If you’re having trouble navigating around
the hip hop/rap genre, you may find the numerous rap styles available
to be too much of a good thing, especially if you’re trying to decide
on your own favorite rapping style. While there are no set rules to determine
what rap styles an artist is classified to, there are some helpful indicators.
If you look at the general history of music styles, you’ll
see that classifying rap styles may be easier than you originally thought.
The factors most helpful to determining what rapping style your favorite
rapper fits in are: lyrical content, how the lyrical content is performed,
and geographical location.
Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg are all from California,
hence West Coast Rappers. Busta Rhymes, Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z are
all East Coast rappers. However, most of them could also be classified
as Hardcore or Gangsta Rap. While many rappers are known for at least
one style, what helps determine which rap styles they fit into are made
most clear by looking at an overall history of music styles, and to which
of these styles the rappers are most drawn.
Looking back, you’ll see that although groundbreaking,
the early rap styles were closely related. Early rappers like Grandmaster
Flash, The Sugarhill Gang, and Run-DMC (which fall into the Old School
Style) created songs by scratching records and looping drum beats. As
time went on, rap styles progressed along with the growing demand for
exciting new sounds.
Making quick history of music styles, new methods emerged
as rappers were pushed to new limits. To address the growing demand for
something new, rappers invented rapping styles that had never been heard
before.
By incorporating live instrumentation, sampling, electronic
beats, and other fabricated sounds ranging from a gun shot to the pouring
of champagne, rappers were able to stay one step ahead of the fans and
keep them enthusiastic about future albums.
In some of these catchy new music styles, the music itself
helps dictate how a rapper rhymes, and to some extent the content of their
lyrics. MC Hammer, P. Diddy, and Will Smith are clearly individualistic
artists, however, much of their upbeat rhythms and catchy tunes tend to
relegate them to Pop-Rap. On the flip side, hardcore rappers like DMX,
Wutang Clan, Eminem, Ice Cube, and Ice-T break from the history of music
styles with their aggressive attitudes, explicit lyrics, and in some instances
a sense of humor. Like Pop-Rap, the music styles of Hardcore Rap help
set the tone for the songs that will echo the rapper's sentiment, whether
it be positive or aggressive.
Fans of rap music span from the urban to the suburban,
and even the rural. If the history of music styles has shown us anything,
it’s that fans and artists will not be limited by artificial boundaries
of style. However, the boundaries set by style often do help artists make
decisions about the type of song they want to write, and in the case of
fans the rapping styles they enjoy most.
|
