Rapid-fire rapping has its roots in scatting.
“Calloway's signature "double-time" scatting and vocal phrasing are frequently credited as early antecedents to the rapid-fire rap and melodic flows that Bone Thugs-n-Harmony popularized in the 1990s.”
I watched a rapper’s reaction video to Cab Calloway and The Nicholas Brothers performance in the 1943 film, Stormy Weather. He brilliantly made the connection of Cab’s scatting sequence to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s Tha Crossroads record and he’s absolutely right!
The cadence of BTH and the way they inflect and sort of sing-rap using the range of notes in the scale absolutely is a callback to the fast synchronized scatting technique of Cab and Ella and many others.
Cab and Ella had a quicker approach to it in comparison to Louis (credited as the first to scat) and Sarah’s but still, the foundation is all connected. Cab and Ella’s style contained swagger and flare because of the speed that they relayed the words and phrases and sounds. Scatting requires a lot of improvisation while also making sense to the notes they’re sounding out and staying within the cohesive standard of the music accompanying them! Seriously, musical geniuses! And then many decades later, rappers like Twista and so many others come along and incorporate that same technique to the genre of rap!
Our music is so interconnected generationally — even when we don’t consciously know that we’re calling back to what our ancestors were doing decades ago! It’s innate.
Our FBA musical legends and icons laid out the foundation for so much of what we do in contemporary times!
JUNE IS FOUNDATIONAL BLACK AMERICAN MUSIC MONTH!
