ludwig said:

joyinrepetition said:

Also around 1982/83 Prince's first rap was on the full vocal version of Lust U Always

On Irresistible Bitch he kind of raps, maybe it's a little bit too melodic.

Yeah, those songs always struck me as being half spoken/half sung over a beat, but to my ears they don't particularly sound like they're actually inspired by the early Hip-Hop that was coming out at that time, more like Prince was just experimenting with different vocal styles or whatever.

My stance is that it wasn't very mainstream. You could find it if you looked. The names who really helped take Rap mainstream had yet to come. Dr Dre, 2Pac, Snoop, BIG, Puffy, Jay-Z, Nas, were just beginning their careers in these years. Thats not to say there weren't rappers before them, there obviously were. But they weren't making huge production videos or tours like rappers today. There had been a handful of top 10 singles (mainstream charts).

No that's factually wrong. There were rap tours in sports arenas as early as 1986-87 by Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, and it got bigger from there.

I started working on an office that played top 40 radio in 1990-92 and we heard tons of MC Hammer, PM Dawn, Arrested Development, Tone Loc, Young MC, Salt & Pepa, yes good ol Vanilla Ice and who could forget the wit and wisdom of Paula Abdul's costar MC Skat Kat? Played alongside the latest hits by Michael Bolton, Jeffrey Obsorne, Madonna etc.

It would get even huger after that but, yeah, rap was very mainstream-popular by 1991.

funksterr said:

Hip Hop music was mainstream as fuck in 1992, so come off of it. Almost every major pop record back then had a guest rapper for 16 bars or so, going back to 1987 or so.

No it wasn't. For a start nobody refered to rap music as "hip-hop" it was 1999 when MTV gave it's first "best hip-hop" award. Up until then it was "best Rap"

Guest rappers weren't as common as you think. Again "Ice Ice Baby" was the first #1 rap single. Who was the Kanye West of 1991? Which rapper was international and dropping top 10 hit after top 10 hit?

funksterr said:

skywalker said:

Prince is very much his own thing.

-

His influence on (and assimilation of) hip hop is much like his influence on (and assimilation of) new wave. He played with each genre in his own way, yet he didn't really add to the genre in a direct and measurable way. That's because what he did was all still "Prince Music."

-

Example:

-

Sexy MF, My Name is Prince, etc. definitely use hip hop imagery/phrasing but they are soooooooo much Prince that they are in their own category. They aren't really hip hop. Nor were they really trying to be.

-

Similarly, Prince's early 80's synths owed a lot to /borrowed a lot from to New Wave, but they weren't really categorizable as such.

[Edited 3/5/15 18:07pm]

Excuses. Prince was trying very hard to be hip hop actually. More so than any other 80's pop/rock/soul act... by far.

Trying very hard to be mainstream with 1999

Trying very hard to be rock n roll with Purple Rain

Trying very hard to be psychadelic with Around the world...

He was always trying to do something...

The albums that feature Tony M are actually among his best selling aren't they?

KingSausage said:

Maybe MJ mainstreamed hip-hop with Dangerous. Right. Prince had nothing to do with making hip-hop mainstream. It was already blowing up in the late 80s. Public Enemy. Beasties. Etc. Prince played catch up then. He plays catch up now.

Jackson had Teddy Riley on Dangerous so there is that element. There is a Rap at the end of the song "Jam" and a verse in "Black or White" - Prince had Cat Rapping on Lovesexy. So he pre-dates Jackson, Then on D&P/ he uses it far more prominently than Jackson on Dangerous.

If the other artists you mentioned were mainstream then were where all the top 10 singles? International tours? Those artists had fans, but not enough to repeatedly propel them to the top of the pop charts.

Aerogram said:

Some rather wild generalizations and simplifications on this thread.

1. Rap was huge way before 1992 -- that was only the year it became overwhelming dominant. Before it got there, it was extremely common, most rap music was bought by suburban white, asian, latino, etc. kids, not just black youth, "young" huns like me had Run DMC, Public Enemy in album form and all sorts of wildly popular singles, those pre-Gangsta rap years saw some extremely accessible music, a lot of it made for and from the mall, and not the "ghetto". Rap simply wasn't equivalent to new wave. which by comparison was just a short lived variation on the rock sound.

Rap had a huge number of fans. But it wasn't dominating the pop charts. There were a handful of top 10 rap songs as of 1992. "Ice Ice Baby" was the first #1 rap single in the USA.

2. So Prince didn't come out growling in his deepest voice trying to act like a true boy in the hood -- that doesn't prove he wasn't getting on a rap train already going full steam ahead.

Prince first used rap on "Alphabet Street". Musically the album is very similar to D&P. A bit heavier and slightly less shiny perhaps, but we still have live instrumentation.

It was his image that really changed.

3. Whatever styles he used in the early nineties in terms of rap were already "old school", but not in a good way.

But some of his efforts were international top 10 singles. While the albums D&P & remain two of his best sellers... so he must have been doing something right.

4. There is no such thing as a genre called Prince music, he's the great style integrator, not a genre of his own. He was least successful at integrating rap, just didn't sound credible most times.

I think he's been massively successful integrating rap in the early 90s. The songs charted, the tours were big scale, Albums among his best sellers...

There is certainly an argument that later around 1994 he was influenced by Dre/snoop/2pac on things like 18 & over which screams "westside". But initially in the early 90s Prince had mainstream commercial success with rap.

Rebeljuice said:

Plagarised from this site. I remember quite a lot of these songs and many did do well in the charts so I would have to agree with Bart, hip hop and rap music was already well under way and mainstream by the time Prince got his mits on it.

Of all those artists, only LL Cool J was more than a one hit wonder? That looks like "maybe once a month a rap song breaks the top 10 singles. Compare that to 1998 when a quarter of the songs in the top 10 at any given point are hip-hop.

There was no 2pac, Dre, Nas, Jay-Z the names that became superstars and put Rap and Hip-hop on the pop charts had all yet to come. When Prince was putting D&P together those names were practically unknown. When you walk though any market, it's 2pacs face on the t-shirts.

Noodled24: You are making excellent points.

KingSausage said:

Graycap23 said:

Any notion that Prince helped rap in any way, shape or form is complete nonsense.

YES

"His ability to create on the spot is mind-boggling. Like a hip-hop MC freestyling, he executes ideas off the top of his head in a very convincing manner. But there must be at least 20 ways to prove that hip-hop is damn-near patterned after Prince, including his genius, blatant use of sexuality and the use of controversy as a way to get attention." -Questlove

BartVanHemelen said:

Noodled24 said:

Part of the discussion in the previous thread was "How mainstream was Rap in 1990/91/92" when Prince was incorporating it in his own way.

My stance is that it wasn't very mainstream.

.

Bobby Brown did the title song for Ghostbusters II. And that's just one of MANY examples of rap and rap-offshoots like New Jack Swing being popular. Hell, Run-DMC had a hit in the mid-1980s that was so big it resurrected Aerosmith's career. The Beastie Boys were front-page material. Yo! MTV Raps was one of MTV's most popular shows.

Run DMC - so mainstream that they had an equally successful followup single? or do we have to go all the way to 1998 and Jason Nevins?

The Bestie boys yes, to be fair they were huge for about 6 months. Then had more success in the late 90 once hiphop entered the mainstream.

Wasn't Yo! Raps on after midnight? Hardly primetime. In 1999 hiphop had it's own channel. When you say it was one of their most popular shows... is there info on ratings?

.

This is nonsense.

.

He was still a multi-million seller, he was still banging out top 10 hits... Nobody was buying D&P or thinking they were getting a rap album, both are clearly pop efforts. But back in 91/92 before hip-hop went mainstream Prince was taking it to a mainstream international audence.

.

Dude, hip hop was already HUGE in the UK. Those live sounds on Public Enemy's second album? That's from a massive UK gig that was recorded and broadcast by the BBC on Def II, a weekly music show that featured tons of rap and hip-hop. Kool Moe Dee's "Go See The Doctor" was a top ten hit in Holland. Hell, "Holiday Rap" was one of the biggest hits of the year back in 1986.

So after this huge gig in the UK Public Enemy must have sold a shitload of records... However after checking I see they've only had 1 top ten hit in the UK... that was in 2012.

As for Holland... out of curiosity how many other rap songs made the top 10 that year?. By the year 1999 had the frequency with which rap songs appeared in the top 10 increased or decreased?

(On a side note Bart it's Shift+Return to create a new paragraph. It would make your posts easier to quote)

Aerogram said:

4. There is no such thing as a genre called Prince music, he's the great style integrator, not a genre of his own. He was least successful at integrating rap, just didn't sound credible most times.

-

Not to get too philosophical, but there actually is no such thing as genres. They are an artificial device created for marketing purposes. Even Taylor Swift knows that.

[Edited 3/6/15 13:42pm]

skywalker said:

KingSausage said:

Graycap23 said: YES

"His ability to create on the spot is mind-boggling. Like a hip-hop MC freestyling, he executes ideas off the top of his head in a very convincing manner. But there must be at least 20 ways to prove that hip-hop is damn-near patterned after Prince, including his genius, blatant use of sexuality and the use of controversy as a way to get attention." -Questlove

I'm not buying it.

Prince has influenced a great deal of music...........rap isn't one of them in my opinion.

Maybe in the forms of attitude and other non music realted ways........but not musically.

Graycap23 said:

skywalker said:

"His ability to create on the spot is mind-boggling. Like a hip-hop MC freestyling, he executes ideas off the top of his head in a very convincing manner. But there must be at least 20 ways to prove that hip-hop is damn-near patterned after Prince, including his genius, blatant use of sexuality and the use of controversy as a way to get attention." -Questlove

I'm not buying it.

Prince has influenced a great deal of music...........rap isn't one of them in my opinion.

Maybe in the forms of attitude and other non music realted ways........but not musically.

Hey, Questlove said it. He is only a world reknowned hip hop, etc. musician that teaches about Prince and Hip Hop at NYU. What does he know?

-

Personally, I think the cultural impact of Purple Rain Era alone (especially Morris Day and The Time) had on music was THE blueprint that people in hip hop followed. That's not even taking into consideration the impact that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had on ALL pop music in the 80's and 90's.

[Edited 3/6/15 14:03pm]

When you look at the work Prince did with Vanity 6 like Nasty Girl, Make-Up and If a Girl Answers (Don't Hang Up), he could have definitely made waves in early 80s hip hop. I could easily see him putting out tracks like Whodini's Rap Machine.

I don't think Prince really saw the potential of rap until he heard It Takes Two which he played on the Nude Tour.

bobzilla77 said:

My stance is that it wasn't very mainstream. You could find it if you looked. The names who really helped take Rap mainstream had yet to come. Dr Dre, 2Pac, Snoop, BIG, Puffy, Jay-Z, Nas, were just beginning their careers in these years. Thats not to say there weren't rappers before them, there obviously were. But they weren't making huge production videos or tours like rappers today. There had been a handful of top 10 singles (mainstream charts).

No that's factually wrong. There were rap tours in sports arenas as early as 1986-87 by Run-DMC and Beastie Boys, and it got bigger from there.

I started working on an office that played top 40 radio in 1990-92 and we heard tons of MC Hammer, PM Dawn, Arrested Development, Tone Loc, Young MC, Salt & Pepa, yes good ol Vanilla Ice and who could forget the wit and wisdom of Paula Abdul's costar MC Skat Kat? Played alongside the latest hits by Michael Bolton, Jeffrey Obsorne, Madonna etc.

It would get even huger after that but, yeah, rap was very mainstream-popular by 1991.

So it went from being "mainstream" to being "more mainstream" and then "even more mainstream than that"?

Hip Hop didn't dominate the charts back then. PM Dawn didn't crack the US top 10 until 93. Arrested Development '92, Young MC cracked the top 10 once in 89. By that logic one could pick a handful of jazzy sounding songs and say Jazz is a mainstream genre... but it isn't

Again as I've said - there was a vibrant rap scene. Rappers were having some commercial success. But Rap wasnt mainstream. It wasn't dominating the pop charts. It was a handful of songs each year that broke the top 10. Rappers for the most part, had songs not careers.

Fast forward to 1995/96 and rap was one of the biggest selling genres. By 1999 it was THE best selling genre. By 1999 everyone in the world knew who 2pac was and you couldn't go an average day without seeing his face on a tshirt or poster, people were even copying his tattoos. I'm not sure the same could be said of MC Hammer.

[Edited 3/6/15 14:22pm]

So it went from being "mainstream" to being "more mainstream" and then "even more mainstream than that"?

Yes, it was a linear progression over a period of time.

By 1999 everyone in the world knew who 2pac was and you couldn't go an average day without seeing his face on a tshirt or poster, people were even copying his tattoos. I'm not sure the same could be said of MC Hammer.

Yes, the same could definitely be said about MC Hammer in 91. He was being parodied on every comedy outlet you could name. He was on 3 big commercials at once. He even had a Saturday morning cartoon. People didn't copy his tattoos but they did copy his pants.

The only thing I don't agree with is your statement that in 1991 hip hop was not mainstream. I'm saying it was. Just not as predominant as it was in later years. But definitely part of the mix of "mainstream popular music" in 1990/91.

How else does MC Skat Kat even exist?

i found this while trying to look for the lyrics to that Whodini song:

.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/21/arts/rap-music-despite-adult-fire-broadens-its-teen-age-base.html

.

the article is from September 1986

Rap music, mostly popular among inner-city teen-agers since it began in the late 1970's, has broken out this year. Rap used to get major radio play only in the New York area, where it started, and in Washington, Philadelphia and other urban centers. But with the success of Run-DMC's latest single, ''Walk This Way,'' and album, ''Raising Hell'' (Profile 1217, LP and cassette), rap is being heard everywhere. Young disk jockeys are playing rap's popular scratch rhythms in rural Mississippi; skateboarding teen-agers are rapping to each other in California. And the promotional video for ''Walk This Way,'' which features both Run-DMC and the song's original authors from the rock group Aerosmith, is all over MTV.

skywalker said:

Graycap23 said:

I'm not buying it.

Prince has influenced a great deal of music...........rap isn't one of them in my opinion.

Maybe in the forms of attitude and other non music realted ways........but not musically.

Hey, Questlove said it. He is only a world reknowned hip hop, etc. musician that teaches about Prince and Hip Hop at NYU. What does he know?

-

[Edited 3/6/15 14:03pm]

.

Sure, he's a huge Prince nerd, but saying that anyone patterns the use of sex and controversy after Prince sounds like a stretch. It's been a common-as-dirt marketing strategy for longer than Prince has been around. I don't know why rap would credit him for it...

[Edited 3/6/15 16:29pm]

Noodled24 said:

Aerogram said:

Some rather wild generalizations and simplifications on this thread.

1. Rap was huge way before 1992 -- that was only the year it became overwhelming dominant. Before it got there, it was extremely common, most rap music was bought by suburban white, asian, latino, etc. kids, not just black youth, "young" huns like me had Run DMC, Public Enemy in album form and all sorts of wildly popular singles, those pre-Gangsta rap years saw some extremely accessible music, a lot of it made for and from the mall, and not the "ghetto". Rap simply wasn't equivalent to new wave. which by comparison was just a short lived variation on the rock sound.

Rap had a huge number of fans. But it wasn't dominating the pop charts. There were a handful of top 10 rap songs as of 1992. "Ice Ice Baby" was the first #1 rap single in the USA.

But some of his efforts were international top 10 singles. While the albums D&P & remain two of his best sellers... so he must have been doing something right.

4. There is no such thing as a genre called Prince music, he's the great style integrator, not a genre of his own. He was least successful at integrating rap, just didn't sound credible most times.

I think he's been massively successful integrating rap in the early 90s. The songs charted, the tours were big scale, Albums among his best sellers...

There is certainly an argument that later around 1994 he was influenced by Dre/snoop/2pac on things like 18 & over which screams "westside". But initially in the early 90s Prince had mainstream commercial success with rap.

I can't get past the fact you think rap was something you had to look for. You said your angle was this:
My stance is that it wasn't very mainstream. You could find it if you looked.

Sorry, a stance has to be based on something solid. It's just not true you had to look for rap, it was absolutely mainstream. There is a big difference between being mainstream and being dominant. Lots of music has been mainstream for ages without being dominant. Don't you think it's reductive to have such a before and after outlook? Just think about the fact Parents Just Don't Understand begath The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

I actually cherish Prince's best rap or near rap, he used spoken parts rythmically when rap was coming up - that seemed to prompt stuff in LCD and many of the early songs mentionned on this thread.

Where you might have a better thesis is that Prince informed rap not only because he was one of the big stars of the era and a guy with good grooves like Sly, JB and Clinton. he was dead on it on Dead On It as a parody and then, the exuberant Alphabet Street rap (in particular) did matter in terms of making rap even more mainstream. Besides wall to wall rap records, you had artists using some rap elements , such as (famously) Blondie (that was actuallly the start of the gradual mainstreamization of rap leading to its dominance in 1992).

[Edited 3/7/15 4:22am]

I think the FaceDown performance on Tv was more hip-hop (visually) than anything he'd done before. with the big snow jackets and sitting a speaker (on the cassette artwork). so it wasn't until 96/97 that he even started to get near to hip-hop style. but as we know it was just one of p's many images and he quickly moved on to the Rave look, which was weird.

Noodled24 said:

funksterr said:

Hip Hop music was mainstream as fuck in 1992, so come off of it. Almost every major pop record back then had a guest rapper for 16 bars or so, going back to 1987 or so.

No it wasn't. For a start nobody refered to rap music as "hip-hop" it was 1999 when MTV gave it's first "best hip-hop" award. Up until then it was "best Rap"

Guest rappers weren't as common as you think. Again "Ice Ice Baby" was the first #1 rap single. Who was the Kanye West of 1991? Which rapper was international and dropping top 10 hit after top 10 hit?

MC Hammer was Huge in 1990.

Noodled24 said:

funksterr said:

Hip Hop music was mainstream as fuck in 1992, so come off of it. Almost every major pop record back then had a guest rapper for 16 bars or so, going back to 1987 or so.

No it wasn't. For a start nobody refered to rap music as "hip-hop" it was 1999 when MTV gave it's first "best hip-hop" award. Up until then it was "best Rap"

Guest rappers weren't as common as you think. Again "Ice Ice Baby" was the first #1 rap single. Who was the Kanye West of 1991? Which rapper was international and dropping top 10 hit after top 10 hit?

No disrepect to you, but you are way too ignorant about the history of hip hop to have this discussion. Maybe start there first, then assess what Prince's complete lack of any meritous role in the development of the genre was.

Back then chart positions were kind of a gentleman's agreement self-reporting polling process, similar to how the winner of the weekend box office numbers are in the movie business today. It was so controversial how sales were being counted that Soundscan was invented. After that rappers started dominating the charts on a regular basis.

Even before Soundscan, though there were tons of successful rappers as many people have already pointed out.

If you check anything on the history of rap on the web, you'll almost invariably have this sequence :

Early 80s: Rap breaking into RnB charts and making appearances in pop songs.

We're talking about Rapper's Delight, The Message, Rapture, etc.

1986: Rap becomes mainstream, breaking into the Pop Top ten, starting with Walk This Way (Run DMC/Aerosmith) -- number 4 on the hot 100), then you have (just to name a few) Young MC, Fresh Prince, Tone Loc, LL Cool J, etc. all having pop chart hits. Just "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc was all over the place, it was played ad nauseum just like Parents Just Don't Understand, which I couldn't stand after hearing it over 100 times just watching those video shows over a couple of months. "It Takes Two", "Bust a Move", "Don't Believe The Hype", "Push It", "Going Back to Cali", "I'm That Kind of Guy" -- all of those were ultra familiar for anyone listening to radio or video shows at the time.

As for the term hip hop, it's a terminology thing or what you'd call semantics. While the mainstream media called "rap" "rap music" for a long time, "hip hop" was referenced in the first rap song to chart, Rapper's Delight, it was another way of referring to the broad practice of having rythmic rhymes/poetry over beats. The Village Voice was the first to describe an artist (the immortal Afrika Kambata) in 1981 and the term gradually supplanted terms like "rap culture" as a way of describing the movement, so much so that today most of this is described as "hip hop history" going back to the very beginning of mceeing over beats in the mid to late 70s and early 80s.

So when award shows started handing out trophies for hip hop, they were simply catching up to the culture in addition to broadening the palette of "rap" to include new branches of the movement.

Aerogram said:

KingSausage said:

Aerogram said:

If you check anything on the history of rap on the web, you'll almost invariably have this sequence :

Early 80s: Rap breaking into RnB charts and making appearances in pop songs.

We're talking about Rapper's Delight, The Message, Rapture, etc.

1986: Rap becomes mainstream, breaking into the Pop Top ten, starting with Walk This Way (Run DMC/Aerosmith) -- number 4 on the hot 100), then you have (just to name a few) Young MC, Fresh Prince, Tone Loc, LL Cool J, etc. all having pop chart hits. Just "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc was all over the place, it was played ad nauseum just like Parents Just Don't Understand, which I couldn't stand after hearing it over 100 times just watching those video shows over a couple of months. "It Takes Two", "Bust a Move", "Don't Believe The Hype", "Push It", "Going Back to Cali", "I'm That Kind of Guy" -- all of those were ultra familiar for anyone listening to radio or video shows at the time.

As for the term hip hop, it's a terminology thing or what you'd call semantics. While the mainstream media called "rap" "rap music" for a long time, "hip hop" was referenced in the first rap song to chart, Rapper's Delight, it was another way of referring to the broad practice of having rythmic rhymes/poetry over beats. The Village Voice was the first to describe an artist (the immortal Afrika Kambata) in 1981 and the term gradually supplanted terms like "rap culture" as a way of describing the movement, so much so that today most of this is described as "hip hop history" going back to the very beginning of mceeing over beats in the mid to late 70s and early 80s.

So when award shows started handing out trophies for hip hop, they were simply catching up to the culture in addition to broadening the palette of "rap" to include new branches of the movement.

Again. Nailed it. I can't believe we're even having this discussion. Prince had no role in the startup or mainstreaming of hip-hop. None. Individual artists may have loved Prince (why not? He's the best!) but the public in no way was further turned on to hip-hop because Prince clumsily tried to rap.

No major influence other than being sampled (like JB, Sly and others) and somewhat reflecting the rise of rap lightly (spoken parts or near spoken parts in his music) to add a few drops to the large cultural bucket (bathtub? pool?) that gradually got audiences to enjoy records on which people didn't just sing (along with many other artists).

If there is a significant "Prince effect" in hip hop, it's in reaction and more cultural than musical. Some have interpreted the rise of hyper masculine "gangsta rap" as a delayed reaction to the fact that 80s black superstars were definitely on the feminine side. According to this interpretation, white audiences long liked their black male artists "trained" to have a contained, non threatening image in the 60s and 70s (lots of Motown acts for instance though not all), then when there was some serious global crossover action, black male sexuality was expressed by slighter-built/lighter skinned types like MJ and Prince, paving the way for (or provoking, according to some) the rawer, blacker, manlier types that would have been too threatening to mainstream America earlier.

bobzilla77 said:

So it went from being "mainstream" to being "more mainstream" and then "even more mainstream than that"?

Yes, it was a linear progression over a period of time.

How does something go "more mainstream"?

I agree that it was building momentum, but how could rap/hiphop be mainstream without the genre producing a #1 single?

By 1999 everyone in the world knew who 2pac was and you couldn't go an average day without seeing his face on a tshirt or poster, people were even copying his tattoos. I'm not sure the same could be said of MC Hammer.

Yes, the same could definitely be said about MC Hammer in 91. He was being parodied on every comedy outlet you could name. He was on 3 big commercials at once. He even had a Saturday morning cartoon. People didn't copy his tattoos but they did copy his pants.

Thats a fair point. Hammer was going top 10, he was international. "Touch this" and "Pray" were big singles.

As a counter to that, I'd say if [insert artist] puts out a Jazz album... does that make Jazz a mainstream genre?

The only thing I don't agree with is your statement that in 1991 hip hop was not mainstream. I'm saying it was. Just not as predominant as it was in later years. But definitely part of the mix of "mainstream popular music" in 1990/91.

How else does MC Skat Kat even exist?

Let me explain - If you go back to the historical singles charts and look at the top ten any given week in 1991 I think you'd be surprised how absent rap is.

There were singles that blew up and everyone remembers them... especially when they sampled a well known song or got to work with a pop star. But "Rap" was largely absent as a genre unto itself.

Having a conversation about mainstream rap in 1991 and already we're talking MC Hammer and Paula Abdul.

The first ever grammy for "best rap album" was handed out in 1995."Best rap song" not until 2004.

MTV had a rap award in 1989, but didn't recognise "hip-hop" as a genre until 1999.

Aerogram said:

KingSausage said:

Aerogram said: Again. Nailed it. I can't believe we're even having this discussion. Prince had no role in the startup or mainstreaming of hip-hop. None. Individual artists may have loved Prince (why not? He's the best!) but the public in no way was further turned on to hip-hop because Prince clumsily tried to rap.

No major influence other than being sampled (like JB, Sly and others) and somewhat reflecting the rise of rap lightly (spoken parts or near spoken parts in his music) to add a few drops to the large cultural bucket (bathtub? pool?) that gradually got audiences to enjoy records on which people didn't just sing (along with many other artists).

If there is a significant "Prince effect" in hip hop, it's in reaction and more cultural than musical. Some have interpreted the rise of hyper masculine "gangsta rap" as a delayed reaction to the fact that 80s black superstars were definitely on the feminine side. According to this interpretation, white audiences long liked their black male artists "trained" to have a contained, non threatening image in the 60s and 70s (lots of Motown acts for instance though not all), then when there was some serious global crossover action, black male sexuality was expressed by slighter-built/lighter skinned types like MJ and Prince, paving the way for (or provoking, according to some) the rawer, blacker, manlier types that would have been too threatening to mainstream America earlier.

Btw, are there any particularly high-profile examples of Prince getting sampled in Hip-Hop music? The only one that comes to my mind is Arrested Development's Tennessee, but that's a very small vocal section of the song, certainly nothing like the wholesale mining of breaks from James Brown's catalogue.

Aerogram said:

KingSausage said:

Aerogram said: Again. Nailed it. I can't believe we're even having this discussion. Prince had no role in the startup or mainstreaming of hip-hop. None. Individual artists may have loved Prince (why not? He's the best!) but the public in no way was further turned on to hip-hop because Prince clumsily tried to rap.

No major influence other than being sampled (like JB, Sly and others) and somewhat reflecting the rise of rap lightly (spoken parts or near spoken parts in his music) to add a few drops to the large cultural bucket (bathtub? pool?) that gradually got audiences to enjoy records on which people didn't just sing (along with many other artists).

If there is a significant "Prince effect" in hip hop, it's in reaction and more cultural than musical. Some have interpreted the rise of hyper masculine "gangsta rap" as a delayed reaction to the fact that 80s black superstars were definitely on the feminine side. According to this interpretation, white audiences long liked their black male artists "trained" to have a contained, non threatening image in the 60s and 70s (lots of Motown acts for instance though not all), then when there was some serious global crossover action, black male sexuality was expressed by slighter-built/lighter skinned types like MJ and Prince, paving the way for (or provoking, according to some) the rawer, blacker, manlier types that would have been too threatening to mainstream America earlier.

The only big things I think you missed are the rise of The Beastie Boys, House and breakdance music. and Neclueus's "Jam On It", where Prince more than likely became inspired to create his Camille persona.

In case "Pope" is Prince doing hiphop.

Then I hate Prince doing hiphop.... cuz that's a really bad track. Awful.

On my iTunes list to The Hits/ The B-sides, I have The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, right before Purple Rain, and not the totally lame "Pope" / hiphop track....