So myself and a couple of other Orgers hijacked another thread with this topic, and it was suggested a new thread was created.

The story of Prince and Rap/Hiphop generally goes something like this:

Once upon a time there was a little dressed head to toe in 100% silk imported gypsy lace, and custom handmade high heel boots. He was a rude and funky man. Then came 1992 hip-hop had taken over and Prince was suddenly playing catch up.

I think thats a grossly oversimplified version of events.

When the subject of Prince and Hip-Hop arises I think most fans minds automatically default first to the song "Dead on it" where Prince "disses" hip-hop, and second to the "" album because it seems to be the album where hip-hop is most prominant. However it was the "Lovesexy" album where he first called for Cat to rap. One could argue the toss about earlier songs where Prince talks rather than sings (DMSR, Shockadelica etc) but we'll leave that be for the moment.

Now, there is no question that Prince somewhat missed the point of Rap music early on. He saw it as dressing on a party song. He didn't understand the authentic nature of what kids were listening to. There was a vibrant rap scene from the late 80s onwards but it hadn't gone mainstream yet.

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. 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).

In 1991 Vanilla Ice became the first rapper to top the billboard charts with a #1 rap single. THAT was what mainstream Rap looked like back then. *Again, there was a vibrant and authentic rap scene in the USA at the time... but it wasn't dominating the pop charts.

Of course there were other artists who'd had some success with rap singles. But no Rap artist had blown up in the pop charts and managed to sustain a successful career. Few if any Rappers had a string of hit singles or commercially successful second album.

Once again for clarity - there is no question that in the late 80s and early 90s there was a vibrant rap scene, but it was nothing close to the way hip-hop dominated the charts by the end of the millenium. (It was 1999 when MTV gave it's first "Best Hip-Hop" award.)

I don't think Hip-Hop owes anything to Prince. But I think he did to a degree help establish hip-hop on the mainstream charts. 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.

By the time he'd sacked Tony.M Prince's rap had evolved. He was delivering his flow over funk rather than trying to sound hard. Prince later came up with some more clearly hiphop influenced stuff. 18&Over seems like his take on the westside sound. I've heard other people liken "Emale" from Emancipation to a "Dr Dre like beat"

I actually have no idea of the details, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't Holly Rock be the first proper rap song Prince did, is there a reason for not counting it (aside from the obvious fact that it's Sheila E doing the actual rapping, but surely it shows that early on Prince was exploring Hip-Hop?)

Prince's rapping was so cool, even on earlier tracks like Dead On it (not sure if that track is considered true rapping but whatever). I kind of wish he still still did it as much. He probably would, but the best songs with his best rapping in often have profanity in

Prince didn't mainstream rap in any way shape or form. Prince's rap music is an AWFUL embarassment. It's a stain on his legacy. It was out of touch and dated even at the time he released it. The first rap song Prince released was Holly Rock by Sheila E for the Krush Groove soundtrack. It was G-A-R-B-A-G-E as a rap song, but as a funk song and a part of the PR era history I like it. 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. Prince thought he was too good to have a "name" rapper on his records like everyone else, so he stoopidly hired a d-list one instead in Tony M.

Prince is very much his own thing.

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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."

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Example:

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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.

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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]

skywalker said:

Prince is very much his own thing.

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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.

funksterr said:

skywalker said:

Prince is very much his own thing.

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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.

You think songs like "Gett off" or "Love 2 The 9s" was an honest attempt on Prince's part to do what Public Enemy, Run DMC, or even MC Hammer was doing? C'mon....

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If Prince was trying to do straight on hip hop he'd have ditched the feminine stuff and bought into the hyper masculinity that is MANDATORY for hip hop. Sure, Tony M was in the mix, but he and the Game Boyz had been around since 1984 and by 1991 they were faux butt shagging Prince onstage.

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Now what "real" hip hop artist would do that? None. Only Prince would. Again, Prince wasn't trying to be "real" hip hop.

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All the gangster glam imagerly and gun microphones owed way more to 70's funk than 90's rap.He was just toying with it and putting it in his sound. He had been doing so since at least 1986. Again, it was never going to be "real" hip hop, it was always Prince's take on a genre. Same as he always did/does.

[Edited 3/5/15 20:00pm]

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.

Interesting. Prince was playing catch up in the late 80's? Like during "Sign O' The Times" and "Lovesexy"?

skywalker said:

KingSausage said:

skywalker said:

Interesting. Prince was playing catch up in the late 80's? Like during "Sign O' The Times" and "Lovesexy"?

No. Catch up on his full embrace of hip-hop.

Would you say that Prince was playing catch up to trends with Dirty Mind?

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His first two albums were mostly slick well produced R&B/Pop (sold as Stevie-esque) albums.

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Yet, in 1980...Prince made a concentrated effort to alter his sound/style. He borrowed a lot of soundstyles and imagery from what was "hot" at the time (New Wave, Punk, Brit Rock, etc.)

skywalker said:

KingSausage said:

skywalker said:

Would you say that Prince was playing catch up to trends with Dirty Mind?

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His first two albums were mostly slick well produced R&B/Pop (sold as Stevie-esque) albums.

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Yet, in 1980...Prince made a concentrated effort to alter his sound/style. He borrowed a lot of soundstyles and imagery from what was "hot" at the time (New Wave, Punk, Brit Rock, etc.)

No. On Dirty Mind he brilliantly blended styles. When he embraced rap in the early 90s, it usually stuck out like a sore thumb.

1. His blending of styles on Dirty Mind was executed better. Yet, does it negate the fact that Prince was still , you know, chasing trends and borrowing from what was (in 1980) popular and "hot" at the time?

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2.Did his embracing of rap stand out like a sore thumb? Always?

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I mean, "Gett Off" was a monster of a song in the summer of 1991 and I don't remember a person (other than a few bitter Prince fans) complaining about Tony M back then. Same with Sexy MF. Same with Prince's rapping in Pussy Control.

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Don't get me wrong. I hear you. I cannot stand Jughead. Yet, I am not a big fan of the DooWop circa 1980 feel of "Gotta Broken Heart Again." So, what do I know?

[Edited 3/5/15 21:30pm]

skywalker said:

KingSausage said:

skywalker said: No. On Dirty Mind he brilliantly blended styles. When he embraced rap in the early 90s, it usually stuck out like a sore thumb.

1. His blending of styles on Dirty Mind was executed better. Yet, does it negate the fact that Prince was still , you know, chasing trends and borrowing from what was (in 1980) popular and "hot" at the time?

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2.Did his embracing of rap stand out like a sore thumb? Always?

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I mean, "Gett Off" was a monster of a song in the summer of 1991 and I don't remember a person (other than a few bitter Prince fans) complaining about Tony M back then. Same with Sexy MF. Same with Prince's rapping in Pussy Control.

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Don't get me wrong. I hear you. I cannot stand Jughead. Yet, I am not a big fan of the DooWop circa 1980 feel of "Gotta Broken Heart Again." So, what do I know?

[Edited 3/5/15 21:30pm]

I agree somewhat. When Prince did incorporate rap into his music it was probably a bit of a surprise to his fans. Especially after dissing it on TBA. But for the most part I think he did ok with it. Lets not forget it was the early 90's and the style he incorporated was very much of its time. He also misfired with it at times too. Jughead (I actually dont mind it as much as most fans do) was indeed a misfire. The rap in 2the9s pisses me off and to some extent on MNIP. But I think the rap on Willing & Able is really good and that is hardly Prince trying to be hip hop.

I think Gold Nigga is Prince really trying to be hip hop. And that album sucks as far as I am concerned. But mainly the rapping in his own songs was ok in general, if somewhat overused and misplaced at times. It only stood out like a sore thumb to his fans because it was such a departure and many of us thought he would never do it.

Prince as a rapper is another story. He really shouldnt go there. P Control he may have just gotten away with it, but by and large, he sucks at rapping.

funksterr said:

Prince didn't mainstream rap in any way shape or form. Prince's rap music is an AWFUL embarassment. It's a stain on his legacy. It was out of touch and dated even at the time he released it. The first rap song Prince released was Holly Rock by Sheila E for the Krush Groove soundtrack. It was G-A-R-B-A-G-E as a rap song, but as a funk song and a part of the PR era history I like it. 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. Prince thought he was too good to have a "name" rapper on his records like everyone else, so he stoopidly hired a d-list one instead in Tony M.

To be fair, rap in the 80s and 90s was an incredibly fast moving genre. Rap artists who were hot one year were played out the next. The slang, fashion, dance, and music was changing dramatically almost every six months. Hip hop artists struggled to keep ahead of the trends so it was almost impossible for an outsider like Prince to keep up.

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.

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.

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

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.

Aerogram said:

Prince is to fem to convincingly pull off the machismo of rap music.

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.

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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.

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In 1991 Vanilla Ice became the first rapper to top the billboard charts with a #1 rap single. THAT was what mainstream Rap looked like back then. *Again, there was a vibrant and authentic rap scene in the USA at the time... but it wasn't dominating the pop charts.

Of course there were other artists who'd had some success with rap singles. But no Rap artist had blown up in the pop charts and managed to sustain a successful career. Few if any Rappers had a string of hit singles or commercially successful second album.

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All of these are YOUR ARBITRARY RULES. Here's what you're saying: "There is absolutely no evidence (except for this huge pile of evidence which I ignore because it doesn't fit my theory)."

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I don't think Hip-Hop owes anything to Prince. But I think he did to a degree help establish hip-hop on the mainstream charts.

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This is nonsense.

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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.

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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.

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.

I'm going 2 have 2 agree w Skywalker on this one, especially when it was Prince doing the rapping.

Aerogram said:

Some rather wild generalizations and simplifications on this thread.

4. There is no such thing as a genre called Prince music, he's the great style integrator, not a genre of his own.

I completely 100% disagree w this comment.

Bart is totally right. Prince just followed trends, he wasn't helping rap to become mainstream at all. This theory is ridiculous.

ludwig said:

.Prince just followed trends, he wasn't helping rap to become mainstream at all. This theory is ridiculous.

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

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.

The Beginnings of Hip Hop

Though it was not the first rap song ever made, Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang was the first hip hop song to become really popular. The original 15 minute song was recorded in a single take in 1979 and involved the Sugarhill Gang rapping over the top of the baseline to Chic's song "Good Times". While Kurtis Blow's The Breaks reached number 87 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first single featuring 80s Hip Hop to really make a dent in the Billboard charts was Rapture by Blondie. The song went all the way to number one in 1980. It featured Blondie rapping and included references to rap pioneers Fast Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash. Other early 80s rap songs included:

• The Message - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
• Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa
• Roxanne Roxanne - UTFO
• The Show - Doug E. Fresh
• The Roof is on Fire - Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three
• Friends - Whodini

Brenda Bennett(Vanity 6/Apollonia 6)

If a Girl Answers Don't Hang Up: Don't know if the public is aware of it or not, but "If a Girl Answers" was one of the first rap songs by a girl group.

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

Graycap23 said:

Prince can do a lot of different music, but he doesn't own them all.

He is rock, pop, funk.

He doesn't own classical, house or hiphop.

When he does that kind of music, it's more funny.

Not that i don't like it, but it's not to be taken that seriously and that's ok.

I mean sexy mf and pussy control...they are just fun tracks.

So I wouldn't say he had any influence on the hiphop movement.

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.