Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Say My Name, Say My Name, Part 2
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2021
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy continues his analysis of when singing became central to rap music. Rap has always been musical. But back in the day, rappers generally, well, rapped: talked in cadence over a beat. Fans judged MCs primarily by their rhymes and rhythms, not their melodies.
Now? Rappers are mostly singers: MCs from Drake to DaBaby slip seamlessly in and out of melody. Some hits that appear on Billboard’s Rap charts feature literally no rapping. When did this change?
Part 2 takes a close look at an integral pivot point in this progression: when Beyoncé changed the game by singing with triple-time flow like the baddest MC.
Podcast production by Asha Saluja.
Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.0 | This episode contains explicit language. |
| 0:07.9 | Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. |
| 0:16.6 | I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number |
| 0:21.8 | One series? On our last episode, we tried to answer the question of when rapping and |
| 0:28.6 | singing blended into a single hip-hop era musical genre. Turns out rap was flirting with melody |
| 0:36.1 | from the beginning, and right through the 80s and 90s, |
| 0:40.7 | a string of MCs and singers were part of the hybridizing, from Houdini to Slick, |
| 0:48.0 | Queen Latifah to PM Dawn, Mary J. Blige, to Bone Thugs and Harmony, to the Fugis. We're now at the turn of the millennium, |
| 0:57.3 | as a new generation of rappers are starting to sing their bars, and a rising rapper from Brooklyn |
| 1:04.0 | and a teenage singer from Houston are about to join forces. Coming into 1999, Destiny's Child were not only going to push past their one-hit wonder status. |
| 1:18.1 | They were going to obliterate the sophomore slump with their second album The Writings on the Wall. |
| 1:25.3 | There was no Wyclef Jean backing them up this time, |
| 1:29.5 | just a fleet of bangers, |
| 1:31.8 | all infused with sass and hip-hop attitude. |
| 1:35.5 | It all led off with the smash Bills, Bills, Bills, |
| 1:39.7 | a jam that dressed down a scrub, |
| 1:42.8 | unable to pay his own way. |
| 1:59.7 | Powered by syncopated four-part harmonies that sounded like equal parts girl group and rap crew |
| 2:06.7 | bills bills bills rose to number one on the hot 100 in just five weeks breaking through |
| 2:14.6 | in the competitive summer of 1999 between hits by Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera. |
| 2:22.7 | From their inception in the early 90s, when the group was known as Girls' Time, |
... |
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