When people refer to rap music, it only means that they were reading or quoting rap lyrics. People always think that when they see lyrics and vocals on a movie, video, or TV, they take their own words, poetry, or rap lyrics, making it a "real song."

People think that they are not just making up songs, but that they are making them up on the spot to the camera, to their friend, or the artist on screen. That is wrong.

Rap is real music, so you need to stop referring to it as a "performance."

Rap music is contemporary music

Before we can understand rap music as "real" music, we must first consider the word "real." It has to do with the topic of discussion.

Music is considered real when it is related to our everyday lives. Many societies have termed this as "new music."

People don't say, "If you are into new music, it must be real." They say, "This is my new music."

This implies that it is contemporary music. Therefore, rap music is music that appeals to the present time.

It is part of the present time. Therefore, it is "real" music because it can be appreciated and enjoyed by all generations of our world.

Also, rap music is music that is based on music and lyrics. It is related to jazz, rock, and blues because it is about topics that people can relate to in their everyday lives.

There are also rap songs that are contemporary music like; Tha Dogg Pound's "It's Midnight," "I Just Wanna Party," and "Girls That Like Girls." Then, there is the song "Celebration" by Snoop Dogg, The Roots, and Corb Lund.

All these songs are about the end of a great party. This proves that rap is "real" music because people of all generations can enjoy it.

On a side note, I would like to state that some songs are actually beat-driven in music, and some are word-driven. Therefore, you can't classify words and beats in the same category of music.

But in "I Just Wanna Party," the main beat is "bababa." The second beat is "chatty-chatter," and the third beat is "bing bing bing" or "ba-da-da-ba." "Chatty-chatter" starts with the "bababa" and ends with a "boom."

Therefore, this song is rhythm-driven. But because the main beat is "bababa" and "chatty-chatter," it is considered word-driven.

Back in the day

Back in the old days, when rap was popular in the late 1970s, early 1980s, artists would get together and play their music for each other. One would be the rapper, and the rest would be the singer or keyboard player.

Artists like Grandmaster Flash, Eric B. and Rakim, and Wu-Tang Clan are the original form of rap. All of them get together and perform a rap.

It does not matter if they are on stage or in a recording studio; they are all rapping. They did not set up the microphone; they did not go into the recording studio in the name of rapping or to make a song.

When I first heard the song "Rapper's Delight" on the radio as a little kid, I said, "Wow! This is amazing!" I had never seen or heard anyone rap like that before.

That was rap, just what I had heard on the radio. It seemed so original and so new and so cool.

Since I was only 13-years-old at the time, I thought that a beat had to be played on a record player to make that "different." Today, all of the rappers, without beat or drum sounds, break up the different words put into a rhyme scheme and make music out of that.

The evolution of rap

That is how it all began. Later on, as I continued to listen to hip-hop music, I realized that they were not only rapping, but they were DJing.

The beat had a bass line, and a new scratch pattern played. This was called scratching, and it is now trendy in hip-hop music.

The words could have rhymed or not rhymed, but it was on the scratch patterns that the words would either be played or not play. So, even though the words could be written out in a written or printed format, it was the music that would make it a song.

That was the concept of "rapping." Artists would rap over a drum beat and sometimes scratch a bass line, sometimes the singers would do the scratch part, and they would just beat on the beat with a microphone.

Then someone else would sing on top of that, or they would scratch with a different musician. Everyone was making their own music out of a simple musical format.

What it is today

The music that everyone is now listening to today is called a song and not rap. A song is a composition or series of notes with a pattern or beat.

Songs can have anything from six to forty-two bars and a chorus to a verse and a chorus. People singing would then go to the beat section and repeat the last bit of a verse or chorus over the beat section.

If someone needed more syllables or needed a hook, they just wrote more music on top of the previously made song.

In hip hop music, the music is made out of a melody and a beat. Rap artists are now making songs with a melody with words, a beat section, and a hook.

Conclusion

Many songs just rap with a beat section, but more is made out of a melody. All of these are songs.

Rap today is just what I had started to refer to as a performance. It is not real music because it is not a group effort.

All of these different types of music are made out of a basic musical format. That is all a song is.

Rappers are the original rappers. They are making real music out of a simple musical format that was never thought of as a song.

They are making music out of a performance. They are not writing out a text, but they are rapping instead.

Charlie K

Charlie K is a music writer and blogger for Sounds of Gold. He also composes background music for a range of web-based businesses.