If you didnt like rap before, you will now

[EddMarkStarr]

This is an awesome thread, fabulouslyghetto!

Rap is still fresh enough that it begs questions about it's beginnings, and where it's heading.
See, I grew up in Norfolk, Va. through the 1960's, back when even the radio stations were divided by the color of the musicians. White radio stations rarely aired black talent.
Norfolk had one radio station for black audiences, WRAP - 850 AM.

At night, WRAP aired talk radio shows where anybody involved in the music industry could go on-air and talk about personalities, trends, and new talent coming up in the business.
One of the best interviews was Rufus Thomas - "America's Oldest Teenager". Rufus goes all the way back to Sun Records in the 1950's, but he scored a hit song in 1968, "Do The Funky Chicken".
Rufus Thomas has often been described as the first rapper, but Mr. Thomas rejected that title, saying other guys back in the 1940's were the first rappers.

I was in middle school in 1971 when Rufus landed another hit song, "The Breakdown", at the age of 55. My dad flipped when he saw Rufus on television dancing like a kid.

By the time of "The Breakdown", Rufus was at STAX Record and he performed live when STAX hosted the Watts Concert in 1972 - he's on YouTube!

 

[EddMarkStarr]

Now it's time for the hard truth.

Ya know how one day you wake up, and you can feel change in the air? By 1973 something was changing when it came to popular music.
The early 70's was deep into TSOP - The Sound of Philadelphia. The best example was The Spinners, "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love".

By the time I was in high school, my friends were itchin' for music that had real grit to it. People around me didn't want TSOP anymore.

Here's what I mean, listen to New York City and their song, written/produced by Thom Bell, "Quick, Fast, In A Hurry", from 1973.
Something had to give! By the time this song aired, rap already had a hold in large cities on both coasts of the USA.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Yall would be surprised how many people under the age of 40 would tell you eminem started rap. and if they had social media during the 90s we would be digging up tweets of wypipo saying vanilla ice started rap.

 

[frankfrank]

This is an awesome thread, fabulouslyghetto!

Rap is still fresh enough that it begs questions about it's beginnings, and where it's heading.
See, I grew up in Norfolk, Va. through the 1960's, back when even the radio stations were divided by the color of the musicians. White radio stations rarely aired black talent.
Norfolk had one radio station for black audiences, WRAP - 850 AM.

At night, WRAP aired talk radio shows where anybody involved in the music industry could go on-air and talk about personalities, trends, and new talent coming up in the business.
One of the best interviews was Rufus Thomas

Dang, you beat me to it. As soon as I read the sentence in red (and I mean **INSTANTANEOUSLY** - like within a fraction of a second, BEFORE THE IMAGE EVEN REGISTERED) my thought was "I'll quote this, and figure out how to use WRAP as a pun" because I didn't even NEED to see the call letters. I mean, I'm still somewhere "on the spectrum" with some Aspergers still in me - what can I say? - so often I zoom right past what's obvious and I bury myself in the details. I'm somehow conditioned that way.

I even have a few of their weekly record Charts from back then. Maybe I should send a couple scans?

And who could have known in advance (answer: NOBODY!) that their call letters could almost be interpreted as "accidental clairvoyance" or something?

I didn't realize WRAP was cool enough to also have interviews, background information, etc. - beyond the usual "call of duty" which meant being good at playing music, and hopefully talking about (and having ads for) upcoming concerts, and other things of interest to the listeners. I also didn't know that Rufus had moved there from WDIA (Memphis) that early.

So often - TOO often - soul (and, earlier, R&B) radio stations were strictly limited to medium to large-sized cities. Even though I grew up a mere 40 miles (as-the-crow-flies) from downtown Detroit, the only reliable and "solid" signal from a soul station was the nightly, hours-long infomercial (long before the word existed) that Randy's Record Shop used to run on WLAC out of Nashville, and of course that was night-time only, but they COULD be "solidly" listened to. The two AM soul stations in Detroit were weak where I was; even in the daytime the reception was weak. One of them was even located halfway out to where I was (WCHB, licensed to AND broadcasting from the western suburb of Inkster), but they were sharply "DIRECTIONAL ANTENNA" TOWARD Detroit and away from me, so that wasn't helpful.

This finally changed in 1965 when I finally had my first radio with FM, and WGPR-FM in Detroit was COMPLETELY reliable. About a year later, a second soul FM station signed on (or, rather, changed format to soul from...I can't remember what, now...I think simulcasted a rock and roll AM station and signed off at sundown!) in Toledo, and they were weaker but also pretty reliable.

I also used to harvest some "extreme" night skip (skywave) and was very often listening to Wolfman Jack all the way out of Mexico, on XERF from a small city across the Rio Grande.

Ahhhh, good times.

I'm pretty encyclopedic about where radio stations were, AND WHAT THEIR FORMATS WERE, back in those late Sixties days...nationwide AND CANADA TOO, though over the decades I've lost some of that memory....

My dad flipped when he saw Rufus on television dancing like a kid.

he's on YouTube!

And no doubt YOU flipped too. Your dad sounds pretty cool but, then, he and Rufus were probably a somewhat-similar age.

Of course, just about everything and everybody is on YouTube now. For media other than predominately text, art, data, literature (and other things that are "still"), YT is probably the best thing ever to happen to the internet.

 

[frankfrank]

Edd, whatever material YOU posted...WOW, that's extremely far back! I don't even think it's from the Sixties. I'm sure that by the first time I heard WRAP (in Michigan!), which was probably 1961, they were already running 5,000 watts.

Actually, I've heard it said OFTEN, BY MANY PEOPLE IN THE COLLECTING HOBBY, that their love of black music (which is VERY common among record collectors!) was spawned by listening to WLAC. Their signal almost got to the Rockies at night. I was fortunate enough to have grown up with stronger rock and roll radio stations in Detroit, which played a lot of the stuff the soul stations played anyway, lol.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

You're correct frankfrank, after WWII there was only a scattered collection of radio stations across the USA airing black talent. Norfolk, Virginia had WRAP, started in 1951 due to the presence of one of the largest navy bases on the east coast and all the military men who made Norfolk a hot zone of commercial activity. In the 50's and 60's, military men of color had stable incomes, married or single, if you catered to their needs there was good money to be made.

It wasn't until 1970 that I learned about the "network", where stations aimed at black audiences collaborated and promoted new talent from around the country, usually with the involvement of "colored" record labels.

I've never told you guys that WRAP sponsored concerts at Norfolk State College, where we could see and hear singers from the radio perform live in front of the whole community.
It was at NSC in 1971 that I got to hear Roberta Flack sing live in concert just before she signed with Atlantic Records. At the time, Roberta sang at a Washington DC club, but would travel to black colleges along the east coast in sponsored promo tours.
WRAP staff recorded that 1971 concert, and just a few months later Roberta Flack teamed with Donny Hathaway to record a hit album.

Rap was already changing the world of music right when Roberta's career was taking-off, but THIS is what I was hearing on WRAP Radio when I was in high school in 1972.

 

[ShadowCat]

Yall would be surprised how many people under the age of 40 would tell you eminem started rap. and if they had social media during the 90s we would be digging up tweets of wypipo saying vanilla ice started rap.

Hey Fab question do you listen to The Weekend? I like his stuff that sounds like its from the 80's like Take my Breath, Blinding Lights does his latest CD sound like these songs??

 

[EddMarkStarr]

Yall would be surprised how many people under the age of 40 would tell you eminem started rap. and if they had social media during the 90s we would be digging up tweets of wypipo saying vanilla ice started rap.

Rap is the first music genre to develop during my lifetime.
(I apologize if it looked like I was taking over your topic).

I'm still in awe of the hurdles rap and hip hop faced to becoming the dominate music of a new generation.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Rap is the first music genre to develop during my lifetime.
(I apologize if it looked like I was taking over your topic).

I'm still in awe of the hurdles rap and hip hop faced to becoming the dominate music of a new generation.

I'm not one to complain about taking over topics I try to explain to the youngins, don't take rap for granted because it was an uphill battle just to find places to let us play our music. there's a lot of politics and [STRIKE]racism[/STRIKE] alternative views of race involved in the music industry and it's definitely a double-edged sword that rap has gone mainstream. This isn't anti-change but rap was once heavy on the anti-establishment wave now it's the voice of the establishment. it was a really sad moment when rappers who have influence over the audience started endorsing trump but i'm getting away from the original topic which is terrible rap so i'm gonna watch this video again, even people who don't know what rap is should tell that this was a clusterfuck of a catastrophe of a nightmare of a performance. the sound effects took me out man. and then the talking to himself.

 

[Peloso]

This isn't anti-change but rap was once heavy on the anti-establishment wave now it's the voice of the establishment.

This happens to any anti-establishment art form. What is most telling is how it maintains it's edge/integrity after it gets sucked into the fray.