Changing rap

Two-disc anthology traces an evolving genre | Arsenio Orteza

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"Rap," the rapper KRS-One once said, "is something that's being done. Hip-hop is something that is being lived."

No matter how one splits the rap/hip-hop atom, its fallout has dominated the black musical landscape for over 30 years. Sony's new two-disc Giant Single: The Profile Records Rap Anthology puts it under a microscope.

By including 10 of the 12 songs on 1994's Diggin' in the Crates, Vol. 1: Profile Rap Classics and extending it by 21 songs and a decade, Giant Single traces rap's early-'80s origins as an underground, Bronx-based party music to the beginnings of its late-'90s descent into decadence. The story is interesting and, for the most part, entertaining, not least because it restores to rap's narrative details that resist the oversimplification implicit in claiming it as a piece of "black history."