When Culture Went Commercial

From the moment the record industry showed vested interest in hip-hop the culture would forever be in the shadow of rap commerce, much the same as the DJ would be behind the MC from there on in.

Words by RIP NICHOLSON Images and YouTube visuals supplied.

Hip-hop’s recording age would produce vinyl products to cement MCs as the new ghetto superstars, taking over from the DJ and through this new media the emergence of the rap genre, crafted for commercial venture, would flourish into industry and the culture of hip-hop would never be the same playing field again. Rap first struck its cord when Sylvia Robinson’s The Sugar Hill Gang dropped ‘Rapper’s Delight’ (1979) and then Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s ‘The Message’ (1982). This essay will explore how the subculture of hip-hop changed its horizons forever and the effects both these tracks had on revolutionising a commodity-based product from a burgeoning cultural presence. For better or worse, this is when hip-hop becomes rap.

At a time when hip-hop was still street-based, when  journos Rocky Ford and J.B. Moore had to ask what b-boys and b-girls were, the legendary names of Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers thought nothing of a rap career and would give up his rhyme book to a Club Sparkle bouncer named Big Bank Hank who couldn’t rhyme for shit, until Sylvia heard him rap over Chic’s ‘Good Times’. And to illustrate how brazen and perverse the recording industry was, the legendary DJ Grandmaster Flash was simply replaced by MC Melle Mel and in-house percussionist named Eric ‘Duke Bootee’ Fletcher. Sylvia Robinson had once been overheard remarking to Flash,

In a culture steeped in authenticity, the true originators of a movement would be figuratively and literally locked out of the studio while the foundations of rap music were perpetrated and created on vinyl for the new Sugar Hill Records. Over the coming weeks, Rip Nicholson will unfold how the recording industry would change the face and sound of hip-hop and make of it a commodity-base, one which cares not for it’s culture nor from whence it came.