The difference between hip-hop & rap?

[Beats & Pieces]

As the traditionalists would have it, 'Rap' is a part, or rather 'element' of 'Hip Hop' (joined by B-Boying, Graff etc.).

This makes sense, at least retrospectively. It serves as a convenient narrative, it tidies up potential loose ends and allows for a certain coherency that can (and has) been used to the benefit of particular communities. It is a view to which I once subscribed - but now - less so. I suspect that it is far, far more complicated.

The easiest example of this is KRS-1.

 

[alsoknownas]

It's not just retrospective because all of the breakbeat, b-boying and fashion stuff always felt aligned and part of the same scene (or group of connected scenes). Graffiti was a bit different because there was clearly a lot of street art including tagging that wasn't linked to the hip-hop scene at all back then - arty kids, urban kids who probably would have identified more with punk/ new wave, etc. but it kind of got eaten up by the growth of hip-hop and became synonymous.

To answer the OP, Hip Hop is a term for the wider culture around urban creativity that you see in rap music, fashion, slang, dj-ing, grafitti art, dance styles, etc.

 

[moody]

What is a DJ if he can't scratch
What is a MC if he can't rap

I'd say that i'm a pretty good dj but I can't scratch for toffee.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I don't like the 'four pillars' idea because it leaves out beatboxing.

 

[Orang Utan]

As the traditionalists would have it, 'Rap' is a part, or rather 'element' of 'Hip Hop' (joined by B-Boying, Graff etc.).

This makes sense, at least retrospectively. It serves as a convenient narrative, it tidies up potential loose ends and allows for a certain coherency that can (and has) been used to the benefit of particular communities. It is a view to which I once subscribed - but now - less so. I suspect that it is far, far more complicated.

The easiest example of this is KRS-1.

translation: I don't know

 

[Crispy]

What's the difference between rock music and guitar solos?

 

[alsoknownas]

"What is a party if it doesn't really rock?
What is a poet, all balls, no cock?
What is a war if it doesn't have a general?
What's Channel 9 if it doesn't have Arsenio?
What is life if you don't have fun?
What is a "what?" if you ain't got a gun?
What's Ali without Shaheed Muhammad?
Nothing,
Kapelka makes you vomit,
What is a Quest if the players ain't willing?
What is a pence if you don't have a shilling?"

 

[ViolentPanda]

Rap is one of the four elements of Hip-Hop.

Are the other elements earth, wind and fire?

 

[ViolentPanda]

What's the difference between rock music and guitar solos?

Tony Iommi.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

translation: I don't know

It didn't need any translation. History is complicated, messy, confused and contested. There may not be order and patterns or even intentionality on the part of those existing within a particular social, cultural, class, or ethnic space. 'Hip Hop' may now be thought of a consisting of 'elements', but was that always the case? Was there always a relationship between the things now recognised as constituting 'Hip Hop'? If separate, when did these elements come together? Who was involved in determining what was included - and perhaps most significantly - what was not? Why were such decisions taken, by whom, and how? This is why my point about retrospective 'fitting' holds, and why it is interesting that in recent years the predominant story of Herc / Bam / Flash has been taken to task - notably by those living in the Projects and by DJs associated with Disco.

The culture now known as 'Hip Hop' - with constitutive elements fixed in place - didn't happen overnight, it didn't emerge fully formed and ready to go. Part of Flash's recent Google criticism of Herc makes that point in respect of DJing and 'Turntabalism'.

 

[Orang Utan]

I was just mocking your overly verbose style - now that's hip hop

 

[Spandex]

It's really quite simple:

Wham - Wham Rap = contains rap, is not hip-hop
Nas - Illmatic = contains rap, is hip-hop
New Order - World in Motion = contains rap, is not hip-hop
J Dilla - Donuts = no rap, is hip-hop

Of course, people more knowledgeable than me could discuss the minutiae of hip-hop's origins and development over the past 40+ years until the sun explodes, but the answer to the question in the OP is that easy.

 

[Orang Utan]

It's really quite simple:

Wham - Wham Rap = contains rap, is not hip-hop
Nas - Illmatic = contains rap, is hip-hop
New Order - World in Motion = contains rap, is not hip-hop
J Dilla - Donuts = no rap, is hip-hop

Of course, people more knowledgeable than me could discuss the minutiae of hip-hop's origins and development over the past 40+ years until the sun explodes, but the answer to the question in the OP is that easy.

This is not hip hop either (maybe cringe-hop), although it does contain rapping, and has one of the sickest lines ever: 'I've got more stock than an Oxo Cube':

 

[red & green]

 

[campanula]

Only tangentially connected, but one of the most wince inducing bits of footage I have ever seen in my life(cringe-hop, OU) was Victoria Aitken (daughter of 'sword of truth' Jonathon)...(ahem) 'rapping'.
I know nothing about rapping...or hip hop, but still grasped enough to know that her febrile effort was the most misguided attempt at 'edgy relevance' in the entire history of the world.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

I was just mocking your overly verbose style - now that's hip hop

Seriously?

 

[Beats & Pieces]

I don't like the 'four pillars' idea because it leaves out beatboxing.

Doug. E would be crying at the nonsense right now. Just do the beatbox - 20 + years later.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

What is a DJ if he can't scratch
What is a MC if he can't rap

I'd say you have a house on the Nile.

 

[Saul Goodman]

What is a DJ if he can't scratch

 

[Beats & Pieces]

For some folks 'time coded' vinyl and 'cue' points offered their salvation? With this in mind some might appreciate the irony of the DMC 'fuckfest' celebration elsewhere on Urban.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

Only tangentially connected, but one of the most wince inducing bits of footage I have ever seen in my life(cringe-hop, OU) was Victoria Aitken (daughter of 'sword of truth' Jonathon)...(ahem) 'rapping'.
I know nothing about rapping...or hip hop, but still grasped enough to know that her febrile effort was the most misguided attempt at 'edgy relevance' in the entire history of the world.

It was a media stunt. No more. No less.

 

[Beats & Pieces]

It's not just retrospective because all of the breakbeat, b-boying and fashion stuff always felt aligned and part of the same scene (or group of connected scenes). Graffiti was a bit different because there was clearly a lot of street art including tagging that wasn't linked to the hip-hop scene at all back then - arty kids, urban kids who probably would have identified more with punk/ new wave, etc. but it kind of got eaten up by the growth of hip-hop and became synonymous.

To answer the OP, Hip Hop is a term for the wider culture around urban creativity that you see in rap music, fashion, slang, dj-ing, grafitti art, dance styles, etc.

Functionalist nonsense.

 

[alsoknownas]

Functionalist nonsense.

 

[Orang Utan]

Seriously?

Aye, you do cut a rather ludicrous figure with your academic gobbledegook

 

[alsoknownas]

It didn't need any translation. History is complicated, messy, confused and contested. There may not be order and patterns or even intentionality on the part of those existing within a particular social, cultural, class, or ethnic space. 'Hip Hop' may now be thought of a consisting of 'elements', but was that always the case? Was there always a relationship between the things now recognised as constituting 'Hip Hop'? If separate, when did these elements come together? Who was involved in determining what was included - and perhaps most significantly - what was not? Why were such decisions taken, by whom, and how? This is why my point about retrospective 'fitting' holds, and why it is interesting that in recent years the predominant story of Herc / Bam / Flash has been taken to task - notably by those living in the Projects and by DJs associated with Disco.

The culture now known as 'Hip Hop' - with constitutive elements fixed in place - didn't happen overnight, it didn't emerge fully formed and ready to go. Part of Flash's recent Google criticism of Herc makes that point in respect of DJing and 'Turntabalism'.

This sort of thing could be said about any genre or movement in music or culture. Punk had disparate, sometimes quite contradictory, roots, but it's pretty recognisable as a scene. You'd have to be talking *very* early hip hop (proto really) for there not to be any kind of feeling of an emerging scene and common touching points. If you are serious (it is actually hard to tell sometimes), I'd love to know what elements of the early scene (apart from the graf ones I've already touched on) you consider to have been somehow separate or excluded or retrospectively airbrushed out? I'm genuinely interested.
One interesting discussion I had with someone centred around his insistence (which I didn't think was wholly valid, but did have some merit) that the importance of 'boogie' (funky disco, I suppose) as a formulating building block in hip hop had been sidelined over an insistence on the importance of funk. My conclusion was that the sound of early recorded rap (Fatback, Sugar Hill, whatever) was geared towards a slightly more disco-friendly record buying public compared to the party call-out stuff from around the same era (which was criminally under-recorded).

 

[Beats & Pieces]

This sort of thing could be said about any genre or movement in music or culture. Punk had disparate, sometimes quite contradictory, roots, but it's pretty recognisable as a scene. You'd have to be talking *very* early hip hop (proto really) for there not to be any kind of feeling of an emerging scene and common touching points. If you are serious (it is actually hard to tell sometimes), I'd love to know what elements of the early scene (apart from the graf ones I've already touched on) you consider to have been somehow separate or excluded or retrospectively airbrushed out? I'm genuinely interested.
One interesting discussion I had with someone centred around his insistence (which I didn't think was wholly valid, but did have some merit) that the importance of 'boogie' (funky disco, I suppose) as a formulating building block in hip hop had been sidelined over an insistence on the importance of funk. My conclusion was that the sound of early recorded rap (Fatback, Sugar Hill, whatever) was geared towards a slightly more disco-friendly record buying public compared to the party call-out stuff from around the same era (which was criminally under-recorded).

It is complicated - and Punk is not something that I feel able to comment on specifically. Maybe Punk was recognisable as a scene because of its particular formation, the circumstances of emergence (and possibly the elements against which Punk was reacting?). With Hip Hop, I think there is still a great deal of work to be done in uncovering the history, or at least moving away from the 'mythic' that you often see. This is a process of asking questions, not necessarily providing easy answers. How much material is available to do so? There are tapes of concerts and shows, but there doesn't appear to have been much scholarly effort made in surveying and collecting what might be out there (flyers, tapes, photos etc.) For something accorded the status of a 'culture', this is troubling. Of course, the act of assembling may well give a sense of coherence and order that was not actually present in contemporary terms.

The 'boogie' argument is interesting - but would mean sorting out what is meant by the term - what is included and excluded. Given the slower tempos seen in what appears to be recognised as boogie you can see the advantages it would have for Rappers and MCs over the generally faster paced Disco orientated material. I'd agree that the early recorded stuff that we have leans towards a party friendly construction, naturally 'Disco' (or at least a form of Disco) may have been picked up on and used to provide a vehicle for the selling of records - and this was about selling records and making money - not informed by a view to history and culture. Perhaps 'Funk' was viewed as too narrow a sonic field through which to achieve commercial viability.