11. "That phrase made perfect sense in sweden in the late 80's-early 90's..." In response to In response to 0
There was a lot of popular music at the time that incorporated rapping while clearly not being Hip-Hop (C+C music Factory, Technotronic, Leila K, Snap!, 2 Unlimited and more euro-dance one could possibly imagine).
This was music that for the "outsiders" was the same thing as Hip-Hop (=someone talking rhythmically over danceable-and note that Hip-Hop itself was frequently danceable in those years-music); believe you me, the regular old rock guy could not tell/did not care about the difference between a De La soul song and Rebel MC's "Street tuff".
Basically, I've uttered variations of that phrase (I don't think I ever worded it like that though since I recognized MOST Hip-Hop as a form of "rap-music" as well; still, the "heads" rarely used the phrase "rap-music" to describe Hip-Hop, it was the people who dug Technotronic-and Hammer and anilla Ice for that matter (often the same crowd)-that said they liked "rap-music") and have no shame in it.
The distinction as made during the underground era in the late 90's (="real" stuff vs. commercial) was kind of corny though but I can understand where it's coming from even if I'm not sure americans actually made the distinction in the late 80's-early 90's but that was probably because the more purely dance-rooted stuff was never getting viewed as anything else but dance, at least not by people "in the know"...