Kid Frost releases 'La Raza' — chicano rap arrives nationally
In 1990, Virgin Records releases 'La Raza' as the lead single from Kid Frost's debut LP Hispanic Causing Panic. The track samples Gerald Wilson's 1968 Latin-jazz composition 'Viva Tirado' and weaves bilingual Spanish-English rap with explicit Chicano-pride lyrical content. The song is the first commercial rap single by a Mexican-American MC to reach sustained national radio rotation and is generally cited as the founding document of chicano rap as a discrete commercial sub-genre.
Why it matters
Kid Frost (Arturo Molina Jr.) is from East Los Angeles. The Chicano-rap tradition is from East Los Angeles. There were Chicano MCs before him, mostly in regional crews, but "La Raza" is the song that announced Chicano rap as something the rest of the country had to acknowledge. The Gerald Wilson sample ("Viva Tirado," 1968, an actual Chicano-jazz composition by a Black bandleader written in tribute to a Mexican bullfighter) is the part that locates the song musically and politically. The bilingual delivery is the part that locates it socially. Cypress Hill arrives the next year. Mellow Man Ace had already arrived. A Lighter Shade of Brown, Aztlan Underground, Lil Rob, Frost's whole Latin Alliance project — the entire 1990s LA Chicano-rap scene runs through Kid Frost's opening. You should hear La Raza if you have not. The first eight bars tell you what is being built.
Branches
Sub-genre1
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