Blondie Scores The First #1 With A Rap

1981

Blondie's "Rapture" hits #1 on the Hot 100, becoming the first chart-topper with a rap.

Rap hit some milestones in 1980, with Kurtis Blow earning the first Gold record in the genre for "The Breaks" and The Sugarhill Gang bringing a rap song to the Top 40 for the first time with "Rapper's Delight." The first #1 with a rap is not by a rapper, but by the disco sensations Blondie, whose frontwoman, Debbie Harry, busts a rhyme about a man from Mars who comes to Earth with an insatiable appetite. Here's what happens after he shoots you dead and eats your head: And then you're in the man from Mars You go out at night eatin' cars You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too Mercurys and Subarus It's all good fun; the levity is in line with other rap songs of the day that tell goofy stories. For instance in "Rapper's Delight": While the stinky foods steamin' Your mind starts to dreamin' Of the moment that it's time to leave And then you look at your plate And your chickens slowly rottin' Into something that looks like cheese Many in the music industry think of rap as a fad, which they are happy to ignore until it passes. But Blondie cannot be ignored - they're one of the biggest acts in the world, with trans-Atlantic #1 hits in "Heart Of Glass," "Call Me" and "The Tide Is High." "Rapture" is guaranteed airplay despite the rap, introducing many listeners to the genre. Blondie are not exploiting hip-hop but celebrating it. As part of the New York City scene that produced punk and disco, they were on the ground as hip-hop was bubbling up in the Boogie Down. One of their allies is Fab 5 Freddy, a grafitti artist who is a huge part of the scene. Blondie writes him into the rap: Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly DJs spinning, I said "my, my" Freddy also appears in the video (along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, who is the guy in the sweet suit and top hat), which becomes the first rap video to air on MTV. The next line is a shout to the enterprising DJ Grandmaster Flash, who later samples it on "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel": Flash is fast, Flash is cool The kind of hip-hop that pioneers like Flash are making is based on existing beats, often lifted from disco ("Rapper's Delight" is built on "Good Times" by Chic). "Rapture" is an original - there are no samples. For many listeners, it's an introduction to rap music, a gateway to Run-D.M.C. That a white act is the first to top the chart in a distinctly black genre could be troublesome, but by paying homage to the forebears of hip-hop, Blondie pulls it off. "We didn't mean it as any sort of rip-off," the group's guitarist/songwriter Chris Stein says. "We meant it to support this movement and be positive about the form." It takes a while for rap to return to the top spot. In the late '80s, chart-toppers like "Red Red Wine" by UB40 and "The Look" by Roxette are peppered with rap interludes, but it's not until 1990 that a song rapped from start to finish reaches the top: "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. The first black act to reach the top with a complete rap song is the teen duo Kris Kross, who do it with "Jump" in 1992.