Blues Rap

Blues rap, more often called hip-hop blues, is the fusion of hip hop with electric blues: rapped verses delivered over twelve-bar progressions, harmonica, slide guitar and sampled or live blues grooves. It crystallised in the mid-1990s when *G. Love & Special Sauce* built a career on the hybrid in Philadelphia, *Everlast* rebuilt his post-*House of Pain* career around it on "Whitey Ford Sings the Blues" (1998), and the On-U Sound orbit of *Little Axe* and *Tackhead* had already been wedding dub, blues and rap in Britain. The style remains a small, musician-led niche rather than a chart movement.