Was Snoop Rap's First Rap Star?

[Trauma-san]

KID N PLAY!!!!

[Big BpG]

You're ignorant enough to think anything outside the scope of your existance is irrelevant.

Good point. So basically your saying that I believe that everything I didn't expierence first hand did not exist.

Look I understand the impact artists had on rap... I do, no matter how hard you believe I don't. I understand that before Snoop Dogg, there were people and artists who worked hard to get rap where it was at the time. I understand that DJing was perfected by Grandmaster Flash. I understand that the Sugarhill gang was the first fabricated rap group, but either way, those artists worked hard. HOWEVER... Rap was not mainstream at the time. Yes, a few songs made the airwaves. RUN DMC paved the way for a lot of what happened. Their impact on rap was enormous. Yes, they were icons at the time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that where RUN DMC was at their prime, is where Snoop was at his. Snoop became an icon, he was RAP. When I look back at hip hop during the eighties, I don't imagine a mainstream audience putting Run DMC up like a poster child. Snoop was that.

lets take rock and roll. it's been argued that The Beatles were the first Rock Stars. Correct me if I'm wrong, but rock did not start with The Beatles. They just elevated to a, here's the keyword, MAINSTREAM AUDIENCE, everywhere the beatles went, the world followed suit. The media wanted to know where the beatles were, what they were working on. Girls loved them. Guys wanted to be them. That's a STAR... their music captivated listeners.

That's my 2 cents. I'm not ignorant to the fact. That's just my opinion. I'm not dis-crediting anyones work at brining hip hop to where it was. I'm just saying. If you look at RAP STARS, I see... Tupac, BIGGIE, Eminem, Jay-Z and now 50 Cent. They are taking rap right now. Snoop Dogg was there before all them. I'm not saying people didn't like other artists before Snoop. I'm just saying. The mainstream audience finally caught on to what rap was when Snoop and the westcoast became a sensation... and they took Snoop and made him a poster child for that era. I do think, the only group you can argue in this argument is that RUN DMC were the first stars of rap...but they definetely were not advertised the way Snoop was. He was the first rapper grandma's were listening to, in a study two years ago at Harvard, when asked to name a Rapper... 77% percet of the people surveyed said Snoop Dogg, that's a big percentage. RUN DMC captivated black culture, broke into radio, got on MTV... they paved the way, but they weren't almighty, girls screaming, UK'ers swimming across the atlantic to see them popular. Snoop was the first rapper that did that.

That's my 2 cents. And I respect those who gave their opinions. There's no need to judge me or anyone else. It's a message board where we express opinions. We are suppose to have different opinions. If I ever agreed with Trauma, which I never have, and we love to argue with each other, then this board would be boring.

-BpG

[Sir Petey]

look man....I like snoop as much as the next man but you werent there to see the hysteria artists like run dmc would bring ....them fools had movies....shoe deals......WORLD tours where people overseas were crying and shit and every where you went people were trying to imitate run dmc's styles just like snoop....every generation has its icons and its ALMOST understandable that you cant percieve that pre gangsta rap artisis were larger then or almost as large snoop but this is what people call a generation gap......

[M Dogg™]

I was thinking about them too. Run DMC was fucking huge in the 80's. I wasn't even really a rap head in the 80's, being I was only like 6-9 during the last parts of the 80's. But anyways, I remember Run DMC, they were at Wrestlemania, they had shoe deals, they had a song with Aerosmith. They were the first big rap stars that fucked up the mainstream. then of course you got the Fat Boys, LL Cool J, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Kid N Play.

Now was Snoop a huge rap star, no doubt. His place in history, up there with 2Pac, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Run DMC, Notorious BIG and 50 Cent and DMX for impact, skillz, flow, and mainstream sucess. His top 10 in any list, and he put his place in rap history. We'll see how his career ends, for the first time ever, I saw a new Snoop CD, R&G, and I didn't buy it, instead buying old Xzibit CDs that got stolen from me earlier in life. That has never happened. Except with The Game Is To Be Sold..., but every Snoop tape/CD has been bought at first sight. So his future in my opinion is not that bright. His place is set, others before him have came, he came, others are coming out now. It's like everything else in life. Past, Present, Future.

[TraceOneInfinite]

He wasn't raps first superstar because you can't forget sell-outs like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.

Yet he was raps first superstar that was organic.  Meaning he looked like a brother from around the way, he dressed like a brother from around the way, and in the mid-90's, he was still living like a brother from around the way cause Suge kept him gangsta and broke.

[Juronimo]

look man....I like snoop as much as the next man but you werent there to see the hysteria artists like run dmc would bring ....them fools had movies....shoe deals......WORLD tours where people overseas were crying and shit and every where you went people were trying to imitate run dmc's styles just like snoop....every generation has its icons and its ALMOST understandable that you cant percieve that pre gangsta rap artisis were larger then or almost as large snoop but this is what people call a generation gap......

I was around 10 when Run DMC came out and even though I wasn't a hiphop head yet, I knew about them already, everyone at my elementary school knew about them. It was a big fuckin deal when they came out to Long Beach to perform so yeah, those were rap's first superstars. If you weren't around at that time, you wouldn't understand how major they were.