THE RAP PHENOMENON: BREAKING AWAY OR HERE TO STAY?

The idea of a street culture growing into a mass phenomenon is one of the enduring myths associated with popular music. In the '60s, observers of rock music spoke of a quality they labeled "street credibility," a cachet of hipness earned by the right connections to the emerging youth culture.

Black popular music, in its origins, is the very embodiment of street credibility. Bluesmen and the R&B pioneers on the road house circuit had no choice but to "pay their dues" and their music kept its connections to, its roots in, a community.