THE RAP PHENOMENON: BREAKING AWAY OR HERE TO STAY?

The idea of a street culture growing into a mass phenomenon is one of the enduring myths associated with popular music. In the '60s, observers of rock music spoke of a quality they labeled "street credibility," a cachet of hipness earned by the right connections to the emerging youth culture.

Black popular music, in its origins, is the very embodiment of street credibility. Bluesmen and the R&B pioneers on the road house circuit had no choice but to "pay their dues" and their music kept its connections to, its roots in, a community.

As the '60s progressed, rock music came to be seen by critics and fans more and more as an art form charged with the burden of carrying messages, of standing for certain shared values.

At the same time, black popular music began to be dominated by the Motown style. This was music far removed with its gritty R&B origins, a slick music that was obviously commercial in purpose, offering entertainment for its own sake.

The style of flash entertainment first made routine by Motown became the form of soul music that dominated throughout the '70s. Disco changed the beat, but not the basic show business emphasis on surface and form, rather than content or meaning. At the same time, the values of "artistic expression" in rock led to the era of superstar indulgence.

Punk was the rock music reaction to this trend, a social corrective seeking to bring the overblown edifice of rock back down to "street level." The ideology of punk involved putting the tools of production into the hands of many, proclaiming "anybody can do it."

Rap was the black music parallel to the punk movement. It began emerging at approximately the same time, although it took much longer to be discovered and publicized. It had an ideology that did for black music what punk did for rock, creating a technology and an atmosphere where "anybody can do it" could flourish as a viable ideal. In rap, anybody can do it, as long as they've got what it takes—though it's not as easy as it looks. But rap, growing out of a really impoverished economic environment, started out even more democratically accessible than punk ever was. In punk you at least needed a guitar and an amplifier and a drum kit. In rap all you had to do was grab hold of someone's microphone. "Get on the mike and start to rap" was both the rallying cry and the challenge and the parks and schoolyards of the South Bronx were filled with kids eager to pick it up.

Both Presidents Carter and Reagan traveled to the South Bronx at the start of their terms to have their photos taken while standing in the rubble and promising urban renewal. But in between presidential visits, the area remained a devastated eyesore of urban ruin.

It is a cruel irony that the unreconstructed ghetto status of the South Bronx provided the physical conditions that allowed the developing art of rapping to flourish. Parks and schoolyards there are not the neat and orderly enclosures found in middle-class neighborhoods, which meant they could be used by the rappers and their audience for the outdoor competitions of sound systems that gave birth to rap without any opposition from elderly bench-sitters or organized basketball teams.

Another thing that would have only been possible In the ghetto was the means by which the early rappers appropriated their power supply. The kids would cart their turntables, amplifiers, mikes and records into a park, then pry open the electrical boxes at the base of the park lights and tap into the city power lines. The police, if they saw this going on, usually looked the other way, figuring this was a relatively harmless pastime.

From the parks, rapping moved indoors to parties and dances held at social clubs and the community centers that were built into some Bronx housing projects. This was the circuit that first made the reputations of the early rappers and DJs like Hollywood and Kool D.J. Here, a legendary South Bronx figure who never got to make a record but is widely credited with first popularizing rap style. These DJs and rappers developed large followings of kids who would tape their performances on their portable boom boxes. While people like Kool Here were rapping, people like Grandmaster Flash—the generation of rappers who caught the movement's commercial potential—were in the audience.

By 1979, rap was a major phenomenon in black New York, having spread from the South Bronx to Manhattan's Harlem and Brooklyn's Bed-Sty areas. Rap events at clubs like Harlem World in Harlem and Disco Fever in the Bronx attracted thousands of kids. It was a devoted audience of fans who knew the names and reputations of the rappers, who were now aligned in three, four or five man "crews" such as Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, the Funky Four Plus One, the Fearless Four and the Treacherous Three. But rap was still an art of live performance—the only recordings were the cassette tapes made by the fans.

In rap, anybody can do it as long as they've got what it takes

It took the business acumen of Sylvia Robinson, a black woman with a long career behind her as a recording artist (as part of the duet Mickey and Sylvia she had a hit, "Love Is Strange," in 1956, and in '74 she had a disco hit "Pillow Talk") and record producer, to turn this audience into a record market. Robinson had a recording studio and record label operation headquartered in Englewood, New Jersey, and not much to do with it. She decided to move Sugarhill Records into the rap business.

Her approach was typically exploitive. Robinson had seen the original rap crews working at Harlem World, but when it came time to record she looked elsewhere. Perhaps she thought the young kids she had seen were too wild and unmanageable, or perhaps she just wanted to make sure she would have complete control over the product. So instead she created her own rap group, the Sugarhill Gang.

"My son and I drove out on Pallisades Avenue here in Englewood just auditioning people," is how Robinson tells the story. "My son had a tape in his car and we'd have fellows get in the car and rap to the tape. One fellow was working in a pizza parlor and he came out with his apron on, flour all over him. That was Master Gee."

The Sugarhill Gang was thus purely a producer's creation. But Robinson and her son Joe wrote a clever rap for them set to the famous bass-line rhythm of Chic's "Good Times." The result, "Rapper's Delight," was a huge success.

"Rapper's Delight" sent a shock wave through the South Bronx. No one up there had ever heard of this Sugarhill Gang. They had never been hanging around the Fever or the World. And yet here they were having a hit record with the hip-hop style. The Bronx kids felt ripped off.

"At first we thought it must be some kind of tape they was playin' on the radio," Sha Rock of the Funky Four Plus One recalls. "I couldn't believe it was a record until I actually saw it, with 'Rapper's Delight' printed on the label."

And Little Rodney C of the same group adds, "We were the original street rappers. None of them in the Sugarhill Gang knew how it felt to be out in the street or play in a club and be up 'till four in the morning when the party's over. All they knew was, somebody just gave it to them and boom, all of a sudden they're on top of the world, and se'ein' the world, while we're struggling."

The first recordings of the real South Bronx rap crews were produced by a Harlem record shop owner named Bobby Robinson (no relation to Sylvia). His Enjoy label put out the first records by Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five and the Funky Four Plus One. This Robinson did things right, supplying the kids with a tight musical backing.

But Enjoy lacked the financial resources to get wide distribution, and soon Sylvia Robinson was raiding its roster for Sugarhill.

Sugarhill has remained the home for most of rap's most important records.

The Funky Four Plus One gave the label its second New York hit with "That's The Joint," a jubilant party anthem that, in terms of rapping technique and rhythmic sophistication, remains one of the definitive rap records. In 1981 a single called "The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel" immortalized the "scratch" technique of the hip-hop DJs, which involves fast cutting between records and hand manipulation of records on the turntable to create repeating phrases and beats. Scratching has since appeared on records by everybody from Altered Images to Malcolm McLaren to Herbie Hancock.

Then, in 1982, Sugarhill released "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, and rap moved from being an inner-city phenomenon and hip curiosity item to something more like a shot heard around the pop world.

When it first appeared, the standard rap in which the speaker brags about how good-looking he is, how all the "fly girls" want him and want to ride in his big car, etc., was cool and captivating nonsense. It had a cultural point to make as well. It captured the bravado and sass of traditional ghetto street-corner jive, pumping it up with a show biz sense of style. The jiving and boasting were a psychological lift for ghetto kids, a course in self-assertion.

As Rodney of the Funky Four Plus One put it, "You rap 'cause you don't want to be the same, you want to be different. It's advertising to the world, I'm coming up from the bottom and here I am."

But by 1982 the standard rap had lost its meaning through too much repetition. Ed Fletcher, otherwise known as Duke Bootee, the percussionist in the Sugarhill Records house band, had a set of rap lyrics that had a new approach, highly social/political in nature, but had no rappers to perform them. Once again it was Sylvia Robinson who had the foresight to realize that the market was ready for a rap with a bit more bite in it. She talked Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five into collaborating with Fletcher on a record, and the result was "The Message," rap's greatest moment.

"We shied away from it at first," Flash told me. "We were scared the record was too serious. But Miss Robinson said it would be a monster.

"We thought the people will resist this. Why bring your troubles to the discotheque? But Miss Robinson kept pumping it into our heads that it would be big."

"The Message" is the most blistering evocation of life in the urban ghetto yet committed to vinyl. When we spoke, Flash compared it to the Last Poets, the Temptations' "Ball Of Confusion" and Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City," but it's even more powerful than those very powerful records. The rap is full of detailed, precisely drawn pictures of what goes wrong in the lives of the dispossessed, and the repeated refrain, "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge/l'm trying not to lose my head" hits the perfect note of combined menace and struggle.

"The Message" became the first rap record to be played on white rock radio stations. In England it made it into the top five of the national charts. It was the first sign of rap's crossover potential.

The other important rap record of '82 was "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic Force. This is a record that would never have been made but for the fact that New York's leading black radio station, WBLS, began opening up its playlist to the electro-pop, allowing Kraftwerk,

Soft Cell and the Fluman League to be heard and accepted in the black community.

"Planet Rock" cemented the alliance of the world of the cool, futuristic synthesizers and the harder sound of rap. It made electronics the sound of the new street music.

Its brilliance lay in its cross-cultural reach, its combination of white and black genres. The vocal sound was very tough, thanks to the strong delivery of the Soul Sonic Force, a trio of rappers put together by the South Bronx DJ, one-time gang leader and now head of the Zulu Nation Afrika Bambaataa.

But it was the way that very black vocal sound played off against the swirling, icy synthesizers and computerized beat that caught the world's ear, and that musical background was created by producers Arthur Baker and John Robie.

"Planet Rock" opened the gates and a flood of electronic-backed rap records followed. The Baker/Robie team have been responsible for many of them. With a vocal group called Rocker's Revenge they did electro/rap covers of Eddy Grant's "Walking On Sunshine" and Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come." They followed up "Planet Rock" with "Play At Your Own Risk" by Planet Patrol. And then there's the latest Soul Sonic Force record, "Looking For The Perfect Beat." This one is musically more complex than "Planet Rock," creating a multi-layered extravaganza of electronic beats and synthesized effects, a sound that is lavish and compelling.

Baker is also the executive producer of black pop idols New Edition, whose actual production is handled by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew. The Jonzun Crew themselves purvey synthesized electro-boogie of a kind that Baker and Robie paved the way for.

And Baker's success with black dance records has led to his being highly in demand by white groups seeking to inject some rhythmic sureness into their sound. This year he produced "I.O.U." by an English group called Freeze, giving them an instant success on both sides of the Atlantic, and introduced New Order to Urban Contemporary Radio with his production of "Confusion."

Rap must change to remain vital.

The newest directions of rap combine the inspirations of "The Message" and "Planet Rock." The sound has mutated into a new fusion of rap hardness and electrobeat lushness, a kind of postrap, with lyrics that convey an awareness of the need to say something beyond jive-talk.

For example, C.O.D.'s "In The Bottle," produced by Raul Rodriguez and Man Parrish, is a lively reworking of the Gil Scott-Heron classic that leaves the message intact and brings it out onto the dancefloor to a whole new audience.

Even more of a monster is Sweet G's "Games People Play." From its tinkling, tingling piano introduction to its passionate, slightly extravagant vocal delivery, this is a record to prove that black street music is expanding, letting in fresh ideas, new inspirations.

And one of the surprise hits of Summer '83 has been "It's Like That"/"Sucker M.C.'s" by Run-D.M.C. Run-D.M.C. is two rappers—D.J. Run and D.M.C., who together have a straightforward, powerful delivery that gets across the impact of their message that life is tough and you've got to be strong to survive. The spare, electronicbeats-only backing of "Sucker M.C.'s" reaches a new height of funk minimalism, which partly explains its attraction as the ultimate street record.

The commercial success of rap has brought the entire spectrum of black youth culture as nurtured in New York to an undreamt-of prominence.

There is the new-found artistic acceptance of graffiti, which is rap's visual cousin. It grew out of the same neighborhoods and serves the same social purpose—an announcement to the world, a colorful postcard from the ghetto. Graffiti has moved out of the subways and into the galleries. Graffiti artists like Future 2000 and Fab Five Freddy have cut rap records, and street artists like Jean Michelle (Samo) and Keith Haring are getting gallery shows and private commissions.

Breaking is rap's physical cousin. It's a form of athletic competition set to music, involving flips, jumps and spins as part of a dance routine. Rap crews and breaking crews often draw on each other for members. The film Flashdance includes a scene in which one of the leading groups of breakers, the Rock Steady Crew, perform on the street to the tune of the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun," an old South Bronx favorite. When the song wasn't released on the Flashdance soundtrack it created such a demand that the record was re-released with a new mix.

All of which means that the skeptics, who said that early rap hits like "Rapper's Delight" and Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" were novelty hits, and that rap would never last, were wrong. The genre must change to remain vital, and it has been changing. But rap has invigorated the entire spectrum of funk music, infused it with life coming from the ground up, and the shock waves it created are not going to just fade away.

REAL RAP-AN ESSENTIAL SELECTION

Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five: Superrappin (Enjoy)

The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel (Sugarhill)

The Message (Sugarhill)

Funky Four Plus One: That's The Joint (Sugarhill)

Mean Machine: Disco Dream (Sugarhill)

Brother D With Collective Effort:

Dib-Be-Dib-Be-Dize (How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise) (Clappers)

Afrika Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic Force: Planet Rock (Tommy Boy) Looking For The Perfect Beat (Tommy Boy)

Fearless Four: Rockin' It (Enjoy) Crash Crew: On The Radio (Bay City/Sugarhill)

Cold Crush Brothers: Punk Rock Rap (Tuff City/CBS)

Sweet G: Games People Play (Fever) Run-D.M.C.: It's Like That/Sucker M.C.'s (Profile)