Well I can speak for myself and millions of others that Yo! MTV Raps is one of the greatest shows of all time for us hip-hop heads. It did great things for hip-hop as far as getting people all over the world a glimpse of the new phenomenon called rap music. The average person thought that rap music was just a fad that seemed cool for the time being but wouldn’t last long. I guess the joke’s on them.
Yo! MTV Raps started in 1988 as a 30-minute show to let viewers in on the hottest hip-hop tours goin on at time featuring Run-DMC, DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, LL Cool J, Biz Markie, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane and etc. Who’s idea was it? The late great Ted Demme. He asked MTV, lets do a special and travel with the hottest hip-hop acts at that time for interviews and play some of the latest hip-hop videos as well. Now like I said before, originally it was only supposed to be that 1 show and that’s it. But MTV told Ted Demme a couple of weeks later that, that 1 show was the highest rated show on MTV of all-time and that they wanted a series of shows that they can show on their network in 2 weeks!! That’s a crazy deadline right? So Ted Demme immediately seeked out Fab 5 Freddy who was already on the inside of the hip-hop scene at that time. And in the show’s infancy stage it was only him doing the shows. But later on Fab 5 suggested to Ted, hey we need to broaden this show out more cause he knew he couldn’t hold it down all by himself. So Ted went ahead and added Ed Lover & Dr. Dre, who at the time had the premier radio show on NYC. They gave Ed Lover & Dr. Dre their own spot during the week on Monday -Friday and let Fab 5 hold it down on Saturdays. And the rest is history!
By 1995 Yo! MTV Raps saw its amazing run come to an end. Around this time they had some competition that was kinda stealing away some of their viewers. Such shows as BET Rap City & Video Music Box was starting to bubble. And I guess MTV went ahead and pulled the plug on Fab 5, Ed Lover & Dr. Dre hosting duties on the show. Til this day Ed Lover is still heated that the show could nt go on for 1 more year cause that would have been 10 and he woulda been happy with that. The show would still be on for 2 more years but the crew wasn’t hosting anymore, instead they had the hottest hip-hop acts at that time doin it. But we all know, it just wasn’t the same.
On this last show MTV decided to go out in a bang by inviting anybody who is everybody on to the show for the last taping. It was a great show that I remember cause a whole lot of people came thru and showed love. I was kinda sad in the fact that I wish I coulda seen more episodes of the show in years past. But during those days I was in elementary & middle school and I was on the move outside playing sports or hangin with the fellas. A brotha wasn’t hanging out in the house like most cats do today. So I missed a majority of the shows, which is why im steadily on the hunt now for them. But back to this show, the event that stole it is the legendary 2-part freestyle at the end of the show. The freestyle featured KRS-One, Rakim, MC Serch, Chubb Rock, Erick Sermon, Special Ed, Redman, Method Man, Large Professor & Craig Mack. With DJ Scribble holding down the DJ duties, everything fell in place for one of the most memorable nights in hip-hop history! The link is below for your listening pleasure!
This as another post sent in by Brandan from Recognize The Real blog.
--verge
