The world’s oldest rappers

Vivian “Rappin’ Granny” Smallwood was 73 and a grandmother to 14 and great-grandmother to 5 when she made waves in the 2006 season of America’s Got Talent, where she advanced all the way to the final round.

This is a video of her audition in which she was a huge hit among not just the audience but also the judges:

But is she the world’s oldest rapper?

Not by some distance: apparently there’s an 80-year old man named Oliver “Busta Jack” Jackson. He started writing raps in the early 1980s.

So is Busta Jack the world’s oldest rapper? Not even close.

Jeanne Calment became the world’s oldest rapper at the age of 121 back in 1996!

She recorded an audio CD entitled “Mistress of Time” after her 120th birthday, as a fund raising drive to buy vans for her nursing home. It was officially released at her 121st birthday. Later there was controversy: “presumed commercial exploitation of a 120-year-old woman” which ultimately caused her nursing-home director to resign.

Anyway, listen to her “rapping” to “La Farandole”, apparently one of the “songs” in the album: