Who was the first rapper?
Rapping developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 70s by Jamaican expatriate Kool Herc and others. The parties introduced dancehall and the practice of having a “Master of Ceremonies,” or MC, get up on stage with the DJ and shout encouragements to the crowd in a practice known as ‘toasting’. Over time, those shouts of encouragement became longer and more complex and cross-pollinated with the spoken-word poetry scene to evolve into rap. It’s believed that the first rapper to actually call himself an MC was Melle Mel from Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. He is also credited as being the first Hip Hop MC to rap in a traditional verse/chorus format. From the beginning hip hop culture has been syncretic, incorporating sounds and elements from radically divergent sources. While Funk breaks formed the backbone of early hip hop, Kraftwerk and other early techno artists were widely sampled a
Muhammad Ali the former World Heavyweight Champion could well lay claim to being the first rapper. He used to recite is own poetry at press conferences before his matches. He didn’t have a musical backup but his style of poetry is very similar to rap. Even before Ali there was a style of music known as the talking blues. It consisted of spoken verses against an instrumental background. The poetry and music is quite different from modern rap but the overall form is the same. Country singer Text Williams and folk singers Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan used the form. It is thought to go back to early spirituals.
That’s a darn good question. While most folks consider DJ Kool Herc to be the “father of hip-hop,” other sites credit Afrika Bambaataa as the first rapper. OldSchoolHipHop features an interesting biography of DJ Kool Herc. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1955, Kool Herc was particularly interested in the song’s “break section” — the part of the song without vocals. Extending the song’s break was Herc’s trademark and “would be a very important one for hip hop.” Does that qualify Herc as the first rapper? Maybe, maybe not. An article on VH-1’s official site lists Afrika Bambaataa as “one of rap’s founding fathers.” User-edited site
the official first rapper was an MC named Coke La Rock. He used to “Move the Crowd” while Kool DJ Herc, the creator of hip-hop music, played his records. Coke La Rock might not have been the first rapper with a record deal, or first to gain commercial success, such as the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. But he was the first person to grab a microphone and talk over a beat, making him the first MC (Rapper) ever.
