rap

I. n

1a.

a conversation, especially an earnest and/or lengthy discussion. A word which became an important part of the counter-culture lexicon at the end of the 1960s, rap was originally used by blacks and beatniks, deriving from the verb form.

1b.

a rhythmic spoken chant, often to a musical background. This form of (origi-nally) improvised delivery became a vogue first among young blacks in New York and other eastern American cities (inspired by Jamaican 'toasting'), and then a worldwide pop phenomenon in the 1980s.

2.

an accusation or charge, blame or punishment. An 18th-century British use of the verb 'rap' was to denote swearing an oath against, accusing of, or charging (with a crime). This sense survives, via American English, in the phrases 'take the rap' and 'beat the rap' and the term rap sheet.

II. vb

a.

to talk, converse or discuss. A key term from the hippy era which usually denoted an earnest or communal exchange of ideas. The word was first heard in this sense in black American speech; it was subsequently adopted by white hipsters, beatniks and hippies in turn. (Rap was in use in Britain in the late 1960s but in its original sense is now confined to the rem-nants of hippy culture.) The exact origin of this use of the word is not at all clear; possible etymologies include a shorten-ing of 'rapid' (speech), 'rapport' or 'repar-tee'. The term might come simply from the similarity between talking and tap-ping ('rapping') on a drum or other sur-face; this might fit an origin among jazz musicians. Alternatively, in archaic slang a 'rapper' was someone who 'talked' to the authorities (see the noun form) and this notion may have become generalised in black argot into 'talk'.

b.

to deliver an (originally improvised) monologue to a musical backing; to per-form rap music. This musical form of the 1980s originated as a street phenome-non among black youth in American cit-ies in the 1970s.