Yo MTV Raps Yo! MTV

YO MTV Raps Yo! MTV Raps: The Rap Revolution Yo! MTV Raps was way before its time. Before the show aired, there was no television presence of hip hop, nor was there an internet that is used as a primary outlet today. The show helped expose world to rap music, introducing hip hop to a mainstream audience. Its success and its great and many contributions to supporting the growth of hip hop highlights how television amplifies the potential success of musicians reaching out to a broader audience.

The television show first aired on MTV in 1988 and ran until 1995, with a later spin off, Yo!, running until 1999. Hosts Dr. Dre and Fab 5 Freddy became household names as they exposed new artists and an entirely different type of life style to the world. The show played hip hop exclusively, airing videos of the hot rappers of the time alongside interviews and special guest performances.

Yo! MTV Raps featured in studio interviews with artists, as well as interviews conducted in the field, where artists and group of rappers got to expose their living situations and environment to the world. It was a raw, new way of looking at music, one which changed the way America thought about rap forever. This was before the modern era of MTV, where the network is devoted to playing more reality show content than music videos.

In fact, music videos are almost entirely absent from the network's line up, as well as many of its competitors have done as well. Yo! MTV Raps thrived in an era devoted to the music video, an era before the internet, where many people tuned in to listen and watch their favorite artists like people do today with Youtube.com.

In an era where rap music was still so foreign and controversial, the show helped make these infamous artists of media lore more personal to audiences around the country and the world. MTV allowed an entirely new subculture to be exposed with the behind the scenes view the show gave audiences who were dying to see more of the new musical genre. Yo! MTV Raps was also a great venue for up and coming rap legends to showcase their work to their world through performances.

Audiences around the world were exposed to a new type of raw creativity in rap music, one which took the music industry by storm. Yo! MTV Raps was a huge first for the network; it was the first show dedicated one hundred percent to rap and hip hop, an emerging art form in American popular music that had not yet found acceptance within the larger body of society.

Major name artists saw their career explode alongside the publicity they were getting from the show and the movement it was inspiring within pop culture. Huge names in the rap industry were seen before they really made it big and when they had a definite hold over the lure of pop culture in the United States. The series was especially supportive of East Coast hip hop, and played a crucial role in exposing great New York artists and groups like the Wu Tang. Notorious B.I.G.