Essay About Rap Music

Rap music from the 1990’s to the year 2000 is known in hip hop as “the golden era”. This era is all about individuality and innovation of creating music in one of the newest musical art forms. Rap music started out as the expression of young black youths in the inner city of New York. Rap music is rhymed storytelling accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music. It began in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx in New York City as a part of hip hop, composed of graffiti, breakdancing, and rap music. From the outset, rap music has articulated the pleasures and problems of black urban life in contemporary America. Rappers speak with the voice of personal experience, taking on the identity of the observer or narrator. Rap music has lost a lot of it purity and essence due to the multimillion dollar business. Rap music is always critizied because of it’s violent and sexual nature but its just reporting what is views in this cold world.(Rose, 1994)
One of the earliest songs that

Run DMC pioneered a rap rock style of music that took the music world by storm. Their music and stage performance also set them apart from other rappers in the late 1980’s. The visual of their street clothes included: Adidas track suit, Adidas shell toes, leather pants, jean jackets and knago hats. Run-DMC was the first rap artist to have their video “Rock Box” played on MTV which gave the group international visibility. They would receive a 1.5 million dollar endorsement deal form Adidas, the first in rap history. The group would collaborate with rock group Aerosmith on their third album “Raising Hell” on a song called “Walk the Way” that would take the group and rap music to a whole new level. The song would peak at number four on the billboard charts and the album would be certified platinum one month later. Raising Hell would go on to sell 3 million copies that year. In 2009 Run-DMC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Hess,