Shea Serrano - The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

Foreword

Ice-T

I did this interview with a twenty-year-old girl. She asked me, Ice, when did you sell a lot of records? I said, When people went to the record stores. She said, Whats a record store? I said, Well, like, Tower... but its gone... Wherehouse... ? I couldnt name any record stores that were still open. She said, Like Best Buy? I said, Really, theyd rather sell you a refrigerator than a record.

A lot of people, when they rap, they say they wanna be the best. They want to be rich. They want to be famous. My only objective was to get out of the street. My objective was to change my occupation, to just become a rapper. I knew my days were numbered to low digits in the streets. I wanted out, but I didnt know how to get out. When I saw rappinghonestly, when I was in the streets hustling, I thought it was silly. I liked it, but nobody was getting money. And me being a hustler, you gotta get some money for me to really respect you. I was on some street shit. Right now, if you go to a real-life drug dealer in the streets, he might be like, Fuck rap. The brain is in another place. Its kind of corny to you. People who are breaking the law, they look down on everything else. So, I was listening to rap, but it wasnt triggering me to do it yet. Then I heard Schoolly Ds P.S.K.

Melle Mel was the first one Id heard who put any real thoughts or ideas into a song. He did it on The Message in 1982. That was what kind of pulled me in at first. Then I was in this spot hustling, I had a gun on me, and I heard P.S.K. come over the mic and I was like, This shit sounds like how I feel. The way Schoolly D was spitting ithe was talking about being in the streets; he wasnt real explicit with like what would come later, but it was the seed. When I heard it I immediately was like, Whoa, that connects to my life.

So now I saw this lane where I could have the things, the money and the carssee, because hustlers and players, they want flashy shit. Thats all a hustlerll think about. He wants girls, he wants jewelry, he wants cars. I did, too. And I was getting it on the street. But when I saw a lane where I could have all that and not go to jail, it was like, Aw, yeah, thats what I wanna do. But I knew I had to get better at rapping. Even by then, by the mid-80s, there was a hierarchy of talent. But again, people wanted to be the best. I didnt. I just wanted to be named among the rappers because that meant I was a rapper and not a street hustler anymore. That was my goal. I just wanted to be named. If someone said, Kool Moe Dee, then I wanted someone else to say, Ice-T. Thats all I wanted. I wanted to be included. I couldnt give a fuck about being the best. If someone said, EPMD, I just wanted someone else to go, What about Ice-T? That was all that mattered.

The most important moment of my rap career is different from my biggest moment personally, even though one kind of led to the other. My most important moment was when the Colors video hit. Colors was a movie starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. They were cops in it and it was set in L.A. when L.A. really had a bad gang problem. Id been rapping for a while, I had an album out. But I hadnt popped yet. When Colors came, Dennis Hopperhe directed ithe asked me to do the song for it. I knew there was going to be a lot of controversy around it so I did it. When I did the song and the video, it took off, thats when I got that national attention. Colors woke the country up to me. That was 1988. It wasnt long after that that I spoke for the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., and then later was on Oprah. Colors was why. And right after Colors was The Dope Jam Tour, my biggest moment.

The Dope Jam Tour was just... I was out there with Doug E. Fresh and Kool Moe Dee and Eric B. and Rakim and Biz Markie and Boogie Down Productions; all these greats. It meant so much because that was the first time I got to get across the country and really see with my own eyes that I had fans. Its one thing to think you have fans or hear you have fans. Its another thing to actually see them. That tour was the first time I saw that they knew me. Thats such a big thing. You could have fans in London but until you go there you dont really know it.

My first show on the tour was San Antonio, Texas. I was the opening act and they went fucking bananas. I was just blown away that they were excited to see me. I was coming from playing small clubs, playing garage parties and small bullshit shows, and then to be able to play an arena and have the whole crowd go off, thats when it really sinks into you like, This shit is real. I got real fans out here. I knew after that I was always going to be mentioned with the rappers. I knew I was becoming important.

A song thats important is a song that changes the route of the music or introduces a new element to the music. Like Fight the Power, that was Public Enemy in 1989. The video showed people marching in the street. That was the first time, to me, a rap group looked like a political movement. That was a huge change. That turned Chuck D into a spokesman instead of just a rapper. If somebody does that, it changes the course of music. When I came out and I was cursing and talking about drugs and the cops, no one had done that. It changed the course again. Important songs birth new things: new rappers, new groups, eventually new movements altogether. If a song comes out and its a new style and it flops, nobodyll take that route. When it comes out and it hits, it becomes a subgenre. Its not restricted to violence, either. The Native Tongues movementDe La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, people like Queen Latifah, all thatthat was a lane. That was important. It was on the other side of what we were doing. It was necessary. Picture it like branches on a tree. Rap started out in this straight line going up like a tree and then spread out into all these different things. The songs that caused those changes, theyre important.

If Im picking important songs, songs that are going to last forever, that changed rap, Ill say Its Like That/Sucker M.C.s by Run-DMC in 1983. Ill say Rappers Delight, of course. There was rap before then that wasnt recordedSpoonie Gee, Cold Crush Brothers, the Treacherous Three. But Rappers Delight was the first commercially successful record. That was 1979. Ill say Eric B. Is President by Eric B. and Rakim because when I was making my first album I was in New York and that record was everyfuckingwhere. Rakimto me, he invented the flow. Kool Moe Dee and T La Rock had introduced rhyme patterns that were a little more difficult than the Sugarhill Gang or Busy Bee Starski. But Rakim took this technicality and made it cool. Schoolly Ds P.S.K. in 1985 was what inspired me to make 6 in the Mornin, and that was a big song that caused a lot of changes. Toddy Tee was an inspiration of mine for that song, too. I cant leave him out. And Fight the Power, that one always should be included.

Rap will always evolve. This stage were in now, theres all this singing. Itll turn into something new and then thatll turn into something new, too. Raps gonna be around forever. I dont know where its headed, though. They probably didnt know in 1979 what we were gonna be doing in 1986.

Introduction

It would seem to me that the best way to begin this book would be to explain exactly what is going to happen in it, so thats what Ill do: The whole entire point of this book is to identify which rap song was the most important rap song each year from 1979 to 2014, so thats whats going to happen.