How The Blues Transformed Into Hip-Hop

Where pain and loss reside, there is blues music. Although blues music could trace as far back as any amount of lamentations over the years, its seeds were sown in the deep south. According to Musical U, “The genre originated during the pre-Civil War era in the southern United States”, sung from the oppression and pain in slavery. The raw emotions would grow up in the Mississippi Delta and began to be recorded for wider consumption. The sounds were rural and country, loaded with twangy guitars, wispy harmonica runs, and a simple tempo to display anything from love and religion to economical turmoil and racial injustice. At its core, it is a genre of heartbreak and crushing reality but also very familiar to the human experience where it can almost become reminiscent of home to Southern folks, especially Black southerners. As it spread across the nation and new genres emerged from blues, its fingerprints are all over much of the music we adore today like R&B and rock. Now, though, we see it prominently displayed in the biggest genre in all of music, hip-hop.

Similar to blues icons like B.B King, Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters, hip-hop is a genre birthed from Black people. It would detail the livelihood and gives a glimpse to what every day looks like from its sound. Initially, hip-hop was a much simpler sound in its inception. However, with time, it has evolved into something much more thoughtful than the Sugarhill Gang origins. The first example of bluesy rap music that comes to mind is the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”, one of the most depressing, anxiety-filled songs in music history.

The rap trio with Scarface, Willie D, and Bushwick Bill goes for 4 verses over 5 minutes, sharing the feelings of paranoia, depression, and fear in excruciating detail. Scarface starts his first verse with one of the most iconic intros of all time, “At night I can’t sleep, I toss and turn. Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies bein’ burned.” The mental breakdown is painted vividly, with Scarface certain there’s someone out to kill him. As a result, he’d…