I first heard rap in 1980, at a party in Harlem. It sounded like a broken record. It was a version of an old hit record called Good Times, the same four bars looped over and over. On top of the loop, a kid chanted a rhyme about how he was the best disc jockey in the world. It was called Rapper's Delight. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.
For the next 26 years. I avoided rap music the way you step over a crack in the pavement. I heard it booming out of cars and alleyways from Paris to Abidjan, but I never listened. In doing so, I missed the most important cultural event in my lifetime. No American music has exploded across the world with such force since sing jazz in the 1930s. This defiant culture of song, graffiti, and dance , collectively known as hip-hop, has permeated almost every society.