Many in the western world have begun to panic about the impending arrival of February 14th, Valentine’s Day, or, as cynics often refer to it, Hallmark Day, a day which conveniently sits somewhere in the middle of Christmas and Easter to ensure society keeps indulging in the spectacle of disposable consumer capitalism. The populist vibe out there this week has compelled me to write something I’ve toyed with for a number of years; an article on love rap songs.
I’ve floated this idea to a few headz since around 2019, and most frown or scowl at the thought, animatedly expressing an immense dislike for love raps. Most of these love rap avoiders cite LL Cool J’s ‘I Need Love’ as the song which epitomises any potential love rap sub-subgenre, accusing it of propagating an array of love raps by contemporaneous artists such as Stetsasonic (‘Float On…’), Big Daddy Kane (‘The Day You’re Mine’), MC Shan (‘She’s Gone’), Eric B. and Rakim (‘Mahogany’), even Jungle Brothers (‘Behind The Bush’); indeed, one glance at some of the hugest albums of 1988 and it could easily be argued that LL’s ballad from 1987 triggered this notion. For sure, during the last few years of the eighties it seemed like the inclusion of a rap ballad on hip hop albums was a necessity of sorts.
Yet, as clear a trajectory of love songs this appears, the idea of the love rap ballad had been in development almost since the inception of hip hop on wax in 1979. For example, 1980 saw the release of two monumentally significant rap albums, Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow’s both self-titled debuts. Although the structure of Sugarhill Gang is a composite of soul ballads and rap songs, the ballads sit cheek-by-jowl with rap nonetheless, expressing a strong musical relationship when considering the album in its totality. Turning to Kurtis Blow, a similar narrative unfolds, and here ‘All I Want In This World (Is To Find That Girl)’ becomes the soul love ballad curated as the penultimate track on the record.
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