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Rap Rock

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Primary Stylistic Influences:

Secondary Stylistic Influences:
I'm the king of rock, there is none higher
Sucker MC's should call me sire
To burn my kingdom, you must use fire
I won't stop rockin' till I retire
Run–D.M.C., "King of Rock"

The fusion of rap and rock.

This fusion was first sketched out of the Post-Punk experimentation of bands like The Clash, who were influenced by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on their songs "The Magnificent Seven" and "This Is Radio Clash", and Public Image Ltd., who collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on the song "World Destruction", as well as New Wave bands like Blondie with "Rapture". The more experimental side of Hardcore Punk also developed some of Rap Rock's early artists, such as Beastie Boys, who, along with the Hip Hop group Run–D.M.C. and the Dutch band Urban Dance Squad, codified Rap Rock as we know it in The '80s. Kid Rock was another significant Rap Rock artist in The '90s, for linking Hip Hop to Rap Rock, due to having started out as a Hip Hop DJ, although he has primarily performed Southern Rock since 2003.

Rap Rock is often conflated with, but not related to, Punk Rap, Rap Metal, or Nu Metal, especially as the latter two terms were used interchangeably with Rap Rock during The '90s. The key difference between Rap Rock and other genres that contain Rock and Hip Hop elements combined, is that Rap Rock is more closely related to the more experimental sides of Hip Hop, Punk or Rock, while Rap Metal's roots are more closely tied to Alternative Metal, and while Rap Rock tends to be more Funk oriented and rooted in a more organic Hip Hop influenced sound, Rap Metal sounds more rooted in Hard Rock/Alt-Metal and essentially sounds more like a metal vocalist rapping over heavy electric guitars, with the Hip Hop elements of Rap Metal sounding more like they were overdubbed onto Metal songs rather than organically integrated into the music, as Rap Rock had done, while Punk Rap tends to be used to describe a very specific form of Hip Hop with Punk/Hardcore/Metal influences developed by rappers in the late 2000s and early 2010s that is more Rap influenced by Rock than Rock influenced by Rap. This term is also confused with "Rapcore", which is sometimes used as a microgenre term to describe Hardcore/Punk bands who mix those styles with Rap, the exact inversion of Punk Rap's fusion. Making things even more confusing for categorization purposes, many Nu Metal bands have been miscategorized as Rap Rock, Rap Metal and Rapcore, although Nu Metal is a distinct genre of it's own with origins in Alternative Metal. Psychedelic Rap, a microgenre of Alternative Hip Hop that fuses Rap with Psychedelic Rock and Soul, is also sometimes conflated with Rap Rock, though also unrelated.

These distinctions, however, were not generally made by the public, so the term "Rap Rock" has often been slapped onto music that would more accurately be described as Rap Metal, Nu Metal or some other unrelated style, and when Nu Metal fell out of favor, Rap Rock fell alongside it by sheer association. The aforementioned Rap style Punk Rap has frequently been described as a successor to Rap Rock, but Rap Rock itself is generally seen as being dead.


Examples:


Tropes

  • Cluster F-Bomb: Not as often as Hip-Hop itself, but many bands feature a lot of swearing.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Run–D.M.C., Urban Dance Squad and the Beastie Boys pioneered the genre, and are easily the most respected.
  • Genre Mashup: It's rap and rock mixed together, what more could you want? Well, if you have to know, many different artists bring in a variety of influences in the mix. This can range from funk, reggae, psychedelia, metal, punk, and ska.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: It's not uncommon for rappers working in more conventional hip-hop styles to suddenly drop a rap-rock album as an experiment. Lil Wayne's Rebirth is a clear example of this.
  • Piss-Take Rap: Some vocalists have been accused of this.
  • Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Some bands give off this impression, especially if they have turntables.
  • Rated M for Manly: Many bands have a 'tough guy' attitude.
  • Taking You with Me: As mentioned above, the association with Nu Metal gave this genre a bad image and it died out from the mainstream largely at the same time that Nu Metal did.

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