The precursors to rap music were funk, Latin, disco and soul music. During the '70s, dance clubs that played these types of music were extremely popular places for young people to spend their time. According to Ez-tracks.com, DJs spinning records at these clubs began finding innovative ways to loop instrumental sections of the drum breaks and percussion features on these records. These new types of instrumental loops were good for dancing, and DJs found that they could also make announcements and proclamations over them, since there weren't vocals to get in the way.
By the end of the 1970s, amateur DJs and musicians began making their own loops, both from music they recorded themselves and from parts of existing records. Rap truly began during this period when musicians took these '70s-style loops and combined them with the vocal nature of Jamaican dub and reggae music. It was common for musicians in Jamaican music to yell slogans and catchphrases over rhythms played by a band. Rap elaborated on this by having musicians speak rhythmically and lyrically complex rhymes over prerecorded music. According to Daveyd.com, rap music first found its home in the Bronx borough of New York.
Since its inception in the late '70s and early '80s, rap music has splintered into many different sub-genres and types. According to allsands.com, types of rap music include East Coast rap, West Coast rap, "gangsta" rap, revolutionary rap, rock rap, hardcore rap, dirty South, religious rap and indie rap. Some of these types, such as East Coast, West Coast and dirty South, differ in the types of instruments the rappers rhyme over and the tempos of the beats they use. For instance, dirty South rap tends to use slower beats with more bass than West Coast rap, which utilizes synthesizers and a pronounced funk influence. Other types of rap differentiate themselves through lyrical content. "Gangsta" rap tends to deal with criminal topics and life on the streets. Similarly, revolutionary rap is very politically charged, and religious rap offers spiritual themes.
As rap music continues to change and develop, it maintains a strong foothold in American culture and abroad. According to hiphop-history.com, rap music has influenced the lyrical content of popular music of different genres. Indeed, many musicians in the pop and rock genres have utilized rappers to do collaborations and guest appearances on their songs and albums. Rap has also spawned an admiration of hip-hop culture, which consists of specific styles of dress and slang terms associated with different regional types of rap music.
Rap music continues to change. Some recent developments in rap have included major rap artists using live backing bands instead of pre-recorded loops to rap over, rappers using genres other than funk and soul to rap over, and rappers finding new, more profound topics to rap about. Although some rappers have become major stars, rap remains a primary method of transmitting social awareness and change in modern culture.