I know a lot of unreformed types who'll insist that Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is an early sort of precursor to rap. While that may be true, I'd like to look even further back in time.
Some of Noel Coward's stuff (I'm thinking specifically of a tune called "
Nina" but there are lots of other examples) was often so verbose that it practically bordered on rap ... roughly a decade before the Dylan number.
Granted, the closest he gets to using garden variety rap lingo (read: "bitches") is when he has his tune's protagonist refer to certain folks (who're inclined to dance) as "sluts." Observe:
"She said I hate to be pedantic but it drives me nearly frantic when I see that unromantic sycophantic lot of sluts forever wriggling their butts guts ... it drives me absolutely nuts!"
Now. Stop to consider that "Nina" practically samples Cole Porter's "Begin The Beguine" and then try to tell me that it isn't some sort of weird missing-link rap number unearthed from a geological strata that ought to be utterly devoid of any such musical fossils.
...
Put some Aston-Martin hood ornament bling 'round his neck and give the chap a tweed ball cap askew at a rakish angle ... and he'd almost be like some sort of Paleolithic MC thawed out from The Great Pop Music Glacier and ready to rock the mic.
