Wild Style (1983) of course remains the ultimate Hip Hop movie, and what it lacks in plot and structure it makes up for in accuracy, authenticity and sincerity. It was made by the right people, at the right time, for all the right reasons.

Read about the making of the film here.

Watch the film here.

The Cold Crush Brothers, one of the contending crews in the basketball throwdown scene:

Cold Crush in 2013, in a concert to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film:

The Rock Steady Crew, also featured in the film, with a hit they had the same year:

Lady Pink (Rosie) is still making work. Check her out here.

So is Lee Quiñones (Zoro), pictured above with his wife.

And watch the trailer for a new documentary on Jean-Michel Basquiat (1961-1988), who was part of the street art scene:

(Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, 1973.)

In Wild Style, the white journalist who goes uptown to get her story listens to Blondie in her car and rocks a Debbie Harry look. Blondie’s 1981 hit “Rapture” syncretized various current forms of black popular music, including disco and rap. The video contains references to West African/Carribean religion, including Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead in Haitian voudou (and Basquiat has a cameo). What else is going on in this video? Is “Rapture” an homage to black culture, or a ripoff?

As a gallery owner says in the 1983 documentary “Style Wars,” which treats the same topics as “Wild Style,” Blondie was a popular meme in graffiti art. 

Watch it here.

On the other hand, in 1979, the conservative cultural critic Nathan Glazer declared about graffiti artists:

I have not interviewed the subway riders; but I am one myself, and while I do not find myself consciously making the connection between the graffiti-makers and the criminals who occasionally rob, rape, assault, and murder passengers, the sense that all are part of one world of uncontrollable predators seems inescapable. 

This is considered to be the first commercially-released rap single, the 1979 “King Tim III” by the Fatback Band — a live funk band playing instruments, not samples — with rapper Tim Washington.

The first commercially-released rap single to achieve mainstream success was “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, also released in 1979.

“Rapper’s Delight” uses samples from the song “Good Times” by Nile Rodgers’s disco-funk band Chic. Note how different the sound is from a live band.

(Incidentally, Nile Rodgers was a member of the New York Black Panther party in his youth, in the same section as Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother.)

Questions:

• Name three African-American cultural and/or verbal traditions that influenced the development of rap music.
• Are any of these traditions still present in current rap styles? Which? Give an example of a song that demonstrates your argument, and attach a video in the comments.