A lot has changed since the 1970s and one of them is how artists approach hip hop and trap: two genres often confused with each other, two styles that often come together and today it is difficult to separate one from the other. When the women of hip-hop entered into the picture, the whole style has changed forever.

From hip hop to trap: the metamorphosis of “rapping” in history

It was the 70s when in the United States, in the middle of the night, the Block Parties were formed in the suburbs: they were improvised parties in the middle of the street, where disc jokey and artists of various kinds went wild to the sound of music and battle in verse spoken, not sung. It was the 70s, the moment of the birth of rap. A style practiced almost exclusively by African American boys, most of whom were born and lived in poor neighborhoods, often victims of racism and with a difficult past behind them. Their lyrics expressed the desire for social redemption, their being anti-system and outside the rules. It didn’t take long for the streets to switch to clubs: white New Yorkers liked that music.

In Atlanta, however, in the 1990s, there were abandoned buildings where drug addicts went to buy drugs.

The trap house. Places of perdition, marked by decay, which however contributed to influencing the imagination of many very young people of the 2000s.

The era of the Millennials began

Guys who loved rap, but who decided to break with that tradition – despite being its children – and who therefore invented a new musical genre, trap. This has nothing to do with Atlanta trap houses, it does not originate within those walls. But from them, they take up their themes: they do not fight degradation, they are not anti-system. They praise drugs and a life of ease and wealth. There is none of the anger expressed by rap, nothing that recalls a desire for social redemption. This is a difference that will often put the two worlds in contradiction.

As often happens when underground meets mainstream, hip hop and trap are now connected to each other. Several rap singers have begun to incorporate trap sounds into their songs and vice versa. From Drake to Rihanna passing through Jay-Z, the artists have begun to experiment and create songs that hold the two genres together, now inseparable.

If those who essentially do traps experience rap by not giving up on autotune (an instrument that is heavily criticized by hip hop purists), we see how the opposite never happens in the rap scene. In other countries, however, where the trap has exploded in recent years, there seems to be much less contamination than in the United States: rap and trap are two still distinct worlds, which do not speak to each other and which hardly come into contact. Dissing is still high, even though singers like Ghali, for example, are breaking down this wall. Clarifying the fact that traps cannot also be a good rapper.