30SOMETHING
Spoonie Gee: Spoonin Rap
From 12" (Enjoy, 1979). Also on Best of Enjoy.
Paulette and Tanya Winley: Rhymin' and Rappin'
From 12" (Winley, 1979). Also on Death Mix.
As we're wishing goodbye to 2008 - a great year in some ways (Obama!), a terrible year in others (financial meltdown) - it's worth considering that 1979 will mark hip-hop's 30th anniversary. I've been thinking on this point - heavy - of late, not the least of which is that I find it interesting that there's yet to be a major post-hip-hop style of Black music to emerge. I'll have to leave that for a future conversation but it's been a good excuse to revisit some of the songs from hip-hop first year.
There is, of course, some debate around whether hip-hop really brought in 1979 or '78 (or even earlier) but if we use "Rapper's Delight" as the style's global introduction, then '79 feels about right. What's definitely true is that '79 is the first year we see a number of early singles get out there, not just "Rapper's Delight" but also the Funky 4 + 1's "Rapping and Rocking the House" and the early Grandmaster Flash and Furious 5 hit, "Superrappin'."
Of that pioneering cohort, I've always been a fan of Spoonie Gee who, to me, was the first individual MC to really distinguish himself, especially in a field where most of the major rap talents were in groups. It helped that his uncle, Bobby Robinson, ran Enjoy Records which, along with Sylvia Robinson's (no relation) Sugarhill Gang, was one of the major, early rap labels (though, unlike Sugarhill, Enjoy didn't survive for too long). Spoonie was blessed with one of those ultra-smooth voices that were all the rage in the old school years; he just sounded cool on the mic but while he didn't have the fiercest of flows (compared to, say, Kool Moe Dee of the Treacherous Three), Spoonie took the pimp/player style of the blaxploitation era and updated it with wild style.
"Updating" is also how Paul Winley approached hip-hop. He had initially gotten into the music biz in the 1950s, riding the doo wop wave, and by the mid 1970s, Winley had turned towards funk, perhaps best-known for the Harlem Underground Band of "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba" fame. As hip-hop began to emerge in New York, Winely was quick to capitalize and drew on his own family's skills to help him get into the scene. His daughters Paulette and Tanya Winley put out a few singles in the early '80s, most produced by mother Ann Winely (a family affair, indeed). 1980's "Vicious Rap" was a superior single but for '79, "Rhymin' and Rappin'" was still an astounding track, combining a rollicking piano loop with the distinctive, piercing voices of the Winley girls.
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