Rap Music is Sesame Street’s Fault
History says that the first rap song to make it as a mainstream hit was Rapper’s Delight in 1979. That always made sense to me. Not that I cared one way or the other, but if I did I had no reason to doubt this bit of conventional wisdom. Until last weekend, when I found a bunch of old Sesame Street letter-and-number cartoons.
By the way, is there a single word to describe the flashback-style memory you get when you've completely forgotten an old Sesame Street song for over a quarter of a century, but once you hear the first notes you instantly remember the whole thing? Whether or not there is, I now think the first rap song to get national notice was actually Jim Henson’s King of Eight.
Best Sesame Street song that I completely forgot about: the disembodied acid-trip guy who counts to ten.
History says that the first rap song to make it as a mainstream hit was Rapper’s Delight in 1979. That always made sense to me. Not that I cared one way or the other, but if I did I had no reason to doubt this bit of conventional wisdom. Until last weekend, when I found a bunch of old Sesame Street letter-and-number cartoons.
By the way, is there a single word to describe the flashback-style memory you get when you've completely forgotten an old Sesame Street song for over a quarter of a century, but once you hear the first notes you instantly remember the whole thing? Whether or not there is, I now think the first rap song to get national notice was actually Jim Henson’s King of Eight.
Best Sesame Street song that I completely forgot about: the disembodied acid-trip guy who counts to ten.
posted by Jennifer Abel at 10:28 PM
5 Comments:
And the first artist to rap on MTV?
...Blondie.
Yeah.
Eric, wasn't Michael Jackson, from his "Thriller" album, the first black musician to appear on MTV? (Goes to show how old I am, talking about Jackson as a black guy.) So of course MTV would be late jumping on the rap bandwagon.
Rap songs about car-chomping Martians. We white people can be SO lame sometimes.
"By the way, is there a single word to describe the flashback-style memory you get when you've completely forgotten an old Sesame Street song for over a quarter of a century, but once you hear the first notes you instantly remember the whole thing?"
Sesamnemonics?
Man, I'd forgotten all about "The King of Eight" ... and now it's back in my head.
I think I have a copy of Rapper's Delight on vinyl. It's probably buried under a mountain of stuff somewhere in my house.
The kingdom of 8 is a dystopian nightmare for the oppressed "sevener" shia minority.
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