Poetry and spoken word were alive and well in the 1960s, but “rap music” as we know it today wouldn’t become popularized until the end of the decade. However, a one-hit wonder by a Pittsburgh-based rock band named The Jaggerz offered an uncanny foreshadowing of the genre and its terminology with their 1970 hit, “The Rapper”.
The Jaggerz released “The Rapper” on their second album, We Went To Different Schools Together. The album wasn’t technically a commercial success, but some singles did well. In addition to “The Rapper”, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Record World Singles chart, “I Call My Baby Candy” saw moderate success when it broke into the Hot 100 at No. 75.
Videos by American Songwriter
The harmony-rich, rock-forward groove certainly doesn’t evoke images of rap music—even its earliest iterations—in the traditional sense. Still, it’s interesting to see the term “rapper” pop up on the Billboard charts before tracks like “Rapper’s Delight” came along and really defined the genre. So, what kind of rapper were The Jaggerz talking about?
“The Rapper” Was Referencing a Different Slang Term of the Late 1960s
Today, we know a rapper to be someone who raps, as in, performs rhythmic (and sometimes melodic) spoken word over music. But in the late 1960s, to “rap” was slang for “talking,” especially in a flirty way.
According to SongFacts, The Jaggerz vocalist Donnie Iris explained that he wrote the song after “watching people in nightclubs, in all the bars that we were playing. You’d see these dudes go over and start rapping to chickens. In those days, we did call it ‘rappin’, and they were just basically picking chicks up and hitting on them. That’s how the song came about, just watching these guys and all their moves.”
Although “The Rapper” spent some time high on the charts in the spring of 1970, by year’s end, the song had dropped to No. 45 on the Hot 100. In the years that followed, The Jaggerz continued to release new music. They underwent several personnel changes, with many of the members breaking off to do other musical projects.
Interestingly, Iris left The Jaggerz to perform with Wild Cherry. This band, too, was deemed a one-hit wonder after they failed to replicate the success of their major hit, “Play That Funky Music”.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images