- Rock Music, Pop, Gospel Music, talking Blues
Disco Rap, the first genre of Hip-Hop to be called by that name, emerged in the Bronx in The '70s. Ghettoised young people at the time — mostly African-American or Latino, and risking violence in the area's commercial nightlife — had a culture of holding house parties and block parties. The DJs at these parties would play Disco records, extending the instrumental dance breaks by alternating between two turntables playing the same record — a technique pioneered by Reggae artists in Jamaica. Also borrowed from reggae was "toasting", the act of an MC addressing the crowd by talking rhythmically over the instrumental. Over time, this evolved from playback into a style of musical performance — the MC would act as a lead vocalist, dazzling the crowd with rhythms, witty wordplay and braggadocio, while the DJ would incorporate scratching and creative mixing of instrumentals to create new sounds.
Because of this, Disco Rap songs are usually long, often going on for longer than the extended version of a disco record. Originally, the beats were edited but otherwise untouched versions of dance recordings, but most commercial recordings used live bands (often interpolating a popular disco song). Rappers use a strong but somewhat conversational delivery, and towards the end of the decade, male rappers began to use deep voices (even though rappers at the time were teenagers, nobody wanted to sound like a squeaky little kid on the mic). Lyrics are improvised, and concentrate on witty brags and hyping up an audience. Disco rappers often use Scatting, which is how the genre got its name — "hip, hop" was a standard nonsense syllable, most prominently appearing in the first lyric of The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight". This eventually developed into "human beatboxing", in which a rapper would imitate the sounds of drum machines, DJ scratches and sometimes other instruments.
A lot of early disco rap is unrecorded, due to labels and the musicians themselves viewing it as party entertainment rather than music, but by 1979, "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang would crack the mainstream and make hip-hop a vanguard of pop music forever after. Disco rap followed disco itself into incorporating electronic elements, spawning electro.
Disco rap began to fade out in The '80s, as disco fell out of fashion, and rappers began making songs that had radio-friendly lengths, Pop Rap and Rap Rock elements, and more confrontational lyrics. However, it was hugely influential on everything that followed, as well as on New Wave Music, Punk Rock, and Post-Punk.
Due to being the oldest genre of hip-hop, disco rap is sometimes looked down upon by later generations of hip-hop fans. Aside from its innovations being watered down by Piss Take Raps using a Two Decades Behind style as a shorthand, it has become a flashpoint for debates about rap lyrical content. While some rappers did talk about gang activity, politics or getting high, most disco rap MCs avoided heavy subject matter, but also strong profanity, and used disco-style classy loverman personas that were not violent or misogynistic. This has led to some dismissing the genre as cheesy and shallow, while others look down on all later forms of hip-hop for embracing misogyny, violence and bad language, including some of the disco rap pioneers themselves. (Both sides claim 1981's "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five as one of theirs — it combines a Disco Rap sound and style with direct social commentary about the poverty in the Bronx, inventing Conscious Hip Hop, and either obsoleting the party rap forever or showing where the genre could have gone if it hadn't been ruined by money and gangs, depending on who you talk to.) However, it is not in question that disco rap displays amazing lexical and musical skills, and documents the lives of New York's Black working class, often through slice-of-life lyrics and interpersonal disputes.
Disco rap is also unique due to being the only genre of hip-hop that was developed before it was possible to get rich and famous through rapping. 1970s bootleg recordings reveal hip-hop at its purest, completely by the culture and for the culture, and even the commercial recordings from The '80s (which are most of what survives of this genre) retain a distinctive DIY spirit and lack of consideration to pop crossover appeal.
Music historians call Disco Rap "old school hip-hop", with the early 80s Pop Rap and Rap Rock styles being "new school hip-hop". However, the terms 'old school' and 'new school' are used by most hip-hop fans to mean older and newer hip-hop regardless of sound or era, making it easier to describe the specific styles involved.
Works about Disco Rap:
- The first hip-hop movie is Wild Style, which is set during this era and features lots of authentic rap pioneers in fictional roles.
- The 1983 documentary Style Wars attempts to document hip-hop in this era when it was thought of as little more than a fad.
- The Get Down is set in the Bronx during the 1977 heat wave, when hip-hop was a tiny underground movement and Disco is mainstream. While the story is fictional, hip-hop pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc appear in the series as Historical Domain Characters.
Disco Rap performers:
- Afrika Bambaataa
- Biz Markie — while better known for his new school work, he started out making disco rap showing off his genius beatboxing abilities.
- Busy Bee Starski
- Fat Boys started out as a disco rap group called Disco 3.
- Funky Four Plus One More — the 'one more' was the group's one woman, Sha Rock, who started the trend for rap groups having one female in the crew.
- Grandmaster Caz
- Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and their star rapper Melle Mel
- The Message (1982)
- Grand Wizzard Theodore — the inventor of disc scratching.
- Kool Herc — generally credited as the inventor of hip-hop, holding a house party on August 11th, 1973 which brought together the four elements of hip-hop (rapping, beatboxing, breakdancing and graffiti) for the first time.
- Kurtis Blow
- Newcleus started out as a Brooklyn party band and battle rap team called Jam-On Productions. "Jam-On Revenge" is an electro song notable for being a 1982 parody of disco rap.
- The Sugarhill Gang
- Treacherous Three — distinguishing themselves from other rappers by combining ultra-fast flows with complex internal rhyming, they are sometimes considered the first lyrical virtuosos in hip-hop.
- Kool Moe Dee — The inventor of modern Battle Rapping, his switch towards harder double-time flows and more aggressive, profane, insulting bars invented Hardcore Hip-Hop.
- Spoonie Gee
- Whodini
- The Roxanne Wars
of the mid-80s, a series of diss tracks arising from 80s group UTFO ghosting a group of promoters (including Marley Marl, who went on to inspire Biggie Smalls). UTFO's hit "Roxanne, Roxanne" was about a woman ignoring their advances, leading to the post-ghosting response song "Roxanne's Revenge" wherein young rapper Roxanne Shanté claimed to be the woman they were pursuing incessantly, dissing them as wannabes and creeps.
A few artists outside of the genre have used Disco Rap sounds, either contemporaneously or as throwback:
- Blondie's "Rapture", which features a long disco rap section at the end, was the first US hip-hop Billboard No. 1.
- Coi Leray, "Players", a 2023 song which samples "The Message".
- The Clash dabbled in this on "The Magnificent Seven" (from Sandinista!) and the non-album single "This Is Radio Clash".
- Ian Dury and The Blockheads's "Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3 (Disco Version)" is sometimes included in histories of the genre.
- Indeep's One-Hit Wonder "Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life" is a 1982 disco song with a rap guest verse from the eponymous DJ.
- Joan Baez bizarrely put out a disco rap record in 1977 called "Time Rag".
- Las Ketchup's novelty hit "Asejere" is based on a Spanglish Mondegreen Gag of the first line from "Rapper's Delight".
- The Lonely Island:
- "Punch You In the Jeans" is a cross between seventies rap and the beginning of West Coast jazz-inspired rap and boom-bap... about physically assaulting anyone wearing jeans.
- "IHOP Parking Lot" turns the usual disco rap shoutouts into a existential nightmare about twerking.
- Macklemore feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee and Grandmaster Caz - "Downtown"
- Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars, "Uptown Funk"
- Strong Bad's "Everybody To The Limit" from Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits, fitting Strong Bad's painfully stuck-in-the-80s persona.
- Talking Heads' song "Crosseyed and Painless" features David Byrne rapping over the bridge. This is rather short on the studio version from Remain in Light, but was significantly extended in the music video and various live performances.
Tropes associated with Disco Rap:
- Awesome McCoolname: Rap names of this era emphasised the idea of the rapper as a master of ceremonies and showman. Names emphasising romance, dynamism and music ("Funky", "Jazz", "Kool", "Flash") and prefixes like "MC", "Master" and "Grandmaster" were common in the era, as well as Xtreme Kool Letterz spellings that still persist in modern rap names.
- Battle Rapping was invented during the Disco Rap era. Starting out as a battle to see which MCs could hype up the crowd better, the sport was revolutionised by Kool Moe Dee in 1981, who roasted Busy Bee Starski with personal insults and anecdotes about his lowlife behaviour (Bee can be heard on the recording yelping "shut up!!" in response to the onslaught). Some rappers refused to move on — in 1987, Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five gatecrashed a KRS-One concert to battle him with outdated crowd-hyping bars, which Kris pointed out was not going to work since the crowd had already paid to see him perform.
- Boastful Rap: Most lyrical content is bragging about how good the rapper is and how good the party is.
- Call-and-Response Song: MCs liked to hype up crowds by calling out to them, often asking for heat from ladies, fellas, specific Zodiac signs, and other identifiers that would facilitate romance.
- Epic Rocking: Many disco rap songs go on for over 10 minutes, as they were live performances that would go on as long as a floor was full.
- Everything Is an Instrument:
- DJs. The innovation of treating music playback equipment like an instrument itself completely transformed music forever, paving the way for sampling (which would lead to the end of the disco rap era and the beginning of the new school era).
- While rapping as a vocal technique goes back to talking gospel and talking blues, the innovation of the host of the party chatting to the crowd as a musical performance was a genuinely new art form.
- Freestyle Version: Rapping improvised lyrics over existing disco instrumentals.
- Glam Rap: A downplayed version — rappers would often brag about their nice clothes and fancy cars, but to emulate a Sharp-Dressed Man of the disco age. Most of the rappers using these personas were broke in real life.
- I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: Disco rap musicians wore disco-style fashions with lots of frills and glitter that began to look very outdated once the new school rappers of The '80s switched to swearing street clothing — Eazy-E once dissed Dr. Dre by digging up a picture of him in his makeup, sequins and lamé doctor's coat as part of his look for the disco rap group World Class Wreckin' Cru in the early 80s. Others, like Melle Mel, stuck with the Studio 54 look regardless of everything changing around them.
- Old School Introductory Rap: A signature lyrical trope of disco rap — rappers spend a lot of time telling the crowd what their name is, due to wanting to welcome everyone to their party. It's unclear if the specific "my name is X and I'm here to say" construction was ever common (though it does appear in a couple of songs, most obviously "Birthday Party" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), or if it was once popular, but old hat by the time of most surviving disco rap recordings.
- Phrase Salad Lyrics: Rappers of this era would often improvise songs out of catchphrases bitten from other rappers, like "hip-hop, and you don't stop", "do it, do it, do it", "put your hands in the air like you just don't care", "everybody say whoa", "yes, yes, y'all", "on and on, and on and on and on..."
- Scatting: The name "hip-hop" grew out of rappers scatting with "hip-hip-hop-hippy-ippy"-type sounds.
- Spelling Song: Rappers will often spell out their names to form rhymes.
- Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: Lyrics often ask the ladies in the house to shake their behinds.
- Working Class Anthem: The subtext to the genre's party lyrics is the oppressive social conditions the music was made in, and the freedom, self-expression and escape from the grind represented by the music. Lyrics often include the MC monologuing about their daily lives in witty but unglamorous terms.
