It is a runaway smash, becoming the first No. Def Jam releases the Beastie Boys’ proper debut, License to Ill. ![]() It is arguably the first-ever crossover rap hit. They initially run the operations out of Rubin’s dorm room.ġ986: Inspired by freestyle sessions done over Aerosmith’s 1975 album Toys in the Attic, Run-DMC releases a cover of “Walk This Way” done in collaboration with the band. It is one of the first hit songs to incorporate elements of hip-hop.ġ983: The Beastie Boys, a trio of downtown hard-core kids, have an underground hit with sort-of-rap song “Cooky Puss,” a prank call to Carvel set to a hip-hop beat.ġ984: Rick Rubin, then a student at NYU, meets Russell Simmons, then a fledgling artist manager, and the two create the hip-hop label Def Jam. And it’s all here, in Vulture’s Condensed History of White People in Rap.ġ981: Blondie releases “Rapture,” a pop song featuring one rap-style verse, in which Debbie Harry makes references to Fab Five Freddy, eating cars, and execution-style murder. But that doesn’t mean hip-hop has gone post-racial in the ten years since Em broke out - just as always, the points of intersection between white people and rap music have been a head-swirling mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. ![]() ![]() These are heady times for white people in rap: This month has seen both the return of Eminem, the greatest white rapper of all time, and the debut of Asher Roth, the most commercially viable white rapper since Eminem. Clockwise from top left: Eminem, Asher Roth, Beastie Boys, Rick Rubin.
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