proto-rap

Noun

proto-rap (countable and uncountable, plural proto-raps)

1. (uncountable) Performance art forms that served as precursors to rap, especially those that feature rhythmic spoken or half-sung lyrics.
   • They make much ado over Bob Dylan as a proto-rap pioneer, and taunt Public Enemy for being "unable to locate even one pure black source" (begging Chuck D's own question in "Fear of a Black Planet": "Who is Pure? What is pure?").1995, Russell A. Potter, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism, →ISBN
   • It opens with a W.H. Auden poem that is read with the urgency and the rhythm of the piston on a steam engine. It sounds like proto-rap.2014, Tom Zoellner, Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World, →ISBN
2. (countable) A specific piece or performance delivered in such an art form.
   • Another source of rap, this one closer to home, was George Clinton's funk; we heard a proto-rap at the beginning of “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk).2008, Michael Campbell, Popular Music in America: And The Beat Goes On, →ISBN, page 286
   • From 1965's triumphal 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' onwards, Brown's music discarded more and more of the conventional devices of Western song structures and concentrated ever more strongly on the holy science of THE FUNK and THE GROOVE: propulsion created by the meshing of seemingly independent...2012, Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop, →ISBN