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Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom. Movement, commentary, passion, rhyme. All wrapped into song. Spoken, sung, experienced. Whether it trips off the tongue or trips up the tongue, it has a beat; it has meaning. John Lennon said, "Tell the truth and make it rhyme."

The "beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom" are the opening words to the verse of Cole Porter's Broadway show and long-time popular song "Night and Day." Written in 1932, it included the plaintive lyrics, "Night and day, under the hide of me, there's an oh-so-hungry yearning burning inside of me. And its torment won't be through 'til you let me spend my life making love to you, day and night, night and day."

Do you hear it? Feel it? "Yearning burning ..." Is it plain-spoken, or innuendo? Is it new, or simply a clever way of expressing love and longing?

They just don't write them like that anymore. Or do they?

Could hip-hop's rap be traced back to such composers as Cole Porter, or particularly Cole Porter? A little research revealed Gena Greher, writing for the College Music Symposium's Journal of College Music Society, published in 2009 a peer-review article titled "Night & Day: Cole Porter, Hip Hop, Their Shared Sensibilities and Their Teachable Moments."

There it is. The idea expressed in academic study, which includes the associated similarities between Porter and rap. "One is urbane, the other urban, yet Cole Porter and his hip-hop brethren share many dimensions in common ... rhyming schemes, double meanings, lists, social commentary, obsession with cultural icons and imagery." Lyrics that may offend, while attracting the chance of censorship. Not as different as night and day, but of a piece.

Rap, as we know it, began in September 1979 with Sugar Hill Records' release of "Rapper's Delight." Rap, not to strike, but to speak rhythmically over the beat. You know it now: Rapper and rap music born out of hip-hop, including breakdancing, DJs manipulating vinyl albums to the beat, graffiti. A culture emanating from the Bronx, now pervasive worldwide.

Pervasive, to be sure. And mainstream. Rap received a Pulitzer Prize in 2016, awarded to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway phenomenon "Hamilton." The rap rhyme schemes right there on the Broadway stage where Cole Porter started with the short-lived Broadway show "Kitchy-Koo." In that 1919 show, a particularly suggestive song was "That Black and White Baby of Mine." A middle lyric submits, "And that if a lot of bedrooms were pink instead of red rooms, there might be many more contented wives. And so, she's put all color from her sight, and ev'rything she owns in black and white." Red rooms? Indeed suggestive.

Porter toyed and toiled with passion, love, and hidden longing. (Miranda did, too, telling of Hamilton and his flirtation with his wife's sister. He did it with more whimsy.)

In 1928, Porter wrote the show "Paris," in which the song "Let's Do It" became so popular it's been covered from Bing Crosby in 1929 to Lady Gaga in 2021.

"And that's why birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it; let's do it, let's fall in love. ... Sloths who hang down from twigs do it, though the effort is great; sweet guinea pigs do it, buy a couple and wait!" You get the idea.

In an Aug. 4 New Yorker book review on the Renaissance, Adam Gopnik wrote, "Style is necessarily hybrid, but there are times when cultural speed really does get supercharged, in ways that draw on the past to create something new."

Rap is certainly not the only re-creation of old styles. But it seems to be one of the most culturally significant departures from a more recognized and standardized way music is or was written and performed.

The evolution of rap lyrics has moved from somewhat benign phrasing--Sugarhill Gang's "Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rappin' to the beat; And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet! --to more vulgar and personalized lyrics filled with cultural reference, the street, how the spoken word in urban neighborhoods is heard, and sex.

Explicit sexual references have been there from Porter's 1919 red-room lyric, and his 1930 song, "Love For Sale," to today's rap. However, while the sex-rap is impactful, so too are the urban rhymes of personal awareness, empathy, and redemption. Witness Post Malone and Jelly Roll's collaboration on 2024's "Losers:" "Last-callers, last-chancers, 9-to-5ers, dancers; Couple Chucks, Ern's, and Chandler's, with a whole lotta prayers unanswered."

There is east coast hip-hop, where it began, and west coast hip-hop. Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. is from Long Beach, Calif. You could check that, but you might want to search "Snoop Dog." Snoop was featured on "Deep Cover" in 1991 with Dr. Dre, followed by his first solo album "Doggy Style."

Is there a parallel between Snoop Dog's "Drop It Like It's Hot" and Cole Porter's "It's Too Darn Hot?" Snoop's song, describing a female dance move, was named in 2009 by Billboard magazine as "Rap Song of the Decade." Porter's song, in the 1948 Broadway show "Kiss Me Kate," was about women, as well as Shakespeare and show business. The heat is palpable in both: Porter wrote, "I'd like to call on my baby tonight, and give my all to my baby tonight; but I can't play ball with my baby tonight, 'cause it's too darn hot!"

Snoop connects, "So don't change the dizzle, turn it up a little; I got a livin' room full of fine dime brizzles; waitin' on the Pizzle, the Dizzle and the Chizzle; G's to the bizzack, now ladies here we gizzo!" Words containing izzle are many times synonymous with words beginning with the first letter--d, P, D, and Ch--as above. Gizzo is different. It has cultural and historical roots. Bizzack, meaning "back," is exclusive to Snoop Dog.

All of it depends on the context in which the lyrics are written. With rap, as with Porter, if you understand the context, you understand the words, rhymes, and phrases. Many seem enigmatic. But, as the New Yorker's Gopnick wrote, "[The enigma] is the purpose, not the problem."

Enough of this term-paper-like investigation! Was the journey amusing, or a waste of time? Maybe it just elicited a "Huh?" If so, so be it. Another path could have been taken, as Cole Porter wrote in 1934, "At words poetic, I'm so pathetic that I always have found it best, instead of gettin' 'em off my chest, to let 'em rest unexpressed." Thanks for hangin'.

Craig Douglass is director of the Regional Recycling District in Pulaski County.