Question about Christion Rap or Regaeton ?

Right. He isn't true Jamaican music. I guess that's why he was at the forefront of Jamaican music since the early 60's.

I suppose, next, you're going to tell me that Joe Higgs isn't "real Jamaican music", either.

Sorry, but Marley's history and legend in Jamaica is well known.

Not sure where you're getting your information, but Bob Marley didn't invent reggae. He just made it popular outside of Jamaica.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you mention "the root of all this" being in England, with rhyming slang used in urban communities. Are you talking about Cockney Rhyming Slang, where stairs are "Apples and pears", wife is "Trouble and strife", and so on? If so, this was used in the East End of London, not "many parts of urban communities" More about this can be found at: http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/cockney_rhyming_slang

I don't understand what Cockney rhyming slang has to do with rap and reggae.

 

My only exposure to Cockney rhyming, I guess, was watching the Bugaloos on Saturday morning back in the 70's.

I agree with you, though. I don't see what it has to do with rap, either.

Obviously, it's pretty easily tracable back to the scatting and rhyming speech of Cab Calloway, Louis Jordan, Slim Gaillard, and others of that era, but I've never seen anything that tries to tie it to anything English.

Think about it logically for a minute: if you're a twenty-something black guy living in inner city New York in the early 70's, are you more likely to be influenced by Cockney rhyming slang? Or black jazz artists of New York?

 

Perhaps I misunderstood what Corndoggy was saying. Maybe he didn't intend a link between "The root of all of this actually started way back in England" and "The slang in many parts of urban communities". Possibly he was referring to American urban communities.

But that would still leave the question unanswered as to what he meant by "the roots of all this" being in England.

 

Cockney rhyming was the birth of rap. They had a very different language of mostly urban slang, and they rhymed everything, which, is exactly what rap is. This has been around so long than an urban dictionary of sorts had to be published in 1859. Yes, it started in England. And, surprise surprise, Jamaica was a British colony.

 

You are being short sighted here. That guy you mentioned... who influenced the people that he is listening to? Then who influenced those guys? And, who influenced them, etc.? Cockney rhyming slang has been around so long that they had to print a dictionary for it 150 years ago. There wasn't no rap and reggae 150 years ago, it had to evolve. Actually, that term and the people/language that it describes has been around since the 1600's.

What is rap anyway? It's urban slang that rhymes and is spoken and not sang. Period. That is exactly what Cockney rhyming is, and it has been around for decades, if not centuries, before "rap" ever existed.

 

Keep your wrists in the air, to keep your watches dry. It's too late to save the boots in here now.

love,

Sopranette

 

I am no expert on rap, so I tried a google search for "History of rap". I found plenty of sites that point to the African roots of rap. For instance, http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/roots_of_hiphop.htm says:

The ancient African tribal rhythms and musical traditions survived the shock of the transportation of milllions of Africans as slaves to the Americas, and after 300 years of slavery in the so called Land of the Free the sounds of Old Africa became the new sounds of black America. Rapping, the rhythmic use of spoken or semi-sung lyrics grew from its roots in the tribal chants and the plantation work songs to become, an integral part of black resistance to an oppresive white society. ​

http://rap.about.com/od/rootsofraphiphop/p/RootsOfRap.htm says:

A product of cross-cultural integration, rap is deeply rooted within ancient African culture and oral tradition.
​

And http://www.ez-tracks.com/Hip_Hop/hip_hop_music_history.html says:

If you look at history rap music, it clearly shows its origins and influences in the popular African American and Latino street culture of New York City and surrounding areas.
​

But I could not find anything that supported your statement that Cockney rhyming was the birth of rap. Cockneys don't speak in verse. Cockney Rhyming slang is not poetry; it replaces certain words with other words or phrases that rhyme with them. So "My wife fell down the stairs and hurt her feet" would be "My trouble-and-strife fell down the apples-and-pears and hurt her plates-of-meat." As I understand it, rap lyrics are a kind of poetry, with words at the ends of the lines rhyming, as in this examply of rap lyrics I found:

I specialize in hypnotizing,
I'm never compromising,
My skills are surprising,
Despite hate arising.
​

 

If you knew anything about poetry, you'd know that it doesn't have to be in verse, have a certain structure, or even rhyme at all.

And that's great that African beats did in fact come from Africa, but the biggest generalization of rap nowadays is the fact that it's mostly been urban slang. They didn't have urban slang in the slave days.

Without urban slang, rap would be nothing, it may have never started up. Now, where did urban slang come from? It didn't come from the slave ships.

You can't consider the history of rap without considering the history of urban slang. Rap revolves around "ebonics". Without ebonics, rap would just not be rap as we know it. Ebonics is a sub-standard form of urban slang that is spoken by African Americans in the exact same fundamental manner as Cockney. Cockney was around well before ebonics as we know it today, and it's the exact same thing fundamentally. Yes there are different phrases and words but fundamentally they are the same thing.

How on earth somebody can see current popular rap and ebonics phrases like "fo shizzle my nizzle" and not realize that it has fundamental roots in Cockney is beyond me.

 

Right. Because nobody knows anything about anything but you.

But, ironically, they had Cockney rhyming.

I hate to break this to you, but there are people who have actually studied the history of rap (although, why they've done so is completely beyond me) and there are those who are involved in rap.

What are your credentials to tell them that they're wrong?

 

I do know that poetry does not need to rhyme. What I was saying was that Cockneys do not pretend to speak in poetry, whether rhyming or not. They speak in prose, like everyone else, with the exception that they replace certain words with other words or phrases which rhyme with them. I don't know what "fo shizzle my nizzle" means, so I cannot realise from it that rap has its roots in Cockney rhyming slang. To be like rhyming slang, it would have to mean something which in ordinary English would rhyme with "nizzle", (like "chisel"), in the same way that in Cockney rhyming slang, "Plates of meat" stands for "feet", and rhymes with "feet".

I can see that both Cockney Rhyming slang and rap lyrics involve rhymes, and both are connected with urban (as opposed to rural) culture, but to say that that means rap has its roots in Cockney RS is no more logical thanb saying that chairs have four legs, and elephants have four legs, so chairs can trace their origins to elephants. :laugh:

Sorry, you haven't convinced me, especially in view of the apparent lack of anything in encyclopaedias, on the web, etc. to back up your assertion.

 

Have you ever met a typical person who heavily uses ebonics claim that they speak in poetry?

And certain ebonics phrases is different from this, how exactly?

Ebonics 101: "fo shizzle my nizzle" means "for sure, my N*****", except you have to be black to actually say it or else you'll get the snot beat out of you.

"Rap", as we know it, specificially the lyrics, has its roots in ebonics. Where did ebonics come from? Seriously, what is ebonics? It's an urban speech that often rhymes, but mostly playfully changes up phrases of things. Your "plates of meat" example, and others, fundamentally does the exact same thing as "fo shizzle my nizzle" and other similar phrases. Both phrases sound the same, they rhyme, it's not musical, it's not in verse, it is urban, etc. It's the exact same thing. Cockney has been around lots longer though. Without ebonics, rap would just be blues, or gospel, things like that, it wouldn't be rapping. And, ebonics is fundamentally the same thing as Cockney slang, just a little different.

As for your little example of the animals vs. chairs that you apparently think is so clever, no you can't say that, but what you can say is that zebras probably came from something very similar to a horse that lived a long time ago. That's all I'm saying.

Yup, because, you know, if it's on the internet, it's got to be true, right? Do you really think you're going to find any website of a hardcore rap fan who would be willing to say that the fundamentals of rap actually came from a bunch of white dudes? Seriously now, think about that...

 

Nice. :thumbs:

 

What I would like to see, is proof that the slaves talked in this manner, or even talked that way up until the mid 1900's. I seriously doubt they did. Sure there may be some vague references saying that Africans talked with ebonics-like language and brought that over, but there's little or no proof of this. There are no examples, all you've got is vague references that say it was brought over from Africa. If there are examples, they are very hard to find.

What IS known, is that this type of language really took off starting probably in the 60's and especially the 70's, then had another explosion in the late 80's or early 90's with the popularization of rap. They didn't always talk this way, they got it from somewhere, and without showing that real Africans, then their offspring, even up to the mid 1900's talked this way... well, quite honestly, saying that it came from Cockney slang logically makes a heck of alot more sense than saying it came from Africa with the slaves.

Why are there tons of examples of how Cockney was spoken throughout history, and so few examples otherwise? Given the popularity of rap, given the overwhelming number of African-Americans and native Africans as compared to Cockneys, and an apparent interest in the history... if you guys are so right and I'm so wrong, then why are there not tons more examples of traditional, historic ebonics than traditional Cockney phrases? If it really did come from there, there should be an overwhelming amount of examples. There's just not. Feel free to drop everything you are doing and attack google.com trying to look them up, I'm sure you were thinking that anyway.

 

Corndoggy, be a man and stop attributing statements to me that I did not make.

Not only is it childish, it's also dishonest.

 

offensive remarks removed.

 

offensive post deleted.

 

Sorry, Corndoggy, I am ignorant on this one. I had never come across the word "ebonics" before reading it in your post.

I don't understand. If "nizzle" rhymes with "N*****" (the same way that "meat" rhymes with "feet", what ever could "N*****" be? (Of course, I can see that "shizzle" rhymes with "nizzle", but if that is what you are thinking of, it is not the way Cockney rhyming slang works. Cockneys don't say "feet of meat"; they say "plates of meat", or just "plates" for short).

I apologise if you thought I was trying to be "so clever". That wasn't my intention. And if you are just saying that rap is similar to Cockney slang in that both are urban, and both involve rhyme in some way, then we are agreed. But in your earlier post you stated that Cockney rhyming was the birth of rap.

No, I don't think that if something is on the internet it must be true. But I do think that if a significant number of people hold a particular belief, several of them are going to put on their websites, blogs and so on.

 

Nice.:thumbs:

 

Too late to save the watches, I guess. This has got to be one of the strangest connections I've seen on this board. Ebonics=cockney slang=rap? Wasn't "ebonics" phased out as being racist, as a way of dumbing down blacks in this country? The Snoop Dog phrase you posted doesn't rhyme, so you contradicted yourself, anyway, and Snoop is the only artist that uses that form of language. (Actually, I'm suprised the moderaters allowed that one by). And what has any of this to do with using rap or reggae for church services, as the original OP asked??
This is starting to remind me of the "Airplane" movie, where the white lady volunteers to translate usual english into jive.

love,

Sopranette