"Rapper's Delight" (full-length version) -- C or D?

I'm glad this doesn't bother Kit Brash move above, but can I just say that I don't really understand this complaint so many people seem to make about early rap songs? Why are "repetitive" hip-hop grooves so often considered bad? To me they often make music feel relentless, inexorable...unstoppable, like I said. Nobody seems to mind much that Can or Black Sabbath or Steve Reich or Giorgio Moroder or Underworld or Bob Dylan or Fairport Convention or Hawkwind or Fall (or fill in your favorite droners', of any genre) grooves are frequently repetitive; in fact, repetition in their music is as often as not deemed as making the music more powerful. Why should rap be different?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zxCOKG3orQ

So many people in this thread are dead to me.

fuck off anyone who doesn't say CLASSIC

I tried to hate this in jr. high because we hadn't heard of "hip-hop" and it just sounded like disco, which I was also trying hard to hate. But damn if we didn't sit around and try to figure out all the rhymes anyway -- that Kaopectate line slayed us every time. And when I realized that girls liked it a lot, I was like REAPPRAISAL MODE.

I think the 15 minute version is kinda too long, I prefer the 8 minute cut. This is especially true regarding DJ use, I've tried to play the full version several times, but I always have to fade it out around the 10 minute mark, because you can see people getting visibly bored. I don't think 15 minute rap songs are necessarily bad though, I'd love to hear a 15 minute version of "8th Wonder" or "Apache", because they have a more dynamic structure, which favours an extended groove.

I tried to fade the super-long version of "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" once at nine minutes or so. Everybody on the dance floor gave me THE STANK EYE and I raised that fader right back up, you bet.

yeah i don't think this has the legs to play for 10 minutes.

i could easily love a 15 minute version of The 900 Number.
easily.
that riff on a loop for 15 minutes - oh yes.

they play this on kiss fm in sf pretty regularly and it makes me happy

My younger sister had their "Apache" single from '82. Oddly enough the B-side was "Rapper's Delight" (which was three years old by then). From my dim recollections, "Rapper's Delight" wasn't even edited, it just sort of got faded down in the middle of a verse...

This is a bit like comparing "Rock Around The Clock" (i.e. simple proxy for first rock and roll record) to some later record like "All Shook Up". Folly!

People talked on records before-- Dylan, Lou Reed, Bootsy (many others)-- and people like Kool Herc were doin it in the hood for ages, but this was the first rap record! Jesus, it's a fucking classic!

I don't sit around and listen to it anymore (not the least reason for which is that I know it by heart) and I'm sure it doesn't do as well in a club as it used to but you got to respect this motherfucker right here.

(You know what is underrated IMO is their "Rapper's Reprise"...)

The only record I would even consider mentioning in this same thread would be be The Sequence "Funk You Up", which showed rather immediately that women could spit it hard too, maybe even harder than the men! This is still true today, at least if you look at my playlists...

Go on and somebody start an "Early Sugarhill s/d" thread (probably exists, didn't check), but this ain't it.

I guess the instrumental for this track is a live recording:

Chip Shearin claimed in a 2010 interview that he was the bass player on the track. When aged 17, he was visiting a friend in New Jersey. The friend knew Robinson, who needed some musicians for various recordings, including "Rapper's Delight". Shearin's job on the song was to play the bass for 15 minutes straight, with no mistakes. He was paid $70 but later went on to perform with Sugarhill Gang in concert. Shearin described the session this way:

The drummer and I were sweating bullets because that's a long time. And this was in the days before samplers and drum machines, when real humans had to play things. ... Sylvia said, 'I've got these kids who are going to talk real fast over it; that's the best way I can describe it.'

in general, were all the early hip hop instrumentals played live? no tape looping? who's playing on "The Message" and did Afrika Bambaata direct the players on "Planet Rock"?

where can I find answers for all my questions about analogue hip hop production in the 70s/80s/90s?

the nuts and bolts of the early days of hip hop (ie pre-Run DMC) are generally not well documented in books afaict. Most of the best books about rap focus on later periods. Oddly, the best (and certainly most fun to read) source of info on early hip hop is probably Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree. The production of "The Message" is covered in detail, for example - and yes it was all written and performed and produced by one guy (Ed Fletcher) who also raps on the track. Melle Mel is the only member of the Furious Five who appears on the song (apart from a brief snippet at the end where you can hear all the other guys talking).

Generally speaking yes, almost all of the early hip hop backing tracks were played live by guys like Pumpkin, Sugarhill's house band (McDonald, LeBlanc, Wimbish), Davey DMX, Arthuer Baker etc. Here's some of Piskor's work on the subject:
Planet Rock - https://boingboing.net/2013/05/07/brain-rot-hip-hop-family-tree-57.html
The Message - https://boingboing.net/2013/04/02/brain-rot-hip-hop-family-tree-53.html
Davey DMX - https://boingboing.net/2015/02/03/davy-dmx-influential-early-hi.html
Sugarhill house band - https://boingboing.net/2013/09/10/brain-rot-hip-hop-family-tree-72.html

Of course, things totally change when a) Run DMC, LL, Rick Rubin, and the Beasties become huge and b) samplers become cheap and widely available

Cool, thanks! I may have to get that Piskor book, it's good stuff.

there are FOUR volumes of the Hip Hop Family Tree collections already!

is he going to do more? seems like he got preoccupied with this X-Men thing...

also as far as books about production/how things were made go, Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies is fantastic but it generally covers a much later era (late 80s/early 90s)

This one is the only hip-hop history book I've ever read that focuses on old school alone. It's pretty good, though the fact that it's an oral history with dozens of interviewees makes it kinda scattered at times, and obviously stories about how certain songs were made is only a part of it. Still well worth reading tho, if old school interests you.

wow, I'm definitely getting Check the Technique! thanks

Yes Yes Y'all looks cool too