We Got It Covered: 10 Dope Rap Cover Songs
We mined the vault to find some great rap cover songs.
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We Got It Covered: 10 Dope Rap Cover Songs - When Drake's sophomore album, Take Care, leaked earlier this week, one of the most talked-about songs was undoubtedly "Practice." The track is practically a cover of Juvenile's 1998 bounce classic "Back Dat Ass Up," repurposing the beat, hook and parts of the verses. Covers are common in rock, pop, R&B and jazz, but in hip hop, with its strong anti-"biting" screed, remakes are rare (which is ironic, considering the music's sampling tradition). But every now and then, rappers redo another artist's song—with dope results. Here, we mined the vault to find 10 great rap cover songs. —Alex Gale(Photos from left: Rick Diamond/Getty Images, Larry Busacca/Getty Images)
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Run-DMC, "Walk This Way" - Run DMC's cover of Aerosmith's 1975 rock classic "Walk This Way" was a seminal moment in more ways than one. As the first rap song to break into the Top 5 on Billboard, it introduced hip hop to mainstream. It also launched Run DMC's career into the stratosphere, and resurrected Aerosmith's. And lastly, for better or for worse, it basically invented the rap-rock subgenre. (Photo: Arista Records, Inc.)
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Snoop Dogg, "Lodi Dodi" - "Lodi Dodi" is probably the first time ever that a rap song was covered, and it set the bar impossibly high. Snoop made Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh's timeless "La Di Da Di" his own over a slinky G-funk backdrop, offering a laid-back, distinctly West Coast take on a New York classic.(Photos from left: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images, Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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QB's Finest, "Da Bridge 2001" - Queensbridge's new generation paid tribute to their godfathers on this rowdy posse cut. Remaking MC Shan and Marley Marl's 1986 benchmark "The Bridge," Nas teamed up with Capone, Cormega, Millennium Thug, Mobb Deep Nature, Tragedy Khadafi, producer L.E.S. and Marley and Shan themselves to big up the nation's largest housing project.(Photo: Ill Will Records/Columbia)
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Blackstar (Mos Def and Talib Kweli), "Children's Story" - In true backpack fashion, Mos Def refashioned Slick Rick's classic crime tale into an attack on commercial rap and the music industry on this cut off his 1998 album with Talib Kweli.(Photos from left: Scott Gries/ImageDirect, Johnny Nunez/WireImage)
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Snoop Dogg, "Vapors" - Snoop, hip hop's cover maestro, mined another '80s New York classic on his 1996 sophomore album, Tha Doggfather. Biz Markie never sounded this pimped-out. (Photo: Death Row Records)
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"Def Squad Delite" - Redman, Erick Sermon and Keith Murray stuck to the script on this single from their slept-on 1998 album, El Niño, covering Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" almost word-for-word to party-starting effect.(Photo: Def Jam Recordings)
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Jay-Z feat. Beyoncé, "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" - Jay-Z teamed up with Beyoncé (on the hook) and Kanye West (on the beat) to extend a posthumous olive branch to a former foe by repurposing Tupac's "Me & My Girlfriend" for this 2003 hit. (Photo: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)
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The Fugees, "Killing Me Softly" - It's kind of cheating to call this a rap cover song—the closest thing to rapping on it are the adlibs. Skillfully merging Roberta Flack's signature hit (though it was first performed in 1971 by Lori Lieberman) with a boom-bap backbeat, this track led the way for one of hip-hop's best-selling albums ever, The Score, and helped launch Lauryn Hill's solo career. (Photo: Sony Music Entertainment Inc.)
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Wu-Tang Clan, "Sucker MCs" - RZA, Ol Dirty Bastard and Method Man sounded like they were having a blast when they remade this Run-DMC standard for In Tha Beginning... There Was Rap, a 1997 compilation of rap covers.(Photos: Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect/Getty Images; Bob Berg/Getty Images)