Val Kilmer’s Not Saying He Invented Rap, But He’s Also Not Saying He Didn’t

The roots of rap run deep and there’s a massive debate over who should receive the lion’s share of the credit for “inventing” the genre. It’s commonly accepted that the first real rap song is The Sugar Hill Gang’s 1979 single “Rapper’s Delight,” but there were a whole host of artists like Gil Scott-Heron and DJ Kool Here who sowed the seeds for rap’s rise years earlier. Now we can add a new name to the debate: actor and one-time Batman, Val Kilmer.

Okay, maybe that’s overstating the case, while also raising some major cultural appropriation joke red flags, but for those who don’t follow the actor on Twitter, he’s known for making some pretty dubious, but ultimately hilarious claims. When it comes to rap, he’s not saying he invented the genre, he’s just pointing out the coincidence that he, a self-proclaimed wordsmith, happened to arrive in New York just as it was about to take off.

“A lot of people don’t know this: I used to write a lot of poetry in the ’70s,” he wrote. “Then I moved to New York. And rap was born. You’re welcome.”

Now before you get all up in arms, this is the same guy who called Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender “2 nobodies.”

Then again, he did get nominated for a spoken word Grammy once, so there’s that…

Either way, Thanks Val.