You know that rap voice that you associate with Kurtis Blow, Sugar Hill Gang, the Furious Five and when someone makes fun of old school rap they put on that voice and flow and start with lines like "Well, my name is Special G and I'm here to say..."
You know what I am talking about?
Funk Master Flex and other other DJs will go into Old School sets, and the beats will be banging but as soon as that style of rapping comes on I can't get with it and it sounds so dated to me.
I wonder did all old school rappers do it? Did it have to become the dominate form of flow or were there competing styles?
It's funny because Run DMC did it a little bit but i really don't associate it with them and then by the time Rakim came along he ethered it and it was definitely dead at that point but I have always been curious as to the origins of it.
********** "naive as the dry leaves on the ground looking past the trees to the blue sky asking 'why me?'" -Blu
1. "Grandmaster Caz wasn't it? " In response to Reply # 0 Mon Feb-11-13 05:07 PM by Menphyel7
I think it was Sugar Hill Gang I've heard that Sugar Hill Gang was seen as elementary by the time they came out and they set the game back ...it was mainstream vs underground even then.
-DJ R-Tistic- Member since Nov 06th 2008 51986 posts
Mon Feb-11-13 05:18 PM
8. "Dude...I wasn't even there back then, but how can you judge the way" In response to Reply # 5
that literally EVERYBODY rapped, as if there were really alternatives??? Do you think they felt it was corny then?? Can't be possible to me...only folks who may have felt it was corny were people who didn't like Rap once Rakim got to it either.
17. "I guess that's my question. Did everybody rap like that back then?" In response to Reply # 8
I am sure it wasn't seen as corny at the time. The more I listen to it it sounds like that silly radio DJ voice that some radio DJs still kind of use today (older soul stations). I wonder if the radio DJs were the inspiration or did MCs inspire the radio DJs.
********** "naive as the dry leaves on the ground looking past the trees to the blue sky asking 'why me?'" -Blu
7. "Impossible to pin point" In response to Reply # 0
Most would say Herc was the start but he wasn't flowing he was just making the calls, and if you site that as the ref then you have to go back further both stateside and in Jamaica. But Herc then inspired other DJ's and they all came with separate MC's who would do the calls. Which is how the MC took form as it was in that era, the cat shouting out shit over the DJ sets until they started developing sets of their own.
Caz was considered the first Grandmaster MC, and he was a DJ too. He was the definitive MC for the time period, but not the first to do it. There were a lot doing it around the same time, too many to call anyone the start of it.
An interesting thing with Caz though is that the reason he became a grandmaster is because his style was beyond what everyone else was doing. If you really listen to the way he spit shit, he was doing multi's and runs way before anyone. In many regards the line goes from Caz to BDK/Rakim and out from there.
Run DMC were looked down upon initially in MC circles because they were throwing back for the most part though Run would evenutally set himself apart style wise.
18. "I've always heard these as essentially old-school flows" In response to Reply # 0
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIPQ35Kg3-A - skip to :40; they cop a few lyrics from 'original talking blues' from a few years earlier, but that recording is not nearly as rhythmic.
20. "Interesting that the Jubalaires did not come up in this convo. " In response to Reply # 0
So I stand by my argument in General that its revisionist youtube only history to cite them as the inventors of hip-hop. I think Lonesone D post also takes the argument a part by giving earlier examples (wish the link for the first one still worked).
********** "Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
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