National Recording Registry: Rap

"If I'm more of an influence to your son as a rapper than you are as a father, you got to look at yourself as a parent." - Ice Cube

Rap music is the youngest separate genre in the National Recording Registry, with many of the canonical classics of the genre having been inducted rather recently, but it has been recognized as an important vehicle for social messaging since its inception, with the first political rap, Grandmaster Flash's 1982 hit "The Message", the newest work in the original 2002 registry.

Music historians argue about the origin of rap music, but it is generally believed to have come from New York parties where DJs would loop the instrumental parts of records and a rapper would rap over them. Most rap records will do the same, with a looped "sample" from an existing song serving as instrumental accompaniment. In most cases, the sample is a direct sample, though in many (such as Dre's sampling of George Clinton), it is played note-for-note by a band.

The earliest raps, such as the Sugarhill Gang's 14-minute "Rapper's Delight", were danceable party songs, but by the end of the 1980s, gangsta rap - which could glorify drugs, violence and misogyny - was the most-recognized subgenre, as exemplified by N.W.A.'s album Straight Outta Compton.

Hip-hop's canon would continue to sample funk and to produce diss tracks, as in the landmark albums The Chronic (with its smooth beats and Snoop Dogg's signature drawl) and The Blueprint (Jay-Z), but in the late 1980s, an alternative canon emerged with the debut of De La Soul's playful 3 Feet High and Rising, which made use of a diverse array of samples including pop, yodeling, and a French educational recording and talks about subjects ranging from love and sex to the danger of drugs and the benefits of community. Jazz-sampling art rap would continue to exist as a genre (and possibly that which inspired today's lo-fi) alongside the main canon.

There are about twelve hours of rap music in the National Recording Registry, for the most part represented in the table below. Titles in the main table have been censored, however, which has affected rap more than any other genre; title modifications are made apparent by brackets.