Rapping

When a rap or hip-hop artist is creating a song, "track", or record, done primarily in a production studio, most frequently a producer provides the beat(s) for the MC to flow over.

Professional studios were not necessary therefore opening the production of rap to the youth who as Williams explains felt "locked out" because of the capital needed to produce Disco records.

[51] More directly related to the African-American community were items like schoolyard chants and taunts, clapping games,[52] jump-rope rhymes, some with unwritten folk histories going back hundreds of years across many nationalities.

[53] In his narration between the tracks on George Russell's 1958 jazz album New York, N.Y., the singer Jon Hendricks recorded something close to modern rap, since it all rhymed and was delivered in a hip, rhythm-conscious manner.

[54] Coke La Rock, often credited as hip-hop's first MC[55] cites the Last Poets among his influences, as well as comedians such as Wild Man Steve and Richard Pryor.

[54] Comedian Rudy Ray Moore released under the counter albums in the 1960s and 1970s such as This Pussy Belongs to Me (1970), which contained "raunchy, sexually explicit rhymes that often had to do with pimps, prostitutes, players, and hustlers",[56] and which later led to him being called "The Godfather of Rap".

By the end of the 1970s, artists such as Kurtis Blow and the Sugarhill Gang were starting to receive radio airplay and make an impact far outside of New York City, on a national scale.

[73] Golden age hip hop (the mid-1980s to early '90s)[74] was the time period where hip-hop lyricism went through its most drastic transformation – writer William Jelani Cobb says "in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time"[75] and Allmusic writes, "rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, and Rakim basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".

[83][84] Poetry scholar Derek Attridge describes how this works in his book Poetic Rhythm – "rap lyrics are written to be performed to an accompaniment that emphasizes the metrical structure of the verse".

[85] In rap terminology, 16-bars is the amount of time that rappers are generally given to perform a guest verse on another artist's song; one bar is typically equal to four beats of music.

Rakim, The Notorious B.I.G., and Eminem have flipped the flow, but Melle Mel's downbeat on the two, four, kick to snare cadence is still the rhyme foundation all emcees are building on".

Kool Moe Dee adds, "in 2002 Eminem created the song that got the first Oscar in Hip-Hop history [Lose Yourself] ... and I would have to say that his flow is the most dominant right now (2003)".

[110] The American hip-hop group Crime Mob exhibited a new rap flow in songs such as "Knuck If You Buck", heavily dependent on triplets.

[111] Mitchell Ohriner in "Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music" describes seven "groove classes" consisting of archetypal sixteen-step accent patterns generated by grouping notes in clusters of two and/or three.

[117] This allows devices such as rests, "lazy tails", flams, and other rhythmic techniques to be shown, as well as illustrating where different rhyming words fall in relation to the music.

James Brown had the lyrics, moves, and soul that greatly influenced a lot of rappers in hip hop, and arguably even started the first MC rhyme.

This confusion prompted the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest to include this statement in the liner notes to their 1993 album Midnight Marauders: The use of the term MC when referring to a rhyming wordsmith originates from the dance halls of Jamaica.

At each event, there would be a master of ceremonies who would introduce the different musical acts and would say a toast in style of a rhyme, directed at the audience and to the performers.

[131] Although the majority of rappers are male, there have been a number of female rap stars, including Lauryn Hill, MC Lyte, Jean Grae, Lil' Kim, Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, Da Brat, Trina, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Khia, M.I.A., CL from 2NE1, Foxy Brown, Iggy Azalea, Eve, and Lisa Lopes from TLC.

Love raps were first popularized by Spoonie Gee of the Treacherous Three, and later, in the golden age of hip hop, Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, and LL Cool J would continue this tradition.

Hip-hop artists such as KRS-One, Hopsin, Public Enemy, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G.

Ice-T was one of the first rappers to call himself a "playa" and discuss guns on record, but his theme tune to the 1988 film Colors contained warnings against joining gangs.

Artists such as Rakim, the members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, X-Clan and Busta Rhymes have had success in spreading the theology of the Five Percenters.

The Nation of Gods and Earths, aka The Five Percenters, has influenced mainstream hip-hop slang with the introduction of phrases such as "word is bond" that have since lost much of their original spiritual meaning.

Similar messages can be seen in many well-known sayings, or as early as 1896, in the English translation of La Comédie Humaine, by Honoré de Balzac where one of his free-spirited characters tells another, "You Only Live Once!".

Its primary focus has morphed from making up a rap on the spot, to being able to recite memorized or "written" lyrics over an "undisclosed" beat, not revealed until the performance actually begins.

The second, more difficult and respected style, has adapted the terms "off the dome", or "off (the) top" in addition to relatively less common older references like "spitting", "on the spot" and "unscripted".

UK garage music has begun to focus increasingly on rappers in a new subgenre called grime which emerged in London in the early 2000s and was pioneered and popularized by the MC Dizzee Rascal.

Increased popularity with the music has shown more UK rappers going to America as well as tour there, such as Sway DaSafo possibly signing with Akon's label Konvict.

It is typified by slowed-down atonal vocals with instrumentals that borrow heavily from the hip-hop scene and lyrics centered on illegal street racing and car culture.