Rap

Rap is music built around rapping: rhymed speech delivered in rhythm over a beat. Emerging from hip-hop culture in the Bronx in the 1970s, it pairs the MC's flow, cadence and verbal invention with production drawn from funk, soul and electronic sources, and it has become the dominant commercial form of popular music worldwide. The records that define it, from *Eric B. & Rakim*'s "Paid in Full" to *Nas*'s "Illmatic" and *Kendrick Lamar*'s "good kid, m.A.A.d city", are judged first on verbal craft: density of rhyme, narrative control, persona and the fit between voice and beat.