udes the memory of rap culture. Rap has a strong sense of tradition for an art form created less than twenty years ago. Rose alludes to t he ability of sampling technology to assist in maintaining the past in rap music 's present. Rap acts of today sample lyrics by Rakim that were released ten yea rs ago; although Rakim hasn't made an album in four years, hearing his sampled v oice today is not seen as a "revival" of a hip-hop image, but is taken for grant ed as a continual interspersion of past and present. When rap artists perform for audiences, the link between the oral perfor mance and a memorized text becomes blurred. The DJ's will have the instrumental s from the mass-produced albums, but rappers rarely recite lyrics from the recor ded songs verbatim. A rap artist might recite the hook, if the song has one, an d stick to a considerable portion of the "original" lyrics; but (like oral poets ) he will spontaneously toy with the lyrics--how much and in what ways depends l argely upon the performer's mood and the audience on a given night. At a Tribe Called Quest show in 1994, rapper Phife was performing a popular track, but at a break in the track he substituted the album lyrics with something like "I'll bu rn the house down like TLC." This lyrical alteration was a reference to a then- recent incident in which a member of female pop band TLC set fire to the mansion of her ex-romantic interest and N.F.L. star Andre Rison. The reference was imm ediately recognized, and the audience responded accordingly. However, with rap acts often falling into the web of chart-minded labels and management, rappers a re less able to stray from their recorded product. When a rap act sees one of i ts records sky across the pop charts, their awareness of audience familiarity an d expectation reaches new heights as well. When the "text" of a song becomes im printed on the minds of millions of people, rap acts become reluctant to break t hat chain of famil...
