I agree with you though. Take those lyrics and delivery over a Nas beat and I bet it wouldn't seem odd at all.

interesting
 

i'm going to have to research that!

While checking out a little Louis Jordan earlier today, I stumbled across this track "Beware, Brother, Beware" and it immediately made me think of this thread. This song is from the 1940s and both the vocal style and the subject matter are amazingly hip hop to me. Check it out:

second commercial(and a few):



Some reason 50s commercials are chalked full of sections of hip hop.

^ That's because rapping is catchy, it's great for advertisement

Sweet, nice find. This is the earliest hip hop I've heard.

I still wouldn't call it hip hop. Bearing in mind that rapping is the vocal style and hip hop is the musical backdrop in most definitions. But yeah, it's rapping.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the term "hip hop" that way actually. It generally refers either to the culture or the genre or both. But for argument's sake let's say it does refer to the backing music, what would the defining characteristics of it even be? People rap over pretty much everything and it's still hip hop.

I actually agree with Conan on that....but hip hop can also refer to the culture as well..

you can't rap over anything and still call it hip hop...it's not....you are just rapping over some random...whatever the backing music is....is what you would consider the song with rap.....take for example nu-metal isn't considered hip hop is it? Some bands rap in nu-metal but it's not called hip hop because of the backing music.

And yet Jay-Z records an album with a nu-metal band like Linkin Park and it's still considered hip hop, Madlib raps over jazz and it's hip hop, MC Dälek raps of droning noisescapes and it's hip hop, Immortal Technique raps over Henry Mancini and it's hip hop. So what exactly are the defining characteristics of hip hop music?

see those examples that you provided I wouldn't consider them to be hip hop
Everything you said is just Rapping over the genres that they have chosen.

......hip hop imo is more about the beats and at times can be very simplistic actually i can't even describe it properly but I just wouldn't consider any of those examples of yours hip hop