Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole.

Shepp is featured in the 1981 documentary film Imagine the Sound in which he discusses and performs his music and poetry. Biography
Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale Florida but raised in Philadelphia Pennsylvania where he studied piano clarinet and alto saxophone before focusing on tenor saxophone (he occasionally plays soprano saxophone and piano). " Shepp was also a professor of African American Studies at SUNY in Buffalo New York.

Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by African Americans as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five Horace Parlan and his collaborations with his "New Thing" contemporaries most notably Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane. Archie Shepp (born May 24 1937) is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist.