Rapture

Album

Blue Jays

Label

Chrysalis Records

Genre

Hip hop

Composer(s)

Deborah Harry;Chris Stein

Entered Chart

Jan 31, 1981

Peak Date

Mar 28, 1981

Released

January 12, 1981

Recorded

1980 Studio United Western Recorders (Hollywood, Los Angeles, California)

Catalog #

Chrysalis 2485

B-Side

Walk Like Me

This was the first #1 hit song with a rap. Artists like Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kurtis Blow had been rapping since the mid-'70s, and The Sugarhill Gang cracked the Hot 100 in 1979 with "Rapper's Delight," but until "Rapture," rap had never been incorporated into a hit pop song. Debbie Harry did the rap, and it was really ridiculous, with lyrics about the "man from Mars eating cars," but the novelty helped the song become a hit. Harry's rap is so goofy that it sounds like she could be mocking the genre, but this was very early in the evolution of hip-hop, and many of the rhymes that came out of the New York block parties were just as silly. Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie championed rap and got involved in the community, often attending these block parties - they even took Nile Rodgers to one, which is where he learned that his song "Good Times" was a DJ favorite. Blondie brought rap to a far larger audience with this song; Debbie Harry says that a lot of rappers - including members of Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan - told her it was the first rap song they ever heard, since the genre wasn't welcome on the radio then. Until this came out, rappers typically used existing songs as the basis for the music they would rap over; they usually took disco or soul records and looped the beats to extend the breaks. Debbie Harry's rap in this was nothing special, but it was the first rap in a song that had its own original music. In certain Christian theology, The Rapture is an event where believers are transported to heaven while others must endure the beginning of the end times on Earth. The lyrics of this song are a bit apocalyptic, as the "Man from Mars" starts destroying the planet with his insatiable appetite. The word "Rapture" is also a play on the rap aspect of the song. As the age of disco ended, so did Blondie's success. This was their last US hit until 1999, when they had a comeback song called "Maria." They did have another UK hit in 1982 called "Island Of Lost Souls." If you listen carefully to the lyrics, you might hear something naughty. Shortly before the rap, there is a line that sounds a lot like "Finger F--king." Most lyric sheets list this line as "Finger Popping." Hip-pop promoter and future host of Yo! MTV Raps Fab 5 Freddy is in the video and is mentioned in the song. He was part of the early rap scene and is credited with helping bring it into the mainstream. Blondie originally met Fab 5 Freddy and his crew at a club. They all became friends, and one day Freddy jokingly suggested that Debbie Harry should write a song about them. She did, and the result was the rap that is the second half of the song. She sent it to Freddy, he and his crew loved it and she ended up recording it. The video for this features a cameo appearance by New York artist/Andy Warhol disciple Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose life was portrayed in the 1996 film Basquiat. The lyrics, "Flash is fast, flash is cool" are a reference to pioneering hip-hop DJ Grandmaster Flash. KRS-One interpolated this song on his 1997 single "Step Into A World (Rapture's Delight)," which made #70 in the US. Singing with KRS-One on the track is Keva Holman. The song can be heard in the 2013 movie This Is the End, where it fits with the rapture theme. A few months after this song was released, Tom Tom Club issued their first single, "Wordy Rappinghood." The Tom Tom Club song wasn't issued in America, but became a big hit in Europe and Latin America. Like "Rapture," it featured a white female vocalist doing a rap (Tina Weymouth). Like Blondie, Tom Tom Club was immersed in the New York music scene and influenced by hip-hop. Neither act knew the other was working on a rap song - Blondie was recording in New York while Tom Tom Club was working in the Bahamas. This was used in a 2015 commercial for the Acura RDX where a woman sings along to the song while driving.

Toe to toe
Dancing very close
Barely breathing
Almost comatose
Wall to wall
People hypnotized
And they're stepping lightly
Hang each night in rapture

Back to back
Sacroiliac
Spineless movement
And a wild attack

Face to face
Sightless solitude
And it's finger popping
Twenty-four hour shopping in rapture

Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's fly
DJ spinnin' I said, "My my"
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
François c'est pas, Flash ain't no dude
And you don't stop, sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and it lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars
And you try to run but he's got a gun
And he shoots you dead and he eats your head
And then you're in the man from Mars
You go out at night eatin' cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subaru
And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars
Then, when there's no more cars you go out at night
And eat up bars where the people meet
Face to face, dance cheek to cheek
One to one, man to man
Dance toe to toe, don't move too slow
'Cause the man from Mars is through with cars
He's eatin' bars, yeah wall to wall
Door to door, hall to hall
He's gonna eat 'em all
Rapture, be pure
Take a tour through the sewer
Don't strain your brain, paint a train
You'll be singin' in the rain
Said don't stop to punk rock

Well now you see what you wanna be
Just have your party on TV
'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars where the TV's on
Now he's gone back up to space
Where he won't have a hassle with the human race
And you hip-hop, and you don't stop
Just blast off, sure shot
'Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin' cars and eatin' bars
And now he only eats guitars, get up