“Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop rock, you name it… you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones.” – Bob DylanRead more
“I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.” – Richard M. Nixon, 37th president of the United StatesRead more
“Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap” – Bo Diddley, responding to the claim his 1959 “Say Man” was one of the first Rap RecordsRead more
“Anticipated [Rap Music]? I damn well invented it! And I wasn’t the only one. Talking rhyming lyrics to a groove is something you’d hear in the clubs everywhere from Macon to Memphis.” – Johnny “Guitar” WatsonRead more
Rapper Dr. Dre sampled PARLIAMENT’s “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” on “Let Me Ride” and “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” on “The Roach (The Chronic Outro)” from his smash hit 1992 album The Chronic.Read more
In his 2024 single “Houdini”, rapper Eminem interpolates the melody from Steve Miller Band’s song “Abracadabra”. Miller loved it.Read more
When pioneering blues/rap guitarist Johnny “Guitar” Watson suffered a massive heart attack mid-guitar solo while on stage touring through Yokohama, Japan, eyewitnesses agreed his last words were “ain’t that a bitch” — the title of his signature song.Read more
The track of George Clinton’s famous superfunky song Atomic Dog was actually a backing track playing on rewind that Cinton just began rapping over — the result of a happy misunderstanding.Read more
Singer Dionne Warwick, upset with misogyny in rap lyrics, once brought Snoop Dogg & Suge Knight to her home and demanded that they call her a “bitch” to her face. Snoop Dogg later said “I believe we got out-gangstered that day.”Read more
Heavy Metal band Black Sabbath collaborated with rapper Ice-T on a 1995 song called “Illusion of Power”.Read more
The hook, screaming intro, and name of rapper Jay Z’s legendary 2001 diss track “Takeover” is from The Doors’ 1968 song “Five to One”.Read more
Sugarhill Gang’s famous early rap track “The Edge” was highly influential to Genesis drummer/lead singer Phil Collins & producer Hugh Padgham, who modeled the hook of the band’s 1983 hit single “Mama” after the song.Read more
Buddy Guy’s daughter Rashawnna Guy, known professionally as Shawnna, is one of the few female rappers in history to have a #1 song on the US Billboard Hot 100, for her rhythmic call-and-response with Ludacris in 2003’s “Stand Up”.Read more
Miles Davis Electric Band’s longtime percussionist James Mtume released a hit 1983 single “Juicy Fruit”, which became the foundation & chorus for rapper Notorious B.I.G’s smash hit “Juicy”.Read more
The opening to the only album rapper Notorious B.I.G. released in his lifetime, 1994’s “Ready to Die”, was a scene depicting his birth — to the music of Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly”.Read more
Progressive rap group Public Enemy used Isaac Hayes’ high-pitched piano riff from “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” as the foundation of their 1989 song “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” on the album ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.’Read more
On his smash hit 2001 album “The Blueprint”, rapper Jay Z pays homage to bluesman Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland — using “Aint No Love in the Heart of the City” as the framework for the aptly-named song “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)”.Read more
Ice Cube used The Isley Brothers’ “Footsteps in the Dark” as the foundation for one of the most distinguished rap songs fo all time, “It Was A Good Day”.Read more
B.B. King’s iconic instrumental riff in “Chains and Things” was the foundation for Ice Cube’s 1991 rap song “A Bird In The Hand”.Read more
A sample of Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness” was foundation of rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West’s 2011 song “Otis”.Read more
