on illegal street racing and car culture.
Another Oakland, California group, Beltaine's Fire, has recently gained attention for their Celtic fusion sound which blends hip-hop beats with Celtic melodies. Unlike the majority of hip-hop artists, all their music is performed live without samples, synths, or drum machines, drawing comparisons to The Roots and Rage Against the Machine.
Bhangra, a widely popular style of music from Punjab, India has been mixed numerous times with reggae and hip-hop music. The most popular song in this genre in the United States was "Mundian to Bach Ke" or "Beware the Boys" by Panjabi MC and Jay-Z. Although "Mundian To Bach Ke" had been released previously, the mixing with Jay-Z popularized the genre further.
Although the majority of rappers are male, there have been a number of female rap stars, including:
- Lauryn Hill,
- MC Lyte,
- Lil' Kim,
- Missy Elliott,
- Queen Latifah,
- Da Brat,
- Eve,
- Trina,
- Nicki Minaj,
- Khia,
- M.I.A.,
- CL from 2NE1,
- Foxy Brown,
- Iggy Azalea,
- and Lisa Lopes from TLC.
There is also deaf rap artist Signmark.
See also:
- Amoebaean singing
- Flyting, contests consisting of the exchange of insults, often in poetry
- The Rapper—1970 song addressed to women, warning them about men, rappers, who seduce them with lies, "rapping"
- Rap squat
- Sprechgesang
Hip-Hop Culture
- YouTube Video: The Evolution Of Hip-Hop [1979 - 2017]
- YouTube Video: Born to Dance: The Breakdancing Kid by ABC News
- YouTube Video: The Breakdance Battle Is On by WatchMojo
Hip hop or hip-hop is a subculture and art movement developed in the Bronx in New York City during the late 1970s.
The origins of the word are often disputed. Some believe that the word was invented by Keith Cowboy of The Furious Five. Others believe it was a derogatory name for the people who practice the art and wear the relative clothing. It is also argued as to whether hip hop started in the South or West Bronx.
While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively to hip hop music (also called rap), hip hop is characterized by nine elements, however only four elements are considered most necessary to understand hip-hop musically. The main elements of hip-hop consist of four main pillars. The 5th element is commonly considered either street knowledge, hip hop fashion or beatboxing however it is often debated.
Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, coining the terms: "rapping" (also called MCing or emceeing), a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality); DJing (and turntablism), which is making music with record players and DJ mixers (aural/sound and music creation); b-boying/b-girling/breakdancing (movement/dance); and graffiti art.
Other elements of hip hop subculture and arts movements beyond the main four are:
The Bronx hip hop scene emerged in the mid-1970s from neighborhood block parties thrown by the Ghetto Brothers, a Puerto Rican group that has been described as being a gang, a club, and a music group. Members of the scene plugged in the amplifiers for their instruments and PA speakers into the lampposts on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue and used their live music events to break down racial barriers between African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Whites and other ethnic groups.
Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc also played a key role in developing hip hop music. At 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Herc mixed samples of existing records and deejayed percussion "breaks", mixing this music with his own Jamaican-style "toasting" (a style of chanting and boastful talking over a microphone) to rev up the crowd and dancers. Kool Herc is credited as the "father" of hip hop for developing the key DJ techniques that, along with rapping, founded the hip hop music style by creating rhythmic beats by looping "breaks" (small portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables.
This was later accompanied by "rapping" or "MCing" and beatboxing. An original form of dancing called break-dancing, which later became accompanied by popping, locking and other dance styles, which was done to the accompaniment of hip hop songs played on boom boxes and particular fashion styles also developed.
Art historian Robert Farris Thompson describes the youth from the South Bronx in the early 1970s as "English-speaking blacks from Barbados" like Grandmaster Flash, "black Jamaicans" like DJ Kool Herc who introduced the rhythms from salsa music, as well as Afro conga and bongo drums, as well as many who emulated the sounds of Tito Puente and Willie Colón.
These youths mixed these influences with existing musical styles associated with African-Americans prior to the 1970s, from jazz to funk.
Hip hop music became popular outside of the African-American community in the late-1980s, with the mainstream commercial success of Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and then emerging hip hop movements such as the Native Tongues, Daisy Age and then later (in the early 1990s) gangsta rap.
Critic Greg Tate described the hip hop movement as "the only avant-garde still around, still delivering [a] shock" of newness to the wealthy bourgeoisie. Ronald Savage, known by the nickname Bee-Stinger, who was a former member of the Zulu Nation, coined the term "six elements of the hip hop movement".
The "six elements of the hip hop movement" are:
Ronald Savage is known as the Son of The Hip Hop Movement.
Hip hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world.
These elements were adapted and developed considerably, particularly as the art forms spread to new continents and merged with local styles in the 1990s and subsequent decades.
Even as the movement continues to expand globally and explore myriad styles and art forms, including hip hop theater and hip hop film, the four foundational elements provide coherence and a strong foundation for hip hop culture.
Hip hop is simultaneously a new and old phenomenon; the importance of sampling tracks, beats and basslines from old records to the art form means that much of the culture has revolved around the idea of updating classic recordings, attitudes, and experiences for modern audiences.
Sampling older culture and reusing it in a new context or a new format is called "flipping" in hip hop culture. Hip hop music follows in the footsteps of earlier African-American-rooted musical genres such as blues, jazz, rag-time, funk, and disco to become one of the most practiced genres worldwide. It is the language of urban environments and the youth around the world.
According to KRS-One, "Hip hop is the only place where you see Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream Speech' in real life". He also notes that hip hop is beyond something as race, gender or nationality, it belongs to the world.
In the 2000s, with the rise of new media platforms and Web 2.0, fans discovered and downloaded or streamed hip hop music through social networking sites (SNS) beginning with Myspace, as well as from websites like YouTube, Worldstarhiphop, SoundCloud, and Spotify.
Origin:
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army by scat singing the made-up words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.
Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into his stage performance. The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of music by calling them "hip hoppers". The name was originally meant as a sign of disrespect, but soon came to identify this new music and culture.
The song "Rapper's Delight", by The Sugarhill Gang, released in 1979, begins with the phrase "I said a hip, hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, and you don't stop".
Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music.
Bill Alder, an independent consultant, once said, "There was hardly ever a moment when rap music was underground, one of the very first so-called rap records, was a monster hit ("Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang on Sugarhill Records).
Hip hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa also credits Lovebug Starski as the first to use the term "hip hop", as it relates to the culture. Bambaataa, former leader of the Black Spades gang, also did much to further popularize the term. The words "hip hop" first appeared in print on September 21, 1982, in The Village Voice in a profile of Bambaataa written by Steven Hager, who also published the first comprehensive history of the culture with St. Martins' Press.
Legacy:
Having its roots in reggae, disco, funk and soul music, hip hop has since expanded worldwide. Its expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 releasing of Planet Rock, which tried to establish a more global harmony.
In the 1980s, the British Slick Rick became the first international hit hip hop artist not native to America.
From the 1980s onward, television made hip hop global. From Yo! MTV Raps to Public Enemy's world tour, hip hop spread to Latin America and became a mainstream culture. Hip hop has been cut, mixed and adapted as it the music spreads to new areas.
Early hip hop may have reduced inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of breakdancing, turntablism, rapping and artwork.
However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related gangsta rap during the early 1990s, violence, drugs, weapons, and misogyny, were key themes. Socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.
Alternative hip hop artists attempt to reflect the original elements of the culture. Artists/groups such as the following emphasize messages of verbal skill, internal/external conflicts, life lessons, unity, social issues, or activism:
Black female artists such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, and MC Lyte have made great strides since the hip hop industry first began. By producing music and an image that did not cater to the hyper-sexualized stereotypes of black women in hip hop, these women pioneered a revitalized and empowering image of black women in hip hop.
Though many hip hop artists have embraced the ideals that effectively disenfranchise black female artists, many others choose to employ forms of resistance that counteract these negative portrayals of women in hip hop and offer a different narrative. These artists seek to expand ways of traditional thinking through different ways of cultural expression. In this effort they hope to elicit a response to female hip hop artists not with a misogynist lens but with one that validates women's struggle.
Many have written about these intersections of hip-hop and feminism. One such example is Savannah Shange's article on Nicki Minaj entitled A King Named Nicki: Strategic queerness and the black femmecee. In her article, Shange discusses discusses the inability to categorize Nicki Minaj’s music as either specifically hetero or homosexual. She ways that Nicki uses a sort of strategic queerness to that uses her sex appeal both ways to attract her audience.
Shange writes how even when looking at Nicki’s music and persona from a homonormative lens, she defies categorization. She goes on to describe how Minaj “is a rapper whose critical, strategic performance of queer femininity is inextricable linked to the production and reception of their rhymes.” In this way, Nicki Minaj's performative style enables her to make similarly great strides as those who came before her.
For women, artists such as Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim, Young M.A. and others are providing mentorship for new female MCs. In addition, there is a vibrant scene outside the mainstream that provides an opportunity for women and their music to flourish.
Rap music has the power to influence how we view black women in our society. Queen Latifah used her award-winning song "U.N.I.T.Y." to support to other women and to inform of the presence of women in the hip hop genre. However, many contemporary females in hip hop do not embody this mindset and counteract it.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Hip-Hop Culture:
The origins of the word are often disputed. Some believe that the word was invented by Keith Cowboy of The Furious Five. Others believe it was a derogatory name for the people who practice the art and wear the relative clothing. It is also argued as to whether hip hop started in the South or West Bronx.
While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively to hip hop music (also called rap), hip hop is characterized by nine elements, however only four elements are considered most necessary to understand hip-hop musically. The main elements of hip-hop consist of four main pillars. The 5th element is commonly considered either street knowledge, hip hop fashion or beatboxing however it is often debated.
Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, coining the terms: "rapping" (also called MCing or emceeing), a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality); DJing (and turntablism), which is making music with record players and DJ mixers (aural/sound and music creation); b-boying/b-girling/breakdancing (movement/dance); and graffiti art.
Other elements of hip hop subculture and arts movements beyond the main four are:
- hip hop culture and historical knowledge of the movement (intellectual/philosophical);
- beatboxing, a percussive vocal style;
- street entrepreneurship; hip hop language; and hip hop fashion and style, among others.
The Bronx hip hop scene emerged in the mid-1970s from neighborhood block parties thrown by the Ghetto Brothers, a Puerto Rican group that has been described as being a gang, a club, and a music group. Members of the scene plugged in the amplifiers for their instruments and PA speakers into the lampposts on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue and used their live music events to break down racial barriers between African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Whites and other ethnic groups.
Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc also played a key role in developing hip hop music. At 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Herc mixed samples of existing records and deejayed percussion "breaks", mixing this music with his own Jamaican-style "toasting" (a style of chanting and boastful talking over a microphone) to rev up the crowd and dancers. Kool Herc is credited as the "father" of hip hop for developing the key DJ techniques that, along with rapping, founded the hip hop music style by creating rhythmic beats by looping "breaks" (small portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables.
This was later accompanied by "rapping" or "MCing" and beatboxing. An original form of dancing called break-dancing, which later became accompanied by popping, locking and other dance styles, which was done to the accompaniment of hip hop songs played on boom boxes and particular fashion styles also developed.
Art historian Robert Farris Thompson describes the youth from the South Bronx in the early 1970s as "English-speaking blacks from Barbados" like Grandmaster Flash, "black Jamaicans" like DJ Kool Herc who introduced the rhythms from salsa music, as well as Afro conga and bongo drums, as well as many who emulated the sounds of Tito Puente and Willie Colón.
These youths mixed these influences with existing musical styles associated with African-Americans prior to the 1970s, from jazz to funk.
Hip hop music became popular outside of the African-American community in the late-1980s, with the mainstream commercial success of Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and then emerging hip hop movements such as the Native Tongues, Daisy Age and then later (in the early 1990s) gangsta rap.
Critic Greg Tate described the hip hop movement as "the only avant-garde still around, still delivering [a] shock" of newness to the wealthy bourgeoisie. Ronald Savage, known by the nickname Bee-Stinger, who was a former member of the Zulu Nation, coined the term "six elements of the hip hop movement".
The "six elements of the hip hop movement" are:
- Consciousness awareness,
- civil rights awareness,
- activism awareness,
- justice,
- political awareness,
- and community awareness in music.
Ronald Savage is known as the Son of The Hip Hop Movement.
Hip hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world.
These elements were adapted and developed considerably, particularly as the art forms spread to new continents and merged with local styles in the 1990s and subsequent decades.
Even as the movement continues to expand globally and explore myriad styles and art forms, including hip hop theater and hip hop film, the four foundational elements provide coherence and a strong foundation for hip hop culture.
Hip hop is simultaneously a new and old phenomenon; the importance of sampling tracks, beats and basslines from old records to the art form means that much of the culture has revolved around the idea of updating classic recordings, attitudes, and experiences for modern audiences.
Sampling older culture and reusing it in a new context or a new format is called "flipping" in hip hop culture. Hip hop music follows in the footsteps of earlier African-American-rooted musical genres such as blues, jazz, rag-time, funk, and disco to become one of the most practiced genres worldwide. It is the language of urban environments and the youth around the world.
According to KRS-One, "Hip hop is the only place where you see Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream Speech' in real life". He also notes that hip hop is beyond something as race, gender or nationality, it belongs to the world.
In the 2000s, with the rise of new media platforms and Web 2.0, fans discovered and downloaded or streamed hip hop music through social networking sites (SNS) beginning with Myspace, as well as from websites like YouTube, Worldstarhiphop, SoundCloud, and Spotify.
Origin:
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army by scat singing the made-up words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.
Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into his stage performance. The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of music by calling them "hip hoppers". The name was originally meant as a sign of disrespect, but soon came to identify this new music and culture.
The song "Rapper's Delight", by The Sugarhill Gang, released in 1979, begins with the phrase "I said a hip, hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, and you don't stop".
Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music.
Bill Alder, an independent consultant, once said, "There was hardly ever a moment when rap music was underground, one of the very first so-called rap records, was a monster hit ("Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang on Sugarhill Records).
Hip hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa also credits Lovebug Starski as the first to use the term "hip hop", as it relates to the culture. Bambaataa, former leader of the Black Spades gang, also did much to further popularize the term. The words "hip hop" first appeared in print on September 21, 1982, in The Village Voice in a profile of Bambaataa written by Steven Hager, who also published the first comprehensive history of the culture with St. Martins' Press.
Legacy:
Having its roots in reggae, disco, funk and soul music, hip hop has since expanded worldwide. Its expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 releasing of Planet Rock, which tried to establish a more global harmony.
In the 1980s, the British Slick Rick became the first international hit hip hop artist not native to America.
From the 1980s onward, television made hip hop global. From Yo! MTV Raps to Public Enemy's world tour, hip hop spread to Latin America and became a mainstream culture. Hip hop has been cut, mixed and adapted as it the music spreads to new areas.
Early hip hop may have reduced inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of breakdancing, turntablism, rapping and artwork.
However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related gangsta rap during the early 1990s, violence, drugs, weapons, and misogyny, were key themes. Socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.
Alternative hip hop artists attempt to reflect the original elements of the culture. Artists/groups such as the following emphasize messages of verbal skill, internal/external conflicts, life lessons, unity, social issues, or activism:
- Lupe Fiasco,
- Immortal Technique,
- Lowkey,
- Brother Ali,
- Public Enemy,
- The Roots,
- Shing02,
- Jay Electronica,
- Nas,
- Common,
- Talib Kweli,
- Mos Def,
- Dilated Peoples,
- Dead Prez,
- Blackalicious,
- Jurassic 5,
- Jeru the Damaja,
- Kendrick Lamar,
- Gangstarr,
- KRS-One,
- and Living Legends.
Black female artists such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, and MC Lyte have made great strides since the hip hop industry first began. By producing music and an image that did not cater to the hyper-sexualized stereotypes of black women in hip hop, these women pioneered a revitalized and empowering image of black women in hip hop.
Though many hip hop artists have embraced the ideals that effectively disenfranchise black female artists, many others choose to employ forms of resistance that counteract these negative portrayals of women in hip hop and offer a different narrative. These artists seek to expand ways of traditional thinking through different ways of cultural expression. In this effort they hope to elicit a response to female hip hop artists not with a misogynist lens but with one that validates women's struggle.
Many have written about these intersections of hip-hop and feminism. One such example is Savannah Shange's article on Nicki Minaj entitled A King Named Nicki: Strategic queerness and the black femmecee. In her article, Shange discusses discusses the inability to categorize Nicki Minaj’s music as either specifically hetero or homosexual. She ways that Nicki uses a sort of strategic queerness to that uses her sex appeal both ways to attract her audience.
Shange writes how even when looking at Nicki’s music and persona from a homonormative lens, she defies categorization. She goes on to describe how Minaj “is a rapper whose critical, strategic performance of queer femininity is inextricable linked to the production and reception of their rhymes.” In this way, Nicki Minaj's performative style enables her to make similarly great strides as those who came before her.
For women, artists such as Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim, Young M.A. and others are providing mentorship for new female MCs. In addition, there is a vibrant scene outside the mainstream that provides an opportunity for women and their music to flourish.
Rap music has the power to influence how we view black women in our society. Queen Latifah used her award-winning song "U.N.I.T.Y." to support to other women and to inform of the presence of women in the hip hop genre. However, many contemporary females in hip hop do not embody this mindset and counteract it.
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Gangsta Rap
- YouTube Video: The World’s Wildest Rapper | Gangsta Rap International - Poland
- YouTube Video: U S Gangsta Rap Vs French Gangsta Rap REACTION!!!!
- YouTube Video: The Evolution Of Gangster Rap [1985 - 2019]
Gangsta rap or Gangster rap is a style of hip hop characterized by themes and lyrics that generally emphasize the "gangsta" lifestyle. The genre evolved from hardcore rap into a distinct form, pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A.
After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A attracted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop. Many (if not most) gangsta rap artists openly boast of their associations with various active street gangs as part of their artistic image, with the Bloods and Crips being the most commonly represented.
Gangsta rap parallels other indigenous gang and crime-oriented forms of music, such as the narcocorrido genre of northern Mexico.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both left-wing and right-wing commentators, as well as religious leaders, who have accused the genre of promoting the following:
The White House administrations of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton criticized the genre. "Many black rappers—including Ice-T and Sister Souljah—contend that they are being unfairly singled out because their music reflects deep changes in society not being addressed anywhere else in the public forum.
The white politicians, the artists complain, neither understand the music nor desire to hear what's going on in the devastated communities that gave birth to the art form," wrote journalist Chuck Philips in a review of the battle between "the Establishment" and defenders of rap music.
"The reason why rap is under attack is because it exposes all the contradictions of American culture ...What started out as an underground art form has become a vehicle to expose a lot of critical issues that are not usually discussed in American politics. The problem here is that the White House and wanna-bes like Bill Clinton represent a political system that never intends to deal with inner city urban chaos," Sister Souljah told Philips.
On the other hand, some commentators (for example, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized gangsta rap as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackface performance, in which performers – both black and white – were made to look African American, and acted in a stereotypical uncultured and ignorant manner for entertainment.
Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by arguing they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character which behaves in ways they do not necessarily endorse.
Gangsta rappers are also famous (or infamous) for appearing more hardcore compared to early concepts and themes of hip-hop artists, and are known for saying things that are often considered taboo; for instance, the gangsta rap group N.W.A produced the famous "F**k tha Police" protest song about police brutality and racial profiling.
In high-crime areas, putting on these made up personas is life-threatening, but the fact that gangsta rappers told the stories of others is often seen as having earned them respect for raising awareness of the severity of inner-city crime. Many gangsta rappers argue that in the world of their genre exists the emotions and perspectives of a people whose suffering is too often overlooked and belittled by society.
Gangsta rap, some argue, was an effect of the various wrongdoings perpetrated against African-Americans in underprivileged neighborhoods. The various riots sparked by the Rodney King beating and the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the beating sparked anger and outrage in an area that was already at risk.
Gangsta rap acted as an outlet so such people could express themselves angrily and not in fear that they were going to be silenced for telling the truth. They often used gangsta rap to tell the stories of their lives, which sometimes included strong violence, hypersexuality, and drug abuse.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Gangsta Rap:
After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A attracted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop. Many (if not most) gangsta rap artists openly boast of their associations with various active street gangs as part of their artistic image, with the Bloods and Crips being the most commonly represented.
Gangsta rap parallels other indigenous gang and crime-oriented forms of music, such as the narcocorrido genre of northern Mexico.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both left-wing and right-wing commentators, as well as religious leaders, who have accused the genre of promoting the following:
- crime,
- serial killing,
- murder,
- violence,
- profanity,
- sex addiction,
- homophobia,
- racism,
- promiscuity,
- misogyny,
- rape,
- street gangs,
- disorderly conduct,
- drive-by shootings,
- vandalism,
- theft,
- driving under the influence,
- drug dealing,
- alcohol abuse,
- substance abuse,
- disregarding law enforcement,
- materialism,
- and narcissism.
The White House administrations of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton criticized the genre. "Many black rappers—including Ice-T and Sister Souljah—contend that they are being unfairly singled out because their music reflects deep changes in society not being addressed anywhere else in the public forum.
The white politicians, the artists complain, neither understand the music nor desire to hear what's going on in the devastated communities that gave birth to the art form," wrote journalist Chuck Philips in a review of the battle between "the Establishment" and defenders of rap music.
"The reason why rap is under attack is because it exposes all the contradictions of American culture ...What started out as an underground art form has become a vehicle to expose a lot of critical issues that are not usually discussed in American politics. The problem here is that the White House and wanna-bes like Bill Clinton represent a political system that never intends to deal with inner city urban chaos," Sister Souljah told Philips.
On the other hand, some commentators (for example, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized gangsta rap as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackface performance, in which performers – both black and white – were made to look African American, and acted in a stereotypical uncultured and ignorant manner for entertainment.
Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by arguing they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character which behaves in ways they do not necessarily endorse.
Gangsta rappers are also famous (or infamous) for appearing more hardcore compared to early concepts and themes of hip-hop artists, and are known for saying things that are often considered taboo; for instance, the gangsta rap group N.W.A produced the famous "F**k tha Police" protest song about police brutality and racial profiling.
In high-crime areas, putting on these made up personas is life-threatening, but the fact that gangsta rappers told the stories of others is often seen as having earned them respect for raising awareness of the severity of inner-city crime. Many gangsta rappers argue that in the world of their genre exists the emotions and perspectives of a people whose suffering is too often overlooked and belittled by society.
Gangsta rap, some argue, was an effect of the various wrongdoings perpetrated against African-Americans in underprivileged neighborhoods. The various riots sparked by the Rodney King beating and the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the beating sparked anger and outrage in an area that was already at risk.
Gangsta rap acted as an outlet so such people could express themselves angrily and not in fear that they were going to be silenced for telling the truth. They often used gangsta rap to tell the stories of their lives, which sometimes included strong violence, hypersexuality, and drug abuse.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Gangsta Rap:
Eminem (Rapper)
- YouTube Video: Eminem - The Evolution Of Eminem (Interview Full)
- YouTube Video of Eminem performing "Rap God" (Live at Brisbane, Australia, 02/20/2019, Rapture 2019)
- YouTube Video: Eminem " Funniest " Moments and Reactions
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer.
In addition to his solo career, Eminem was a member of the hip hop group D12. He is also known for collaborations with fellow Detroit-based rapper Royce da 5'9"; the two are collectively known as Bad Meets Evil.
After his debut album Infinite (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP. His next two releases The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002) were worldwide successes and were both nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
As a result of being a leading figure in a form of black music and being credited for popularizing hip hop to a Middle American audience, Eminem was subject to comparisons with Elvis Presley at the time.
After the release of what was considered to be his final album, Encore (2004), Eminem went on hiatus in 2005 partly due to a prescription drug addiction. He returned to the music industry five years later with the release of Relapse (2009), and Recovery was released the following year; both albums won Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album.
Recovery was the best-selling album worldwide of 2010, making it Eminem's second album, after The Eminem Show in 2002, to be the best-selling album of the year worldwide. In the following years, he released the US number one albums The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Revival, Kamikaze and Music to Be Murdered By.
Eminem starred in the musical drama film 8 Mile (2002) playing a fictionalized version of himself, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Lose Yourself", making him the first hip hop artist to ever win the award. He has made cameo appearances in the films The Wash (2001), Funny People (2009), and The Interview (2014), and the television series Entourage (2010).
Eminem has developed other ventures, including Shady Records, with manager Paul Rosenberg, which helped launch the careers of artists such as 50 Cent, Yelawolf and Obie Trice, among others. He has also established his own channel, Shade 45, on Sirius XM Radio.
Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time with sales estimated more than 220 million records:
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Eminem:
In addition to his solo career, Eminem was a member of the hip hop group D12. He is also known for collaborations with fellow Detroit-based rapper Royce da 5'9"; the two are collectively known as Bad Meets Evil.
After his debut album Infinite (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP. His next two releases The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002) were worldwide successes and were both nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
As a result of being a leading figure in a form of black music and being credited for popularizing hip hop to a Middle American audience, Eminem was subject to comparisons with Elvis Presley at the time.
After the release of what was considered to be his final album, Encore (2004), Eminem went on hiatus in 2005 partly due to a prescription drug addiction. He returned to the music industry five years later with the release of Relapse (2009), and Recovery was released the following year; both albums won Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album.
Recovery was the best-selling album worldwide of 2010, making it Eminem's second album, after The Eminem Show in 2002, to be the best-selling album of the year worldwide. In the following years, he released the US number one albums The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Revival, Kamikaze and Music to Be Murdered By.
Eminem starred in the musical drama film 8 Mile (2002) playing a fictionalized version of himself, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Lose Yourself", making him the first hip hop artist to ever win the award. He has made cameo appearances in the films The Wash (2001), Funny People (2009), and The Interview (2014), and the television series Entourage (2010).
Eminem has developed other ventures, including Shady Records, with manager Paul Rosenberg, which helped launch the careers of artists such as 50 Cent, Yelawolf and Obie Trice, among others. He has also established his own channel, Shade 45, on Sirius XM Radio.
Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time with sales estimated more than 220 million records:
- He was the best-selling music artist in the United States of the 2000s, and Billboard named him the "Artist of the Decade (2000–2009)".
- The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show, "Lose Yourself", "Love the Way You Lie" and "Not Afraid" have all been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
- Eminem has won numerous awards, including 15 Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards, 17 Billboard Music Awards, an Academy Award and a MTV Europe Music Global Icon Award.
- He has had ten number one albums on the Billboard 200, which all consecutively debuted at number one on the chart making him the only artist to achieve this, and five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
- Rolling Stone included him in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Eminem:
- Life and career
- Early life
- 1988–1997: Early career, Infinite and family struggles
- 1997–1999: Introduction to Slim Shady, The Slim Shady LP and rise to success
- 2000–2002: The Marshall Mathers LP, lyrical conflicts and The Eminem Show
- 2003–2007: Encore, more lyrical conflicts and musical hiatus
- 2008–2009: Comeback, Relapse and Relapse: Refill
- 2010–2011: Recovery and Bad Meets Evil reunion
- 2012–2013: The Marshall Mathers LP 2
- 2014–2016: Shady XV, vinyl box set, and Southpaw
- 2017–present: Revival, Kamikaze, and Music to Be Murdered By
- Artistry
- Personal life
- Legacy
- Honors and awards
- Other ventures
- Discography
- Concert tours
- Books
- See also:
- Official website
- Eminem on IMDb
- Artists with the most number-one European singles
- Honorific nicknames in popular music
- List of artists who reached number one in the United States
- List of best-selling music artists
- List of best-selling music artists in the United States
- List of best-selling singles in the United States
- List of best-selling singles worldwide
- Global Recording Artist of the Year
- List of best-selling albums of the 21st century
- List of best-selling albums
Drake
- YouTube Video: Future - Life Is Good (Official Music Video) ft. Drake
- YouTube Video: Drake - God's Plan
- YouTube Video: Drake - Nice For What
Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) is a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, executive producer, actor, and entrepreneur.
A prominent figure in popular music, Drake is widely credited for popularizing the Toronto sound to the music industry and leading the "Canadian Invasion" of the American music industry. He initially gained recognition as an actor on the teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation in the 2000s; intent on pursuing a career in music, he left the series in 2007 after releasing his debut mixtape Room for Improvement. He released two further independent projects, Comeback Season and So Far Gone, before signing to Young Money Entertainment in June 2009.
Drake released his debut studio album Thank Me Later in 2010, which debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200.
Drake achieved back-to-back widespread critical successes with his next two albums Take Care (2011) and Nothing Was the Same (2013). Drake's first commercial mixtape If You're Reading This It's Too Late (2015) earned a platinum certification in the US. His fourth album Views (2016) sat atop the Billboard 200 for 13 nonconsecutive weeks, becoming the first album by a male solo artist to do so in over a decade. Marketed as a playlist, Drake's third commercial mixtape More Life (2017) set multiple streaming records.
A year later, he released the double album Scorpion, which produced three number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Drake's fourth commercial mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes (2020) featured the Hot 100 number-one lead single "Toosie Slide".
As an entrepreneur, Drake founded the OVO Sound record label with longtime collaborator 40 in 2012. In 2016, Drake was announced as the new "global ambassador" for the Toronto Raptors, thereby joining the executive committee of the NBA franchise.
In the same year, Drake announced his development with American entrepreneur Brent Hocking of the bourbon whiskey Virginia Black; it eventually broke sale records in Canada. In 2018, Drake was reportedly responsible for 5% ($440 million) of Toronto's $8.8 billion total annual tourism income.
Among the world's best-selling music artists, with over 170 million records sold, Drake is ranked as the world's highest-certified digital singles artist by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Drake has won:
Drake also:
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Drake:
A prominent figure in popular music, Drake is widely credited for popularizing the Toronto sound to the music industry and leading the "Canadian Invasion" of the American music industry. He initially gained recognition as an actor on the teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation in the 2000s; intent on pursuing a career in music, he left the series in 2007 after releasing his debut mixtape Room for Improvement. He released two further independent projects, Comeback Season and So Far Gone, before signing to Young Money Entertainment in June 2009.
Drake released his debut studio album Thank Me Later in 2010, which debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200.
Drake achieved back-to-back widespread critical successes with his next two albums Take Care (2011) and Nothing Was the Same (2013). Drake's first commercial mixtape If You're Reading This It's Too Late (2015) earned a platinum certification in the US. His fourth album Views (2016) sat atop the Billboard 200 for 13 nonconsecutive weeks, becoming the first album by a male solo artist to do so in over a decade. Marketed as a playlist, Drake's third commercial mixtape More Life (2017) set multiple streaming records.
A year later, he released the double album Scorpion, which produced three number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Drake's fourth commercial mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes (2020) featured the Hot 100 number-one lead single "Toosie Slide".
As an entrepreneur, Drake founded the OVO Sound record label with longtime collaborator 40 in 2012. In 2016, Drake was announced as the new "global ambassador" for the Toronto Raptors, thereby joining the executive committee of the NBA franchise.
In the same year, Drake announced his development with American entrepreneur Brent Hocking of the bourbon whiskey Virginia Black; it eventually broke sale records in Canada. In 2018, Drake was reportedly responsible for 5% ($440 million) of Toronto's $8.8 billion total annual tourism income.
Among the world's best-selling music artists, with over 170 million records sold, Drake is ranked as the world's highest-certified digital singles artist by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Drake has won:
- four Grammy Awards,
- six American Music Awards,
- a record 27 Billboard Music Awards,
- two Brit Awards
- and three Juno Awards.
Drake also:
- holds several Billboard chart records;
- has the most top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (tied with Madonna),
- has the most charted songs (209) of any artists in the history of the Billboard Hot 100,
- has the most simultaneously charted Hot 100 songs in a single week (27),
- has the most time on the Hot 100 (431 weeks),
- and has the most Hot 100 debuts in a week (22).
- also has the most number-one singles on the Hot Rap Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rhythmic Charts.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Drake:
- Early life
- Career
- 2001–2009: Career beginnings
- 2010–2012: Musical breakthrough with Thank Me Later and Take Care
- 2013–2015: Nothing Was the Same and If You're Reading This It's Too Late
- 2015–2017: What a Time to Be Alive, Views and More Life
- 2018–2019: Scorpion and return to television
- 2019–present: Dark Lane Demo Tapes and sixth studio album
- Artistry
- Public image
- Achievements and awards
- Controversies
- Business ventures
- Personal life
- Discography
- Tours
- Filmography
- See also:
LL Cool J
- YouTube Video: Top 10 Best LL Cool J Songs (WatchMojo)
- YouTube Video: LL Cool J - I'm Bad (Official Video)
- YouTube Video: LL Cool J - Luv U Better (Official Video)
James Todd Smith (born January 14, 1968), better known by his stage name LL Cool J (short for Ladies Love Cool James), is an American rapper, record producer, actor, author, and entrepreneur from Queens, New York.
With the breakthrough success of his hit single "I Need a Beat" and the Radio LP, LL Cool J became an early hip-hop act to achieve mainstream success along with Kurtis Blow and Run-D.M.C.
LL Cool J has released 13 studio albums and two greatest hits compilations. His twelfth album Exit 13 (2008), was his last for his long-tenured deal with Def Jam Recordings. LL Cool J appeared in numerous films, including In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday, S.W.A.T., Deep Blue Sea, Mindhunters, and Edison.
LL Cool J currently plays NCIS Special Agent Sam Hanna in the CBS crime drama television series NCIS: Los Angeles. LL Cool J also is the host of Lip Sync Battle on Paramount Network.
A two-time Grammy Award winner, LL Cool J is known for such hip hop hits such as: as well as R&B hits such as
In 2010, VH1 placed him on their "100 Greatest Artists Of All Time" list. In 2017, LL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about LL Cool J:
With the breakthrough success of his hit single "I Need a Beat" and the Radio LP, LL Cool J became an early hip-hop act to achieve mainstream success along with Kurtis Blow and Run-D.M.C.
LL Cool J has released 13 studio albums and two greatest hits compilations. His twelfth album Exit 13 (2008), was his last for his long-tenured deal with Def Jam Recordings. LL Cool J appeared in numerous films, including In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday, S.W.A.T., Deep Blue Sea, Mindhunters, and Edison.
LL Cool J currently plays NCIS Special Agent Sam Hanna in the CBS crime drama television series NCIS: Los Angeles. LL Cool J also is the host of Lip Sync Battle on Paramount Network.
A two-time Grammy Award winner, LL Cool J is known for such hip hop hits such as: as well as R&B hits such as
- "Doin' It",
- "I Need Love",
- "All I Have",
- "Around the Way Girl"
- and "Hey Lover".
In 2010, VH1 placed him on their "100 Greatest Artists Of All Time" list. In 2017, LL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about LL Cool J:
- Early life and family
- Musical career
- Acting career
- Other ventures
- Political involvement
- Legacy
- Discography
- Filmography
- Awards and nominations
- See also:
Lil' Kim
- YouTube Video: The Queen Bee, Lil Kim, Prepares For Her Epic 2019 Hip Hop Awards Performance! | Rehearsal 360°
- YouTube Video of Lil Kim, Junior M.A.F.I.A. & More Shut Down The Stage With Classic Hits! | Hip Hop Awards ‘19
- YouTube Video: Lil' Kim - Lighters Up (Official Video)
Kimberly Denise Jones (born July 11, 1974 or 1975), better known by her stage name Lil' Kim, is an American rapper and songwriter.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she lived much of her adolescent life on the streets after being expelled from home.
In her teens, Jones would freestyle rap, influenced by fellow female hip hop artists like MC Lyte and The Lady of Rage.
In 1994, she was discovered by fellow rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who invited her to join his group Junior M.A.F.I.A.; their debut album, Conspiracy, generated two top 20 singles in the United States and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Lil' Kim's debut studio album, Hard Core (1996), was certified double platinum, has since sold more than 6 million copies worldwide, and spawned three successful singles: "No Time", "Not Tonight (Ladies Night)", and "Crush on You".
Her following albums, The Notorious K.I.M. (2000) and La Bella Mafia (2003), were also certified platinum, making her the only female rapper besides Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj to have at least three platinum-certified studio albums.
In 2001, she was featured on the single "Lady Marmalade" (a remake of the 1974 hit single of the same name, originally recorded by LaBelle), alongside Mýa, Pink, and Christina Aguilera, which topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The remake won two MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year, and a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals at the 44th Grammy Awards in 2002.
Other notable singles from this period include "The Jump Off" and "Magic Stick", the latter of which reached number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
In 2005, Lil' Kim served a one-year prison sentence for lying to a jury about her friends' involvement in a shooting four years earlier. During her incarceration, her fourth album, The Naked Truth, was released to positive reviews from critics; it remains the only album by a female rapper to be rated five mics out of five by The Source.
A reality series covering her sentence, Lil' Kim: Countdown to Lockdown, premiered on BET in 2006. She released her first mixtape, Ms. G.O.A.T., in 2008 and returned to the public eye in 2009 with an appearance on Dancing with the Stars.
Throughout the 2010s, she continued to release music and perform sporadically, collaborating with artists such as Faith Evans, Remy Ma, and Fabolous. Her fifth studio album, 9, was released in 2019.
Lil' Kim has sold more than 15 million albums and 30 million singles worldwide. Her songs "No Time", "Big Momma Thang", and "Not Tonight (Ladies Night)" were each listed on Complex's list of the 50 Best Rap Songs By Women. In 2012,
Lil' Kim was listed on VH1's 100 Greatest Women In Music list at number 45, the second highest position for a solo female hip-hop artist. Lil' Kim was ranked as one of the top 50 greatest MCs of all time in Kool Moe Dee's 2003 book, There's a God on the Mic.
Aside from music, Lil' Kim is also known for her risk-taking and luxurious approach to fashion that inspired many artists; she has been cited as a fashion icon.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Lil' Kim:
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she lived much of her adolescent life on the streets after being expelled from home.
In her teens, Jones would freestyle rap, influenced by fellow female hip hop artists like MC Lyte and The Lady of Rage.
In 1994, she was discovered by fellow rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who invited her to join his group Junior M.A.F.I.A.; their debut album, Conspiracy, generated two top 20 singles in the United States and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Lil' Kim's debut studio album, Hard Core (1996), was certified double platinum, has since sold more than 6 million copies worldwide, and spawned three successful singles: "No Time", "Not Tonight (Ladies Night)", and "Crush on You".
Her following albums, The Notorious K.I.M. (2000) and La Bella Mafia (2003), were also certified platinum, making her the only female rapper besides Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj to have at least three platinum-certified studio albums.
In 2001, she was featured on the single "Lady Marmalade" (a remake of the 1974 hit single of the same name, originally recorded by LaBelle), alongside Mýa, Pink, and Christina Aguilera, which topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The remake won two MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year, and a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals at the 44th Grammy Awards in 2002.
Other notable singles from this period include "The Jump Off" and "Magic Stick", the latter of which reached number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
In 2005, Lil' Kim served a one-year prison sentence for lying to a jury about her friends' involvement in a shooting four years earlier. During her incarceration, her fourth album, The Naked Truth, was released to positive reviews from critics; it remains the only album by a female rapper to be rated five mics out of five by The Source.
A reality series covering her sentence, Lil' Kim: Countdown to Lockdown, premiered on BET in 2006. She released her first mixtape, Ms. G.O.A.T., in 2008 and returned to the public eye in 2009 with an appearance on Dancing with the Stars.
Throughout the 2010s, she continued to release music and perform sporadically, collaborating with artists such as Faith Evans, Remy Ma, and Fabolous. Her fifth studio album, 9, was released in 2019.
Lil' Kim has sold more than 15 million albums and 30 million singles worldwide. Her songs "No Time", "Big Momma Thang", and "Not Tonight (Ladies Night)" were each listed on Complex's list of the 50 Best Rap Songs By Women. In 2012,
Lil' Kim was listed on VH1's 100 Greatest Women In Music list at number 45, the second highest position for a solo female hip-hop artist. Lil' Kim was ranked as one of the top 50 greatest MCs of all time in Kool Moe Dee's 2003 book, There's a God on the Mic.
Aside from music, Lil' Kim is also known for her risk-taking and luxurious approach to fashion that inspired many artists; she has been cited as a fashion icon.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Lil' Kim:
- Life and career
- Products and endorsements
- Philanthropy
- Personal life
- Controversies
- Awards and nominations
- Legacy
- Discography
- Tours
- Filmography
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Ice T (Rapper and TV Star)
- YouTube Video: Top 50 - Ice-T Songs [The Greatest Hits]
- YouTube Video: ICE T - O.G. Original Gangster (Video)
- YouTube Video: How Well Does Ice-T Know Law and Order: SVU?
Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician, rapper, songwriter, actor, record producer, and author.
Ice T began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays; the second hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker after Slick Rick's La Di Da Di.
The following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "Rhyme $yndicate") and released another album, Power, which went on to go Platinum. He also released several other albums that went Gold.
He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced on his 1991 rap album O.G.: Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count". The band released their self-titled debut album in 1992.
Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", the lyrics of which discussed killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late-1990s.
Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
In 2018, Ice T began hosting the true crime documentary, In Ice Cold Blood, on the Oxygen cable channel. In 2020, In Ice Cold Blood began its third season.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Ice C:
Ice T began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays; the second hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker after Slick Rick's La Di Da Di.
The following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "Rhyme $yndicate") and released another album, Power, which went on to go Platinum. He also released several other albums that went Gold.
He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced on his 1991 rap album O.G.: Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count". The band released their self-titled debut album in 1992.
Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", the lyrics of which discussed killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late-1990s.
Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
In 2018, Ice T began hosting the true crime documentary, In Ice Cold Blood, on the Oxygen cable channel. In 2020, In Ice Cold Blood began its third season.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Ice C:
- Early life
- Career
- In popular media
- Style and influence
- Personal life
- Activism
- Personal disputes
- LL Cool J
- Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
- Discography
- Filmography
- Awards and nominations
- See also:
- Official website
- Ice-T discography at Discogs
- Ice-T on IMDb
- Conspiracy Worldwide Radio Ice T interview (December 2009)
Foxy Brown (Rapper)
- YouTube Video: Foxy Brown - I'll Be (feat. Jay Z) Lyrics Video
- YouTube Video: Foxy Brown - Tables Will Turn ft. Baby Cham
- YouTube Video: Foxy Brown - Big Bad Mama (Edited) ft. Dru Hill
Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand (born September 6, 1978), better known by her stage name Foxy Brown, is an American rapper.
After signing to Def Jam in 1996, she released her debut album, Ill Na Na, that same year, and was also part of the short-lived rap group the Firm.
Her second album Chyna Doll, arrived in 1999, and her third, the Grammy-nominated Broken Silence, in 2001.
The Firm's sole album arrived in 1997. Since 2001, she has featured on songs, but has not released any albums. In 2003, she left Def Jam and cancelled the release of her Ill Na Na 2 album, but returned in 2005 once Jay-Z, then the label's president and CEO, signed her again to begin work on her new album Black Roses.
Her mixtape Brooklyn Don Diva was released in May 2008, and her visual album, King Soon Come, was slated for 2019 release but has been delayed indefinitely.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Foxy Brown:
After signing to Def Jam in 1996, she released her debut album, Ill Na Na, that same year, and was also part of the short-lived rap group the Firm.
Her second album Chyna Doll, arrived in 1999, and her third, the Grammy-nominated Broken Silence, in 2001.
The Firm's sole album arrived in 1997. Since 2001, she has featured on songs, but has not released any albums. In 2003, she left Def Jam and cancelled the release of her Ill Na Na 2 album, but returned in 2005 once Jay-Z, then the label's president and CEO, signed her again to begin work on her new album Black Roses.
Her mixtape Brooklyn Don Diva was released in May 2008, and her visual album, King Soon Come, was slated for 2019 release but has been delayed indefinitely.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Foxy Brown:
- Early life
- Music career
- 1996–1997: Ill Na Na and The Firm
- 1998–1999: Chyna Doll
- 2000–2003: Broken Silence and Ill Na Na 2: The Fever
- 2004–2006: Black Roses
- 2.52007–present: Brooklyn's Don Diva and King Soon Come
- Artistry and impact
- Personal life
- Discography
- Filmography
- See also:
Nicki Minaj
- YouTube Video: Nicki Minaj - MEGATRON
- YouTube Video: Iggy Azalea x Cardi B x Nicki Minaj - Started To Make It Hot (Mashup)
- YouTube Video: Top 10 Nicki Minaj Songs (by WatchMojo)
Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty (born December 8, 1982), known by her stage name Nicki Minaj, is a Trinidad and Tobago-born rapper, singer, and songwriter. Born in Saint James, Port of Spain, and raised in Queens, New York City, she gained public recognition after releasing the mixtapes Playtime Is Over (2007), Sucka Free (2008), and Beam Me Up Scotty (2009).
After signing with Young Money Entertainment in 2009, Minaj released her first studio album, Pink Friday (2010), which peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was ultimately certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Her second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, was released in 2012 and debuted at number one in several countries. Minaj made her film debut in the 2012 animated film Ice Age: Continental Drift.
In 2013, she was a judge on the twelfth season of American Idol. Minaj's third studio album, The Pinkprint, was released in 2014. She subsequently played supporting roles in the films The Other Woman (2014) and Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016). Her fourth studio album, Queen, was released in 2018.
Early in her career, Minaj was known for her colorful costumes and wigs. Her rapping is distinctive for its fast flow and the use of alter egos and accents, primarily British cockney.
Minaj has accumulated the most entries among women of all genres on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. As a lead artist, she has earned multiple top-five entries on the Hot 100: "Super Bass" in 2011, "Starships" in 2012, and "Bang Bang" and "Anaconda", both in 2014. As a featured artist, Minaj topped the Hot 100 with the remix of Doja Cat's "Say So" in 2020.
Minaj was ranked 15th on Billboard's list of the top artists of the 2010s—the highest female rap artist on the list.
Cited as one of the most influential female rap artists of all time, Minaj has received numerous accolades, including:
In 2016, Minaj was included on the annual Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Nicki Minaj:
After signing with Young Money Entertainment in 2009, Minaj released her first studio album, Pink Friday (2010), which peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was ultimately certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Her second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, was released in 2012 and debuted at number one in several countries. Minaj made her film debut in the 2012 animated film Ice Age: Continental Drift.
In 2013, she was a judge on the twelfth season of American Idol. Minaj's third studio album, The Pinkprint, was released in 2014. She subsequently played supporting roles in the films The Other Woman (2014) and Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016). Her fourth studio album, Queen, was released in 2018.
Early in her career, Minaj was known for her colorful costumes and wigs. Her rapping is distinctive for its fast flow and the use of alter egos and accents, primarily British cockney.
Minaj has accumulated the most entries among women of all genres on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. As a lead artist, she has earned multiple top-five entries on the Hot 100: "Super Bass" in 2011, "Starships" in 2012, and "Bang Bang" and "Anaconda", both in 2014. As a featured artist, Minaj topped the Hot 100 with the remix of Doja Cat's "Say So" in 2020.
Minaj was ranked 15th on Billboard's list of the top artists of the 2010s—the highest female rap artist on the list.
Cited as one of the most influential female rap artists of all time, Minaj has received numerous accolades, including:
- six American Music Awards,
- 11 BET Awards,
- four MTV Video Music Awards,
- four Billboard Music Awards,
- and two Billboard Women in Music Awards.
- She has also been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards.
In 2016, Minaj was included on the annual Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Nicki Minaj:
- Early life
- Career
- Artistry
- Public image
- Philanthropy
- Impact
- Products and endorsements
- Controversies
- Personal life
- Awards and nominations
- Discography
- Filmography
- Tours
- See also:
Jay Z, Rapper and Businessman
- YouTube Video: Top 10 Jay-Z Songs (by WatchMojo)
- YouTube Video: JAY-Z - Anything
- YouTube Video: The Evolution Of JAY-Z [1986 - 2017]
Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Jay-Z (stylized as JAY-Z), is an American rapper, songwriter, record executive, entrepreneur, businessman, and record producer.
Born and raised in New York City, Jay-Z first began his musical career after founding the record label Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995, and subsequently released his debut studio album Reasonable Doubt in 1996.
The album was released to widespread critical success, and solidified his standing in the music industry.
He has gone on to release twelve additional albums, including the acclaimed albums:
Jay-Z has also released the full-length collaborative albums Watch the Throne (2011) and Everything Is Love (2018) with Kanye West and wife Beyoncé, respectively.
Outside of his musical career, Jay-Z has also attained significant success and media attention for his career as a businessman. In 1999, he founded the clothing retailer Rocawear, and in 2003, he founded the luxury sports bar chain 40/40 Club. Both businesses have grown to become multi-million dollar corporations, and allowed Jay-Z to fund the start-up for the entertainment company Roc Nation, which was founded in 2008. In 2015, he acquired the tech company Aspiro and took charge of their media streaming service Tidal.
Jay-Z is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with over 50 million albums and 75 million singles sold worldwide. He has won a total of 22 Grammy Awards, the most by a rapper, and holds the record for the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200, with 14.
He has been ranked by Billboard and fellow music publication Rolling Stone as one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2017, he became the first rapper to be honored into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2018, received the commemorative "Salute to Industry Icons" award at the 60th Grammy Awards.
In June 2019, Jay-Z officially became the first hip hop billionaire, making him the fifth wealthiest African-American and the wealthiest American musician.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Jay-Z, Rapper and Business Mogul:
Born and raised in New York City, Jay-Z first began his musical career after founding the record label Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995, and subsequently released his debut studio album Reasonable Doubt in 1996.
The album was released to widespread critical success, and solidified his standing in the music industry.
He has gone on to release twelve additional albums, including the acclaimed albums:
- The Blueprint (2001),
- The Black Album (2003),
- American Gangster (2007),
- and 4:44 (2017).
Jay-Z has also released the full-length collaborative albums Watch the Throne (2011) and Everything Is Love (2018) with Kanye West and wife Beyoncé, respectively.
Outside of his musical career, Jay-Z has also attained significant success and media attention for his career as a businessman. In 1999, he founded the clothing retailer Rocawear, and in 2003, he founded the luxury sports bar chain 40/40 Club. Both businesses have grown to become multi-million dollar corporations, and allowed Jay-Z to fund the start-up for the entertainment company Roc Nation, which was founded in 2008. In 2015, he acquired the tech company Aspiro and took charge of their media streaming service Tidal.
Jay-Z is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with over 50 million albums and 75 million singles sold worldwide. He has won a total of 22 Grammy Awards, the most by a rapper, and holds the record for the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200, with 14.
He has been ranked by Billboard and fellow music publication Rolling Stone as one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2017, he became the first rapper to be honored into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2018, received the commemorative "Salute to Industry Icons" award at the 60th Grammy Awards.
In June 2019, Jay-Z officially became the first hip hop billionaire, making him the fifth wealthiest African-American and the wealthiest American musician.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Jay-Z, Rapper and Business Mogul:
- Early life
- Music career
- 1995–1997: Reasonable Doubt and In My Lifetime, Vol. 1
- 1998–2000: Vol. 2..., Vol. 3... and The Dynasty
- 2001–2002: Feud with Nas, The Blueprint and The Blueprint2
- 2003–2005: The Black Album and initial retirement
- 2005–2007: Kingdom Come and American Gangster
- 2008–2011: The Blueprint 3 and Watch the Throne
- 2012–2016: Magna Carta Holy Grail and other ventures
- 2017–2018: 4:44 and Everything Is Love
- Musical style
- Business career
- Personal life
- Discography
- Filmography
- Tours
- Books
- Awards and nominations
- See also:
The Black Eyed Peas is an American hip hop group, consisting of rappers will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo, and singer Fergie. Originally an alternative hip hop group, they subsequently added R&B and EDM influences.
Although the group was founded in Los Angeles in 1995, it was not until the release of their third album Elephunk in 2003 that they achieved high record sales. Since that time, the group has sold an estimated 76 million records (35 million albums and 41 million singles), making them one of the world's best-selling groups of all time.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, the Black Eyed Peas were the second-best-selling artist/group of all time for downloaded tracks, with over 42 million sales as of the end of 2011.
Their first major hit was the 2003 single "Where Is the Love?" from Elephunk, which topped the charts in 13 countries, including the United Kingdom, where it spent seven weeks at number one and went on to become Britain's biggest selling single of 2003.
Another European hit single from the album was "Shut Up". Their fourth album, Monkey Business, was an even bigger worldwide success, certified 4× Platinum in the U.S., and spawning four singles, "Don't Phunk with My Heart", "Don't Lie", "My Humps" and "Pump It".
In 2009, the group became one of only 11 artists to have simultaneously held the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, with their singles "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling", which topped the chart for an unprecedented 26 consecutive weeks.
This album The E.N.D later produced a third Hot 100 number-one placement with "Imma Be", making the group one of few to ever place three number one singles on the chart from the same album, before being followed with "Rock That Body" and "Meet Me Halfway", which peaked in the Top 10 of the Hot 100. "I Gotta Feeling" became the first single to sell more than one million downloads in the United Kingdom.
The Black Eyed Peas were ranked 12th on Billboard's Decade-End Chart Artist of the Decade, and 7th in the Hot 100 Artists of the Decade. At the 52nd Grammy Awards ceremony, held in January 2010, they won three awards out of six nominations.
In November 2010, they released the album The Beginning. In February 2011, the group performed at the Super Bowl XLV halftime show. The album's first two singles, "The Time (Dirty Bit)" and "Just Can't Get Enough", became international hits and topped the charts in many countries. The single "Don't Stop the Party" became an international hit as well.
Although the group was founded in Los Angeles in 1995, it was not until the release of their third album Elephunk in 2003 that they achieved high record sales. Since that time, the group has sold an estimated 76 million records (35 million albums and 41 million singles), making them one of the world's best-selling groups of all time.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, the Black Eyed Peas were the second-best-selling artist/group of all time for downloaded tracks, with over 42 million sales as of the end of 2011.
Their first major hit was the 2003 single "Where Is the Love?" from Elephunk, which topped the charts in 13 countries, including the United Kingdom, where it spent seven weeks at number one and went on to become Britain's biggest selling single of 2003.
Another European hit single from the album was "Shut Up". Their fourth album, Monkey Business, was an even bigger worldwide success, certified 4× Platinum in the U.S., and spawning four singles, "Don't Phunk with My Heart", "Don't Lie", "My Humps" and "Pump It".
In 2009, the group became one of only 11 artists to have simultaneously held the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, with their singles "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling", which topped the chart for an unprecedented 26 consecutive weeks.
This album The E.N.D later produced a third Hot 100 number-one placement with "Imma Be", making the group one of few to ever place three number one singles on the chart from the same album, before being followed with "Rock That Body" and "Meet Me Halfway", which peaked in the Top 10 of the Hot 100. "I Gotta Feeling" became the first single to sell more than one million downloads in the United Kingdom.
The Black Eyed Peas were ranked 12th on Billboard's Decade-End Chart Artist of the Decade, and 7th in the Hot 100 Artists of the Decade. At the 52nd Grammy Awards ceremony, held in January 2010, they won three awards out of six nominations.
In November 2010, they released the album The Beginning. In February 2011, the group performed at the Super Bowl XLV halftime show. The album's first two singles, "The Time (Dirty Bit)" and "Just Can't Get Enough", became international hits and topped the charts in many countries. The single "Don't Stop the Party" became an international hit as well.
Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), better known by his stage name 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, entrepreneur, investor, record, film, and television producer.
Born in the South Jamaica neighborhood of the borough of Queens, Jackson began selling drugs at age twelve during the 1980s crack epidemic.
Although he left drug-dealing to pursue a musical career, he was struck by nine bullets in a 2000 shooting. After Jackson released the compilation album Guess Who's Back? in 2002, he was discovered by Eminem and signed by Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records.
With the aid of Eminem and Dr. Dre (who produced his first major-label album, Get Rich or Die Tryin'), Jackson became one of the world's best selling rappers and rose to prominence with East Coast hip hop group G-Unit (which he leads de facto). In 2003 he founded G-Unit Records, signing his G-Unit associates Young Buck, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo.
Jackson had similar commercial and critical success with his second album, The Massacre, which was released in 2005. He released his fifth studio album, Animal Ambition, in 2014 and is working on his sixth studio album: Street King Immortal, scheduled for release in 2016.
During his career Jackson has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and won several awards, including a Grammy Award, thirteen Billboard Music Awards, six World Music Awards, three American Music Awards and four BET Awards.
He has pursued an acting career, appearing in the semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005), the Iraq War film Home of the Brave (2006) and Righteous Kill (2008). 50 Cent was ranked the sixth-best artist of the 2000s, the third-best rapper (behind Eminem and Nelly), and Get Rich or Die Tryin' and The Massacre were ranked the 12th and 37th best albums of the decade by Billboard.
Click here for more about 50 Cent.
Born in the South Jamaica neighborhood of the borough of Queens, Jackson began selling drugs at age twelve during the 1980s crack epidemic.
Although he left drug-dealing to pursue a musical career, he was struck by nine bullets in a 2000 shooting. After Jackson released the compilation album Guess Who's Back? in 2002, he was discovered by Eminem and signed by Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records.
With the aid of Eminem and Dr. Dre (who produced his first major-label album, Get Rich or Die Tryin'), Jackson became one of the world's best selling rappers and rose to prominence with East Coast hip hop group G-Unit (which he leads de facto). In 2003 he founded G-Unit Records, signing his G-Unit associates Young Buck, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo.
Jackson had similar commercial and critical success with his second album, The Massacre, which was released in 2005. He released his fifth studio album, Animal Ambition, in 2014 and is working on his sixth studio album: Street King Immortal, scheduled for release in 2016.
During his career Jackson has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and won several awards, including a Grammy Award, thirteen Billboard Music Awards, six World Music Awards, three American Music Awards and four BET Awards.
He has pursued an acting career, appearing in the semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005), the Iraq War film Home of the Brave (2006) and Righteous Kill (2008). 50 Cent was ranked the sixth-best artist of the 2000s, the third-best rapper (behind Eminem and Nelly), and Get Rich or Die Tryin' and The Massacre were ranked the 12th and 37th best albums of the decade by Billboard.
Click here for more about 50 Cent.
Kanye Omari West (born June 8, 1977) is an American recording artist, songwriter, record producer, fashion designer, and entrepreneur.
Raised in Chicago, West first became known as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the early 2000s, producing hit singles for artists such as Jay Z and Alicia Keys.
Intent on pursuing a solo career as a rapper, West released his debut album The College Dropout in 2004 to widespread critical and commercial success. He went on to pursue a variety of different styles on subsequent albums including Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), and the polarizing 808s & Heartbreak (2008).
In 2010, he released his acclaimed fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and the following year he collaborated with Jay Z on the joint LP Watch the Throne (2011). West released his abrasive sixth album, Yeezus, to further critical praise in 2013. His seventh album, The Life of Pablo, was released in 2016.
West's outspoken views and life outside of music have received significant mainstream attention. He has been a frequent source of controversy and public scrutiny for his conduct at award shows, on social media, and in other public settings.
His more publicized comments include his off-script denunciation of President George W. Bush during a live 2005 television broadcast for Hurricane Katrina relief and his interruption of singer Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
West's efforts as a fashion designer include collaborations with Nike, Louis Vuitton, and A.P.C. on both clothing and footwear, and have most prominently resulted in the YEEZY collaboration with Adidas beginning in 2013. He is the founder and head of the creative content company DONDA.
His 2014 marriage to television personality Kim Kardashian has also been subject to widespread media coverage.
West is among the most acclaimed musicians of the 21st century, and is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 32 million albums and 100 million digital downloads worldwide.
He has won a total of 21 Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all time and the most Grammy-awarded artist to have debuted in the 21st century.
Three of his albums have been included and ranked on Rolling Stone's 2012 update of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. He has also been included in a number of Forbes annual lists. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005 and 2015.
Raised in Chicago, West first became known as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the early 2000s, producing hit singles for artists such as Jay Z and Alicia Keys.
Intent on pursuing a solo career as a rapper, West released his debut album The College Dropout in 2004 to widespread critical and commercial success. He went on to pursue a variety of different styles on subsequent albums including Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), and the polarizing 808s & Heartbreak (2008).
In 2010, he released his acclaimed fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and the following year he collaborated with Jay Z on the joint LP Watch the Throne (2011). West released his abrasive sixth album, Yeezus, to further critical praise in 2013. His seventh album, The Life of Pablo, was released in 2016.
West's outspoken views and life outside of music have received significant mainstream attention. He has been a frequent source of controversy and public scrutiny for his conduct at award shows, on social media, and in other public settings.
His more publicized comments include his off-script denunciation of President George W. Bush during a live 2005 television broadcast for Hurricane Katrina relief and his interruption of singer Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
West's efforts as a fashion designer include collaborations with Nike, Louis Vuitton, and A.P.C. on both clothing and footwear, and have most prominently resulted in the YEEZY collaboration with Adidas beginning in 2013. He is the founder and head of the creative content company DONDA.
His 2014 marriage to television personality Kim Kardashian has also been subject to widespread media coverage.
West is among the most acclaimed musicians of the 21st century, and is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 32 million albums and 100 million digital downloads worldwide.
He has won a total of 21 Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all time and the most Grammy-awarded artist to have debuted in the 21st century.
Three of his albums have been included and ranked on Rolling Stone's 2012 update of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. He has also been included in a number of Forbes annual lists. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005 and 2015.
Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. (born September 27, 1982), known professionally as Lil Wayne, is an American hip hop recording artist and author from New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1991, at the age of nine, Lil Wayne joined Cash Money Records as the youngest member of the label, and half of the duo The B.G.'z, alongside fellow New Orleans-based rapper Lil' Doogie.
In 1996, Lil Wayne formed the southern hip hop group Hot Boys, with his Cash Money label-mates Juvenile, Young Turk and Lil' Doogie (who now goes by B.G.). Hot Boys debuted with Get It How U Live!, that same year. Most of the group's success came with their platinum-selling album Guerrilla Warfare (1999) and the 1999 single "Bling Bling".
Along with being the flagship artist of Cash Money Records, Lil Wayne is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of his own label imprint, Young Money Entertainment, which he founded in 2005.
Lil Wayne's solo debut album Tha Block Is Hot (1999), was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
His subsequent albums, Lights Out (2000) and 500 Degreez (2002), went on to be certified gold. Wayne reached higher popularity with his fourth album Tha Carter (2004), which was led by the single "Go D.J." and his appearance on Destiny's Child's Top 10 single "Soldier", that same year.
The album was followed by Tha Carter II (2005), as well as several mixtapes and collaborations throughout 2006 and 2007. Wayne gained more prominence with his sixth album Tha Carter III (2008), which became his most successful album to date, with first-week sales of over one million copies in the United States. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and includes the hit singles "Lollipop", "A Milli" and "Got Money".
Following the success of Tha Carter III, Wayne decided to record a rock-esque album titled Rebirth. The album, released in 2010, was certified gold by the RIAA, despite a generally negative critical response.
In March 2010, Lil Wayne began serving an 8-month jail sentence in New York after being convicted of criminal possession of a weapon stemming from an incident in July 2007.
Wayne's eighth album I Am Not a Human Being (2010), was released during his incarceration.
His 2011 album and first following his release, Tha Carter IV, sold 964,000 copies in its first week of availability in the United States. It includes the singles "6 Foot 7 Foot", "How to Love" and "She Will".
On September 27, 2012, Lil Wayne passed Elvis Presley as the male with the most entries on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with 109 songs. Lil Wayne's thirteenth studio album, Tha Carter Vhas been delayed multiple times and has no scheduled release date.
Lil Wayne has sold over 100 million records worldwide, including sold more than 15 million albums and 37 million digital tracks in United States, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.
In 1991, at the age of nine, Lil Wayne joined Cash Money Records as the youngest member of the label, and half of the duo The B.G.'z, alongside fellow New Orleans-based rapper Lil' Doogie.
In 1996, Lil Wayne formed the southern hip hop group Hot Boys, with his Cash Money label-mates Juvenile, Young Turk and Lil' Doogie (who now goes by B.G.). Hot Boys debuted with Get It How U Live!, that same year. Most of the group's success came with their platinum-selling album Guerrilla Warfare (1999) and the 1999 single "Bling Bling".
Along with being the flagship artist of Cash Money Records, Lil Wayne is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of his own label imprint, Young Money Entertainment, which he founded in 2005.
Lil Wayne's solo debut album Tha Block Is Hot (1999), was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
His subsequent albums, Lights Out (2000) and 500 Degreez (2002), went on to be certified gold. Wayne reached higher popularity with his fourth album Tha Carter (2004), which was led by the single "Go D.J." and his appearance on Destiny's Child's Top 10 single "Soldier", that same year.
The album was followed by Tha Carter II (2005), as well as several mixtapes and collaborations throughout 2006 and 2007. Wayne gained more prominence with his sixth album Tha Carter III (2008), which became his most successful album to date, with first-week sales of over one million copies in the United States. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and includes the hit singles "Lollipop", "A Milli" and "Got Money".
Following the success of Tha Carter III, Wayne decided to record a rock-esque album titled Rebirth. The album, released in 2010, was certified gold by the RIAA, despite a generally negative critical response.
In March 2010, Lil Wayne began serving an 8-month jail sentence in New York after being convicted of criminal possession of a weapon stemming from an incident in July 2007.
Wayne's eighth album I Am Not a Human Being (2010), was released during his incarceration.
His 2011 album and first following his release, Tha Carter IV, sold 964,000 copies in its first week of availability in the United States. It includes the singles "6 Foot 7 Foot", "How to Love" and "She Will".
On September 27, 2012, Lil Wayne passed Elvis Presley as the male with the most entries on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with 109 songs. Lil Wayne's thirteenth studio album, Tha Carter Vhas been delayed multiple times and has no scheduled release date.
Lil Wayne has sold over 100 million records worldwide, including sold more than 15 million albums and 37 million digital tracks in United States, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.
Cornell Iral Haynes, Jr. (born November 2, 1974), known professionally as Nelly, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, investor, and occasional actor from St. Louis, Missouri. Nelly embarked on his music career with Midwest hip hop group St. Lunatics, in 1993 and signed to Universal Records in 1999.
Under Universal, Nelly began his solo career in the year 2000, with his debut album Country Grammar, of which the title-track was a top ten hit. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and went on to peak at number one. Country Grammar is Nelly's best-selling album to date, selling over 8.4 million copies in the United States. His following album Nellyville, produced the number-one hits "Hot in Herre" and "Dilemma" (featuring Kelly Rowland).
Other singles included "Work It" (featuring Justin Timberlake), "Air Force Ones" (featuring Murphy Lee and St. Lunatics), "Pimp Juice" and "#1".
With the same-day dual release of Sweat and Suit (2004) and the compilation Sweatsuit (2006), Nelly continued to generate many chart-topping hits. Sweat debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 342,000 copies in its first week. On the same week of release, Suit debuted at number one, selling around 396,000 copies in its first week on the same chart.
Nelly's fifth studio album, Brass Knuckles, was released on September 16, 2008, after several delays. It produced the singles "Party People" (featuring Fergie), "Stepped on My J'z" (featuring Jermaine Dupri and Ciara) and "Body on Me" (featuring Akon and Ashanti).
In 2010, Nelly released the album 5.0. The lead single, "Just a Dream", was certified triple platinum in the United States. It also included the singles "Move That Body" (featuring T-Pain and Akon) and "Gone" (a sequel to the 2002 single "Dilemma" in collaboration with Kelly Rowland).
Nelly won Grammy Awards in 2003 and 2004 and had a supporting role in the 2005 remake film The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. He has two clothing lines, Vokal and Apple Bottoms. He has been referred to by Peter Shapiro as "one of the biggest stars of the new millennium", and the RIAA ranks Nelly as the fourth best-selling rap artist in American music history, with 21 million albums sold in the United States. On December 11, 2009, Billboard ranked Nelly the number three Top Artist of the Decade.
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Under Universal, Nelly began his solo career in the year 2000, with his debut album Country Grammar, of which the title-track was a top ten hit. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and went on to peak at number one. Country Grammar is Nelly's best-selling album to date, selling over 8.4 million copies in the United States. His following album Nellyville, produced the number-one hits "Hot in Herre" and "Dilemma" (featuring Kelly Rowland).
Other singles included "Work It" (featuring Justin Timberlake), "Air Force Ones" (featuring Murphy Lee and St. Lunatics), "Pimp Juice" and "#1".
With the same-day dual release of Sweat and Suit (2004) and the compilation Sweatsuit (2006), Nelly continued to generate many chart-topping hits. Sweat debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 342,000 copies in its first week. On the same week of release, Suit debuted at number one, selling around 396,000 copies in its first week on the same chart.
Nelly's fifth studio album, Brass Knuckles, was released on September 16, 2008, after several delays. It produced the singles "Party People" (featuring Fergie), "Stepped on My J'z" (featuring Jermaine Dupri and Ciara) and "Body on Me" (featuring Akon and Ashanti).
In 2010, Nelly released the album 5.0. The lead single, "Just a Dream", was certified triple platinum in the United States. It also included the singles "Move That Body" (featuring T-Pain and Akon) and "Gone" (a sequel to the 2002 single "Dilemma" in collaboration with Kelly Rowland).
Nelly won Grammy Awards in 2003 and 2004 and had a supporting role in the 2005 remake film The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. He has two clothing lines, Vokal and Apple Bottoms. He has been referred to by Peter Shapiro as "one of the biggest stars of the new millennium", and the RIAA ranks Nelly as the fourth best-selling rap artist in American music history, with 21 million albums sold in the United States. On December 11, 2009, Billboard ranked Nelly the number three Top Artist of the Decade.
Click Here for more about Nelly.