"What Is" is a weekly series that explores early media descriptions of an object, genre, or concept. See the archives here.

   

Rap began to coalesce into a recognizable musical genre sometime in the 1970s, but it wasn't until a decade later that its roots took hold and the media started taking notice.

From the New York Times to the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Associated Press, journalists did their best to define this bubbling subculture that was no longer seen as just a fad. (This was a glorious time if you loved scare quotes.)

Ratter assembled a handful of these early descriptions from the early '80s, which is a good time capsule of when America began to steal hip-hop's soul. 

 

 

 

Although rap music — basically rhymes that are spoken, not sung over a bare-bones dance beat…

—The Paris News (Sunday, August 30, 1981)

 

 

 

 

Comedian Mel Brooks has decided to get in on the current fad in “rap” music (a rhythmic monologue to a musical background) by creating his own.

—The Salina Journal (Sunday, December 6, 1981)

 

 

 

 

And their blasting of “rap music,” songs accompanied by speaking.

—Santa Cruz Sentinel (Monday, March 29, 1982) 

 

 

 

 

"The Message" is a seven-minute single by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on the Sugar Hill label, a 'rap record,' in the parlance of the day...That is, it spotlights spoken or chanted vocals - rapping - rather than singing.

—New York Times (September 3, 1982)

 

 

 

 

Break dancing began as an accompaniment to "rap" music, rhythmic speech over a heavy beat...Rap music started when disc jockeys began talking over instrumental breaks in the records they played in clubs.

—New York Times (October 18, 1983)

 

 

 

 

Unaccompanied by instruments at first, rap songs originally were stories that grew out of street talk. They were spoken in sing-song, and the subject matter dealt with girls, money, and the male ego trip.

—The Evening Independent (June 8, 1984) 

 

 

 

 

In a park, where the young dancers and DJs won’t interrupt pedestrian traffic, rap music has found a nice in Ottawa...The mixture of singsong speech and driving rhythmic beat that has had New York and Chicago street dancers breaking out in spine-twisting contortions for the past six years is now heard every Sunday in Confederation Park, near the National Arts Centre.

—Ottawa Citizen (August 30, 1985)

 

 

 

 

Rap, music from the urban streets of Baltimore, Washington D.C., and especially New York City, now has a national following. The sound gets its punch from a bottom heavy beat and its message from the rhythmic rhymes laid over the disc jockey’s scratch and spin movements on two adjacent turntables.

—The Palm Beach Post (August 15, 1986)

 

 

 

 

Disco Fever has emerged as the headquarters of rap music, which is usually heard on city streets. Rappers transpose street slang into chanted couplets. The words are spoken (or 'rapped'), not sung, over a stark, rhythmic base and deal with topics as diverse as unemployment and birth control.

—People (May 16, 1983) 

 

 

 

[COVER IMAGE: (Almighty KG of the Cold Crush Brothers at Harlem World 1981.) Joe Conzo/MCNY]