Devotees of dancehall must’ve been baffled and horrified to see Snow suddenly surging to #1. It was popular in clubs and sometimes on rap radio, but it never threatened pop dominance. Before “Informer,” dancehall was essentially an underground phenomenon. Snow’s stage name emphasized his whiteness, and it practically demanded Vanilla Ice comparisons. The idea of a white guy - a Canadian white guy, no less - sing-rapping in patois was sheer novelty in 1993, and the weirdness was probably part of the appeal. The entire story of the man known as Snow looks different at a distance. In 1993, when the first dancehall record ascended to the top of the Hot 100, it was a white guy who made the record. But rappers and dancehall deejays had been collaborating since the early years of both genres. Dancehall toasting and rapping were never the same thing patois-heavy toasting was more melodic and improvisational. (Kool Herc, the Bronx DJ widely credited with inventing hip-hop, is a Jamaican immigrant, and he essentially kicked off an entire cultural revolution by adapting the soundsystem culture to American music.) In the ’80s, rap and dancehall evolved along parallel lines, aided in part by the development of sampling technology. The two genres share a common ancestor in Jamaica’s soundsystem culture. Rap and dancehall reggae have always had a lot in common. But in March of 1993, the same thing happened all over again. By the spring of 1993, Vanilla Ice had basically become a cultural punchline, and rap music had moved on. In a genre that had always been predominantly Black, this was a troubling development - a message that pop radio would only truly embrace rap music if it came with a white face attached. In 1990, Vanilla Ice’s “ Ice Ice Baby” became the first rap song to top the Billboard Hot 100. How did this happen again? How was this even possible? History barely took two years to repeat itself. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |