510 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
from early explorations into poetry recitations with jazz accompaniment dating
back to the Beats and continued in the 1970s by the Last Poets and by Gil Scott-
Heron, both of whom stressed social commentary refl ecting the black national-
ist movement of the 1960s. The 1973 album Hustlers Convention features jazz and
funk musicians, notably Kool and the Gang, backing recitations by Lightnin’
Rod, one of the Last Poets, that use the methods of toasting to recount the rise
and fall of a young ghetto criminal. In its funky rhythms, unvarnished portray-
als of ghetto life, and earnest social message, Hustlers Convention is a forerunner
of much of the rap music that was yet to come.
The MC’s rapping went hand in hand with the DJ’s ability to extract, alter,
and extend instrumental breaks from records—in short, to spontaneously cre-
ate a rhythmic instrumental accompaniment, or beat, for the MC. Caribbean
immigrants fi gured prominently in the ranks of early hip-hop DJs, and their
beats drew on the similar practices found in dub, a Jamaican genre dating back
to the late 1960s. By the end of the 1970s DJs in the South Bronx such as Kool Herc
(a Jamaican immigrant), Grandmaster Flash (born in Barbados), and Disco Wiz
(born in the South Bronx to a Puerto Rican father and a Cuban mother), either
doing their own rapping or working with early MCs such as Cowboy and Melle
Mel, had attracted enthusiastic audiences to their live performances. In fact,
their art was intrinsically about live performance. The combination of DJing and
MCing was something one did with records, not something to be done on records.
That changed in 1979 with the release of “Rapper’s Delight,” the fi rst com-
mercially successful hip-hop record. “Rapper’s Delight” was the result of efforts
by Sylvia Robinson, a producer, singer, and guitarist who in the 1950s had scored
an R&B hit, “Love Is Strange,” as half of the duo Mickey and Sylvia. As a co-owner
of Sugar Hill Records, Robinson assembled a group of MCs and named them the
Sugar Hill Gang. She recorded their rapping over a backing of studio musicians
recreating the instrumental break from Chic’s current disco hit “Good Times.”
The breakaway success of “Rapper’s Delight” proved that rap could be captured
on vinyl and that doing so could turn a profi t. At the same time, it marked a
shift in the music’s center of gravity from the DJ to the MC. Because live interac-
tion with dancers, a signifi cant part of the DJ’s craft, had no place in recorded
hip-hop, the DJ came to be seen as merely providing a backdrop for the rapping.
Likewise, as MCing came to be less about acting as master of ceremonies than
about crafting rap performances, attention increasingly turned to the work of
rappers, as MCs were now more likely to be called.
As record labels scrambled to sign rap artists in the 1980s, the rappers in
turn began to craft songs with meatier content than the feel-good party rhymes
of “Rapper’s Delight.” As early as 1982 rap had produced its fi rst hit single with
social commentary: “The Message” (LG 20.2), credited to Grandmaster Flash and
the Furious Five, who performed it in concert even though only one of the furi-
ous Five, Melle Mel, appears on the record. Sylvia Robinson and producer Duke
Bootee (Ed Fletcher) wrote the fi rst half of the rap, and Melle Mel (Melvin Glover)
wrote the second half, an extended toast much in the style of Hustlers Convention.
Duke Bootee also created the instrumental track with a synthesizer and a drum
machine, a device that imitates percussive sounds and sound effects, such as
the shattering glass that introduces the rapping in “The Message.” On top of the
ominous-sounding minor-mode beat, the gritty depiction of ghetto life set the
tone for much rap to come.“Rapper’s Delight”LG 20.2172028_20_495-513_r3_sd.indd 510 23/01/13 11:16 AM