Here’s How ABC News Reported on Rap Music in 1981

Sometimes it can be very enlightening to take a look back at how certain phenomena were covered by the media. And UPROXX came upon video of an ABC News 20/20 report all the way back in 1981 in which they looked at this strange new form of music simply known as rap.

It’s a very interesting report, but there’s also a quaint hilarity about it. You hear phrases like “inner-city kids learn rhyme talk in their street games,” and “dance as a form of ritual warfare.” And there’s even a police officer in the report who confused a dance-off for some potential gang warfare, but nope, it was just dancing.

That being said, it’s not terribly dated, unlike that infamous Today Show report on the internet from 1994…

Watch the report below:

Correction: an earlier version of this post misquoted “street games” as “street gangs.”

[h/t UPROXX]
[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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