Losertown: History of Music 5

Hello. I'm Professor Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards. For the last forty years I have dedicated my life to painstaking research into the field of music. I know a lot about music, so don't f[beep] with me motherf[beep]er. In today's History of Music, we do rap. [pause] You ho.

Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards's History of Music, part 144: rap.

Drum loop

Rap was invented in the mid-1970s by poor street kids in the Bronx. So poor, ahh. They were poor. They had to sell their sense of melody to the pawnbrokers just to buy a crust of Costcutter's white sliced bread. Without such vital musical skills, they resorted to talking quickly over the rhythm of a broken Casio keyboard. This kept them happy and distracted from the fact that they were so poor (ahhh) but having pawned their feelings, opinions and ideas, all they had left to talk about was how great they were and how they would f[beep]k any motherf[beep]er who f[beep]ed with their (large selection of) b[beep]ches. In 1979 the Sugar Hill Gang released the first commercial rap album. [beat] It was [beep].
By the mid-eighties, the crews of rappers, or "talking men" as they weren't known, were joined by ranks of talentless white men who were drawn to rap by the apparent lack of talent or ability to sing required. Rap and hip-hop branched out to interact with a variety of unpleasant musical forms such as R&B, house, and, later, ragga. And by the end of the eighties, no pop song was allowed to leave the studio without a dire rap over the middle eight.

This classic example shows 80s pop-rap eschewing the few qualities that made rap good in the first place - that it was fast and liberally scattered with f[beep]ing swearing.
Despite the divergence of musical styles, it became clear that the market could only sustain a limited range of records where men talk about how good they were in bed. So the US Government stepped in to supply rappers with guns and allow them to shoot each other to death. Whilst this cull reduced numbers, it had the unfortunate side-effect of... tribute records.

The ghetto kids were by now, old, rich, fat from gorging themselves on amounts of Costcutter's white sliced bread they could only dream of as kids, and riddled with bulletholes they could have avoided had they not been so fat. Some used the money to buy their musical sense back from the pawn shop, and realised that their records had been crap all along. They tried to continue their careers by re-releasing other people's records, and for copyright reasons, adding their own intelligent commentary over the top; along the lines of "one time", "uh-huh" and "yeah". The Fugees, Puff Daddy and Coolio have since covered over 99% of songs ever written; bidding for rights to the remaining four songs - Knees Up Mother Brown, Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall, Rachmaninov's Third Symphony and the Birdie Song - is said to have reached a six-figure level.

Next week, in part 145 of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards's History of Music: The Beatles - the world's second-greatest band. Obviously.

Thanks Eddie. You're listening to Compact Disco; coming up next, the new one from LL Cool J. This is called Birdie in the Hand.

Ev'ry night I'm headin' to my pad, a birdie in each hand, -
That's cos when it comes ta lovin' I'm da greatest in da land.
I can go to any honey, wid a night of passion planned,
And then later I'll ged busy wid'her birdie in my hand.
[chorus]
...watch the birdie
...in the hand
...purdy birdie
...yeah...
[B-part]
All the birdies in the crib be pecking hungry at my jammy,
Hopin' for a taste of homie seed to take home to Miami,
And yo better queue up now for a swallow on this salami,
'Cos a six month waiting list is forming for the LL Cool J whammy.
[chorus]
...watch the birdie
...in the hand
...widda little bitta dis...
...and a little bitta dat... and shake your ass.