Unless you have been living in a hole for the last twenty years, you cannot fail to have noticed the modern musical phenomenon that is "rap" music. Currently the most lucrative type of music out-selling even Country and Western, "rap" has become the soundtrack to our modern lives. From TV commercials to the "thump thump thump" of the outsized subwoofers in some teenager's hopped-up Honda Civic, it is almost impossible to avoid this aural assault and the crimes against fashion that accompany it.

I understand that some people enjoy listening to this aggressive noise, with its mysogynistic, racist, homophobic, anti-christian and cop-killing lyrics, and that is fair enough. Patriot Act notwithstanding, the USA is still a fairly free country, and with some minor exceptions, free speech is still nominally protected by the fifth amendment to our Constitution.

Here at adequacy, our problem is not with "rap" music per-se. Our beef is that this style of music was stolen from the white-man and then sold back to him as the exclusive work of African Americans, who are now making preposterous claims that paint the white man as the guilty party!

To truly get to the bottom of this outrage, it is necessary to travel back in time to 1948, before anyone had heard of "Afrika Bambaata" or "Grandmaster Flash". This was a time when a young white man named T. Texas Tyler relased his ground-breaking single "Deck of Cards" and became the first in a long line of white European Americans to utilize "rap" - a section of spoken dialog over a backing track wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats. It was not known as "rap" at that point in history, his releases were called "country narrative records" or "talking songs", but the basic "rap" idea of speaking over a pounding beat was there.

Tyler (real name David Luke Myrick, born 6/20/1916 in Mena, Arkansas and known as "the man with a million friends") had thus laid the groundwork for what was to be an explosion of white "rapping", that was to continue up until the late 70s when "rap" music was hijacked by African Americans.

After the success of Deck of Cards, many more white stars emulated Tyler by "rapping" on their records, ensuring "rap" became a mainstay of the white music charts.

Artists such as Elvis Presley begun to incorporate "rapping" into their hit singles like "Lonesome Tonight". CW McCall brought "rap" music into the notoriously conservative trucking community with his famous top ten hit rap: Convoy. (Listen to it on MP3 here)These were followed by hits from the likes of Steve Martin with "King Tut", Debbie Harry with "Rapture", Vanilla Ice (killed our brains like a poisonous mushroom) with "Ice Ice Baby", 3rd Bass with "Steppin' To The AM" and the ironically named Young Black Teenagers with "Proud To Be Black"

So by the late 70s, "rap" music was mainstream, and making money. So I expect you are wondering what happened to all the white rappers after that ? After all, "rap" music today is almost exclusively an African American affair. I will explain.

The African American community had for some time been looking for a new style of music. The old style soul of James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett just was not selling any more. African Americans were beginning to get fed up with the innovative sounds of the "rapping" white men. The "Human Beatbox" invented by Rolf Harris and made famous by his "rap" "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" was the last straw. There was a great deal of resentment at this new style of music which was rendering the top African American singers redundant.

This is where it gets complicated. According to some sources, a group of Prince Hall Masons with close connections to the music industry got together with some senior record label executives and decided that from that day forward, "rap" music would become the exclusive preserve of the black man. The plan was to take ownership of "rap" and ensure that it was exclusively associated with black Americans.

Another theory was that a new computer program developed by the major record labels predicted a massive increase in profits if "rap" could be marketed to the teenage African American audience. According to this story, focus groups were set up with various styles of black "rappers" present, from old school, to gangsta, to radical islamic, to party, basically every style of "rap". As a result of these sessions, the acts "Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five" and "Afrika Bambaataa" were manufactured in much the same way that modern boy bands like N-Sync and Backstreet Boys are today.

Whichever story is true, it doesn't matter. It's been lost in the mists of time. All we know is that with the release of "The Message" and "Planet Rock", white "rap" had had its day.

Soon it became a rare event to hear the crazy dope rhyming skillz of an educated white man going off on the mic like a crazy motherfucker, as the inevitable rise of the African American "rappers" displaced the white pioneers.

Nowadays white rappers are an endangered species, and your kids are more likely to know the lyrics to "Fuck tha police" than "Ice Ice Baby". Fortunately for us old-timers, we still have our old vinyl recordings, and our memories.

Who knows where white rap might be today if it weren't for the African American conspiracy to keep it down ?