Rapture (Blondie song)
| "Rapture" | |
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"Rapture" is track number eight on the 1980 album Autoamerican by Blondie. This was the second and final song to be released from the album, where it reached number five in the UK singles chart and number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It was the first Hip-Hop song to ever reach number one in the world, and although it never made the top spot in the UK, is still a famous song to this day, and one of Blondie's most well known. The B-side to this single was "Walk Like Me", also from the album Autoamerican.
Although "Rapture" wasn't the first successful hip-hop/rap song (the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 hit "Rapper's Delight" reached the top 40 on the U.S. Hot 100 chart), it was the biggest rap hit for a number of years. Its lyrics were tame, even playfully nonsensical, even name dropping hip-hop pioneers Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash (Freddy and graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat made cameo appearances in the music video, one of the first broadcast on MTV). For a large segment of the population, it served as an introduction to the burgeoning hip-hop genre. This was arguably the first instance of a radio-friendly mainstream white pop act branching out into hip-hop (although Queen, and the Rolling Stones, amongst others, also put out hip-hop-influenced material during this time period).
Story
The song consists of a series of somewhat nonsense rhymes until the listener is told that they follow a light and discover a UFO, whose occupant, the Man From Mars, kills them and eats their head. The listener is now part of the Man from Mars as he proceeds to eat various enormous objects including automobiles, until there aren't any more cars left. Then the Man from Mars proceeds to eat bars (except ones where the TV is on), then later switches to eating guitars.
Media reference
Grandmaster Flash sampled "Rapture" on his classic single "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel". It was also sampled by Won-G for his single "Caught up in the Rapture", and was interpolated by rapper KRS-One on his 1997 single "Step Into A World (Rapture's Delight)". In 2000 it was sampled once more by Glamma Kid on his single "Bills 2 Pay". The song was also sampled by The Jungle Brothers in the song "In Days 2 Come" from the album "Done by the Forces of Nature".
The live version as of 2003 comes full circle with the history of sampling by incorporating "Good Times by Chic, the song originally used in Rapper's Delight by The Sugarhill Gang.
In 2006 "Rapture" was fused with The Doors' "Riders on the Storm" into "Rapture Riders" by Go Home Productions. This unofficial remix was later approved to be included on Blondie's Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision and was a top ten hit on the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart.
"The Rapture" is the first song on Senses Fail's album "Still Searching"
See also
External links
- Rapture on YouTube - MTV-style video
- Step Into A World on YouTube