ike Bobby Brown a vaguely hip edge with his brand of "New Jack Swing," White alternative rockers like G. Love, bobby Sichran, and most notably Beck devised a strange hybrid of rap, blues, and rock. Vanilla Ice probed that whitebread pop-rap could top the charts, though he was unable to sustain his success.More than most genres' rap/hip-hop has become a culture with its own sub-genres and buzzwords what can seem almost impenetrable to the novice. Despite this proliferation of schools of production and performance, many rap records can appear virtually indistinguishable from each other to a new listener. And there's no getting around the fact that a lot of them are-- the market is saturated with repetitive beats and monotonously uncompromising slices of urban street life, to the point that they've lost a lot of both their musical novelty and shock value. Rap music has lost none of its momentum--or it's compacity to inspire outrage in society as a whole--as we head into the last half of the 1990's. Scenes continue to proliferate, not just on the coasts, but in Atlanta, Houston, and such unlikely locales as Paris (home of the leading French rapper MC Solaar). It may appeal more to inner-city adolescents than anyone else, but gangsta rap may be bigger than anything else in R&B music commercially, and there are more multiplatinum rap/hip-hip acts than you can count. Shinehead, Shabba Ranks, and less heralded performers like Sister Carol have fused reggae and rap. And the jazz and rap worlds are being brought closer together than ever through the efforts of Gang Starr and their lead Guru, US3, and the landmark Stolen Moments: Red, Hot + Cool compilation, which united many of the top names of hip-hop and jazz....
