Maybe it was that he hailed, atypically for a drill rapper, from Chicago’s Northside, or maybe it was that his demon-voiced delivery felt like an evolution for the genre. In 2014, Young Pappy went on a run that established the untamed aggression and angst that would later influence the ...
In the summer of 1980, Kurtis Blow’s second single was a massive hit: The first hip-hop song to go gold was instrumental in mainstreaming the genre. But just as telling is its creative DNA. While a clear outgrowth of rap’s roots in funk and disco, “The Breaks” also evokes the ...