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Rapping (or rhyming, spitting,[1] emceeing,[2] MCing[2][3]) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular",[4] which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backbeat or musical accompaniment.[4] The components of rap include "content" (what is being said), "flow" (rhythm, rhyme), and "delivery" (cadence, tone).[5] Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that rap is usually performed in time to an instrumental track.[6] Rap is often associated with, and is a primary ingredient of hip-hop music, but the origins of the phenomenon predate hip-hop culture. The earliest precursor to the modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which "oral historians",[7] or "praise-singers",[7] would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their formidable rhetorical techniques for gossip or to "praise or critique individuals."[7] Griot traditions connect to rap along a lineage of Black verbal reverence that goes back to ancient Egyptian practices, through James Brown interacting with the crowd and the band between songs, to Muhammad Ali's quick-witted verbal taunts and the palpitating poems of the Last Poets.[8] Therefore, rap lyrics and music are part of the "Black rhetorical continuum",[8] and aim to reuse elements of past traditions while expanding upon them through "creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies.[8] The person credited with originating the style of "delivering rhymes over extensive music",[9] that would become known as rap, was Harlem, New York native, Anthony "DJ Hollywood" Holloway.[9]
