Rapping
Refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” (rhythm and rhyme), and “delivery”. Rapping is distinct from spoken word poetry in that it is performed in time to a beat.
Rapping is often associated with and a primary ingredient of hip hop music and reggae, but the phenomenon predates hip hop culture by centuries. It can also be found in alternative rock such as that of Cake and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Rapping is also used in Kwaito music, a genre that originated in Johannesburg, South Africa and is composed of hip hop elements. Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, prose, poetry, and singing. The word (meaning originally "to hit") as used to describe quick speech or repartee predates the musical form. The word had been used in British English since the 16th century, and specifically meaning "to say" since the 18th. It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style. Today, the terms "rap" and "rapping" are so closely associated with hip hop music that many use the terms interchangeably.
Etymology
Over many centuries, the meaning of the English verb rap was gradually extended from 'hit, strike, especially repetitively and rapidly' to 'parley', and finally, 'speak lyrics to a beat measure (whether or not the beat itself is physically present)'.
By the late 1960s, when Hubert G. Brown changed his name to H. Rap Brown, rap was a slang term referring to an oration or speech, such as was common among the 'hip' crowd in the protest movements, but it did not come to be associated with a musical style for another decade.
Rap thus etymologically means "fast read" or "spoken fast". It may be from a shortening of repartee.
