Chopper (rap)
Chopper is a hip hop music subgenre that originated in the Midwestern United States and features fast-paced rhyming or rapping.
Chopper style places an emphasis on speed of pronunciation, and as such is commonly attributed to some of the fastest professional rappers, such as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Mac Lethal, Twista, Big L, Tech N9ne, Twisted Insane, Busta Rhymes, Rebel XD, Krizz Kaliko, George Watsky, Jaz-O, and Eminem.
[1] Although the subgenre of chopper-style hip hop did not achieve broad mainstream appeal until the early–mid 1990s through artists such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Twista, the style has been around for decades.
[16] The style of rapping fast was also popular with Jamaican rappers in the early 1980s with releases by Daddy Freddy ("Joker Lover"),[17] Shinehead ("Rough and Rugged") and Peter King ("Me Neat, Me Sweet").
This ushered in a wave of chopper acts from the Midwest that began to receive attention, such as Twista in Chicago and the group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony from Cleveland.
[2] During this period, many other rappers in the Midwest that would go on to become highly successful began their rapping careers as underground artists releasing songs in the chopper style, such as Eminem[10] and Tech N9ne.
[30] Also active in New York in the late 1990s was Latino rapper Big Pun, who was known for his fast-paced, witty lyrics and ability to rap for long periods of time without taking a breath,[31][32] very much in the manner of the chopper style.
[3] In 1999, Missouri rapper Tech N9ne and his business partner Travis O'Guin founded the independent record label Strange Music.
[33] Anghellic, Tech N9ne's first album released through Strange Music, sold 278,000 copies and marked his breakthrough from an underground artist to a commercial success.
[6][36] Due largely to the success of Tech N9ne's career, Strange Music has become a major independent record label and hosts a sizeable roster of artists including many in the chopper genre.
[24] Throughout the 1990s, New York rapper Busta Rhymes had been creating music, first as a part of the group Leaders of the New School from 1989 to 1993 and then as a solo artist from then onwards.
[38] Beginning with his 1998 album Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front he began to rap at faster speeds on some songs, and throughout the time since then he has incorporated chopper-style rapping on several of his successful tracks, such as 2001's "Break Ya Neck"[39] and his guest verse on Tech N9ne's 2011 single "Worldwide Choppers",[5] leading many to consider Busta Rhymes a chopper rapper.
