Sherelle wrote: >I think there is such a thing as a hip hop culture. In the mid to late >seventies, we had The Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash who in my >opinion, were early forerunners of the hip hop culture we know today. We also >had electronic dance music like that which came from the German group, >Kraftwerk (Trans-Europe Express) which as a Black person, I remember being >very popular with the Black community in the late seventies. I feel that rap >music came about from the meshing of the two styles.
To what degree does the history of rap predate the mid to late 1970s? In 1970 Roeg & Cammell's PERFORMANCE soundtrack featured "Wake Up Niggers" by The Last Poets, certainly proto-rap. I wasn't aware of hearing rap before Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" exploded all over the radio. There's also Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from 1965, which I never connected as rap until I saw it performed as a rap song much later in a movie (whose title I disremember). Since I am, to understate it, not fond of rap, this caused severe mental conflicts, since I am very much a Dylan fan. I never thought of Kraftwerk as being popular with the Black community, and I certainly wouldn't have thought of that style as being a cornerstone of rap music. Interesting. Gil NP: Bob Dylan, Dark Eyes
