When Sugar Hill Gang scored the very first commercial Rap hit in 1979, this form of music to most people, was completely new. But Rap was nothing new! Before there was Rap, there was Proto Rap: spoken word jazz poetry and comedy records recorded by Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets or Pigmeat Markham. They were the predecessors of rapping.

We’ve done some more crate digging and found 20 more songs by the ancestors of rap.

Roots of Rap: 20 awesome tracks

Read more about Proto Rap and the History of Rap.

Discover more proto rap on the blog the Roots of Rap