Join Totally 80s Podcast host Lyndsey Parker (Yahoo Entertainment Music Editor/SiriusXM Volume Host) and her special guest, A&R rep Darone Bowers, as they remember rap's impact on the music of the 80s. We're talking Run DMC! LL Cool J! Kurtis Blow! Beastie Boys! Plug into the full episode below.
ON THEIR FIRST MEMORIES OF THEIR RAP AWAKENING:
HUGHES: "Mine's the most obvious 'white boy in the '80s' choice. Sorry, but it's Blondie's 'Rapture.' I mean, I could lie and think of something really, to give me some street cred, but now it was 'Rapture.' Sorry."
PARKER: "Isn't that first song with rapping in it that was a Top 10 hit? You know the charts, John, right? Wasn't it like the first chart hit with rap? Yeah, I'm trying to remember off the top of my head and Duran, he's going to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure. But I believe it was not the first Top 40 hit to feature rap, but it was definitely the first Top 10 hit to feature rap. I believe Sugar Hill Gang was before 'Rapture,' correct?"
BOWERS: "No, actually, 'Rapture,' I want to say it may have been the second before then. What was so awesome about Debbie Harry is she hung out in New York. That was the first time not only the white audience heard hip hop, but everyone outside of New York, that was the first time they heard that kind of music."
HUGHES: "The thing I really remember about 'Rapture' were the two different versions. You have the single version that really just cut off the most of the rap, really. And then sometimes when the song got really big, a Top 40 radio station in my town would play the extended version and I was like, 'Wait, there's a man from Mars that's eating cars?!'"
ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN RAP AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY:
BOWERS: "The message was that was actually the first time where you had a group that made this record about how hard the streets are and just how everyday thing - they talk about everything, from police brutality to drugs, everything in one record. And even though they were in New York, that echoed everywhere. I grew up in the inner city of LA and that was the first time I ever heard anything like that."
"I think that record inspired a huge amount of not only Message-type records, but a reality that a lot of people, a lot of people who were born with things sitting on their porch, it's like, 'Oh, okay, well, I can tell my story that same way.'"
PARKER: "Yeah, it's interesting because I remember when I heard the Message for the first time where it had that line that said, 'Don't push me. Cause I'm close to the edge.' I was like, 'Whoa!' Now it sounds like kind of quaint because obviously, you know, songs got a lot more explicit, a lot tougher, but even just, that was in compared with like these kind of disco funky beats. It wasn't upbeat. So I remember it being like, 'Whoa, they're really going there.'"
Listen the rest of the podcast here.
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