KATZ RAP (Cat Rap)
Several days later, they had laid down two more tracks, “Katz Rap” (“Cat Rap”) and “Mom”; these were released in 1982 as their first single on Ata Tak Records. This earned Ja Ja Ja and Julie Jigsaw recognition as the first female rapper in Europe. (“Katz Rap" came out the year after Blondie’s pioneering single “Rapture” was released). A later single called “Graffiti Artists International” was the first song in Europe to talk about graffiti artists. Mel Jefferson was the engineer for the Ja Ja Ja music; he later worked with the Sugarcubes and Björk.
The Ja Ja Ja song “Katz Rap” was included on a 2005 German compilation album called Grlz: Women Ahead of Their Time; and a copy of the original 45 is included in the Cornell University Library Hip Hop Collection.
(February 2012)
* * *
I had to dig around some, but I did find some classy Ja Ja Ja videos on YouTube. This is their classic “Katz Rap” (“Cat Rap”), the first female rap song released in Europe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf5410itOkU .
(February 2014)
* * *
This is the single, “Katz Rap” – the first female rap song in Europe:
(February 2015)
* * *
Vanilla Ice was inaccurately called the first white rapper by many in that time period, but this was not at all the case. For one thing, future superstar Eminem was already rapping in high school by the age of 14 (in about 1986). For another, past UARB Ja Ja Ja released “Katz Rap” (“Cat Rap”) in Germany in 1982 as the first female rap song in Europe. As a third example, “Under the Gun” (1984) by a long-time favorite New Wave band called Face to Face features a Christian rap passage.
(September 2016)
