In 1981, the first number one song with rapping on it wasn't by a rapper. It was "Rapture," by the New York new wave band Blondie. Nobody expected a hit like that from a band known for guitars and hooks, not rap verses.
Debbie Harry Was Going Uptown to Watch Hip Hop
In 1980, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein started going to hip hop events in the Bronx. They weren't tourists passing through for a night. Blondie had already spent years playing CBGB and the same downtown clubs that built New York's art and music underground, and that world already crossed paths with the DJs, writers and artists building hip hop uptown. "Rapture" came out of those nights, not out of a trend somebody spotted from a distance. Fab 5 Freddy was one of the people who bridged those two worlds, moving between downtown galleries and uptown block parties well before most of the music industry noticed either scene existed.
So She Put the People She Saw Into the Song
The rap section doesn't hide who it's about. Fab 5 Freddy gets named directly: "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." So does Grandmaster Flash: "Flash is fast, Flash is cool." Both were real people Harry had been watching in person, not names picked up secondhand. Putting actual hip hop DJs into a verse, by name, on a record aimed at pop radio simply wasn't something bands did in 1980. Downtown and uptown New York rarely showed up on the same seven-inch.
Freddy Made the Video. Flash Didn't Show Up.
Fab 5 Freddy appears in the "Rapture" video himself. Grandmaster Flash was supposed to be there too, and by 1981 he wasn't some unknown DJ doing a favor. He and the Furious Five were already among hip hop's most established acts, which is exactly why his absence from the shoot mattered. He never turned up for the shoot. Jean-Michel Basquiat stepped in behind the turntables instead, and at that point he was still an emerging artist. Downtown New York already knew him, mostly for tagging galleries and subway cars under the name SAMO. The paintings that would make him one of the most famous names in American art were still years away. A future icon covered for a working DJ, in a video for a song built around the scene they were both already part of.
By March It Was Number One
"Rapture" was recorded in 1980 and released on January 12, 1981, on Autoamerican, Blondie's fifth studio album and a sharp turn from the sound that had made them famous. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 28, 1981, and held the top spot for two weeks. That made it the first number one song with rapping on it in American chart history. Debbie Harry hadn't borrowed a sound for a hit record. She'd put the actual scene, and the actual people in it, on the radio, and the radio said yes.
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