Rap music is one of today 's most successful and influential music forms. But what do we really know about it? Knowledge on rap music in my generation consists mostly about who we think is "doper", whose "played out", who is just a singer posing as a rapper, whether underground or mainstream is better and whose the sexiest. But none of us really know who started this movement. None of us understand what it took to create not just a genre, but a whole culture that influenced our parents ' and inevitably, our, lives. Rap music shaped America and its people into what it is now and vice versa. So shouldn 't we know more about how it got started? 1978, New York City- The Bronx, a small poverty stricken neighborhood, is where it all began.
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Unfortunately this groundbreaking achievement didn 't last long, since N.W.A was soon after banned from mainstream radio station for their explicit content. But it didn 't matter that the stations weren 't playing their songs, because they were already being heard. In the same year Yo! MTV Raps premiered, it was a whole show dedicated to hip hop/rap music. The following year, BET 's Rap City premiered, which showed that TV had started to accept rap music. Many wanna-be-famous rappers came out of the wood works, each feeling like he was the 'next big thing '. One of those struggling to earn a title was gangsta rap artist, Tupac Shakur. He debuted with his album, "2Pacalypse Now" in 1991. It wasn 't his absolute best but all the songs, despite not having hooks, showed a more poetic side of Shakur. Later that year, Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, Tracy "The D.O.C" Lynn Curry, and Marion "Suge" Knight founded Death Row records. A major record company of its time, it continued on through the years, to sign many of the big names in the rap game such as: Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, and even our rising star, 2pac. On the other side of America in New York, Sean "Diddy" Combs had just signed a newbie to his own record label, "Bad Boy" records. That newbie was Christopher "Biggie" Wallace. Tensions arouse between the producers Diddy and Suge Knight, due to a supposed shooting of a close friend of Suge 's that he suspected Combs had been a part of. Diddy denied ever having anything to do with the altercation. Despite this, Knight openly voiced his disgust with anything to do with Bad Boy, especially Diddy. While at first it seemed this was just a personal issue between the two producers it grew into something neither of them had expected. An East coast/ West coast rivalry had
Unfortunately this groundbreaking achievement didn 't last long, since N.W.A was soon after banned from mainstream radio station for their explicit content. But it didn 't matter that the stations weren 't playing their songs, because they were already being heard. In the same year Yo! MTV Raps premiered, it was a whole show dedicated to hip hop/rap music. The following year, BET 's Rap City premiered, which showed that TV had started to accept rap music. Many wanna-be-famous rappers came out of the wood works, each feeling like he was the 'next big thing '. One of those struggling to earn a title was gangsta rap artist, Tupac Shakur. He debuted with his album, "2Pacalypse Now" in 1991. It wasn 't his absolute best but all the songs, despite not having hooks, showed a more poetic side of Shakur. Later that year, Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, Tracy "The D.O.C" Lynn Curry, and Marion "Suge" Knight founded Death Row records. A major record company of its time, it continued on through the years, to sign many of the big names in the rap game such as: Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, and even our rising star, 2pac. On the other side of America in New York, Sean "Diddy" Combs had just signed a newbie to his own record label, "Bad Boy" records. That newbie was Christopher "Biggie" Wallace. Tensions arouse between the producers Diddy and Suge Knight, due to a supposed shooting of a close friend of Suge 's that he suspected Combs had been a part of. Diddy denied ever having anything to do with the altercation. Despite this, Knight openly voiced his disgust with anything to do with Bad Boy, especially Diddy. While at first it seemed this was just a personal issue between the two producers it grew into something neither of them had expected. An East coast/ West coast rivalry had