Rap

Rapping, also referred to as MC-ing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the performer speaks rhythmically and in rhyme, generally to a beat. Rapping developed both inside and outside of hip-hop culture and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighbourhood of New York in the 1970s by Jamaican expatriate Kool Herc and others. The parties introduced dancehalls 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 is 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 or 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 as well.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia articles "Rapping" and "Hip hop music".