GENRE: HIP HOP

Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans,

with heavy influence by AfroLatino Americans and Caribbean Americans in the Bronx, New

York City. The origin of the name is often disputed. It is also argued as to whether hip hop

started in the South or West Bronx. While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively

to hip hop music (including rap), hip hop is characterized by four key elements: "rapping"

(also called emceeing), a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality), DJing (and turntablism),

which is making music with record players and DJ mixers (aural/sound and music creation).

In the 1970s, an underground urban movement known as "hip hop" began to form in the

Bronx, New York City. It focused on emceeing (or MCing) over house parties and

neighborhood block party events, held outdoors. Hip hop music has been a powerful medium

for protesting the impact of legal institutions on minorities, particularly police and prisons.

Historically, hip hop arose out of the ruins of a post industrial and ravaged South Bronx, as a

form of expression of urban Black and Latino youth, whom the public and political discourse

had written off as marginalized communities. Jamaican-born DJ Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell

pioneered the use of DJing percussion "breaks" in hip hop music. Beginning at Herc's home

in a high-rise apartment at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the movement later spread across the

entire borough. On August 11, 1973 DJ Kool Herc was the DJ at his sister's back-to-school

party. He extended the beat of a record by using two record players, isolating the percussion

"breaks" by using a mixer to switch between the two records. Kool Herc's sister, Cindy

Campbell, produced and funded the Back to School Party that became the "Birth of Hip

Hop". Herc's experiments with making music with record players became what we now know

as breaking or "scratching.
A second key musical element in hip hop music is emceeing (also called MCing or rapping).

Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered at first without

accompaniment and later done over a beat. This spoken style was influenced by the African

American style of "capping". The basic elements of hip hop boasting raps, rival "posses"

(groups), uptown "throw-downs", and political and social commentary were all long present

in African American music. MCing and rapping performers moved back and forth between

the predominance of toasting songs packed with a mix of boasting, 'slackness' and sexual

innuendo and a more topical, political, socially conscious style.

By 1979 hip hop music had become a mainstream genre. It spread across the world in the

1990s with controversial "gangsta" rap. Also developed upon break beat deejaying, where the

breaks of funk songs the part most suited to dance, usually percussion based were isolated

and repeated for the purpose of all-night dance parties. This form of music playback, using

hard funk and rock, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and

exhortations to dancers would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now

known as rapping. He dubbed his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys

and b-girls.

The 4 Main Elements of Hip Hop Music. Most scholars agree that there are four main

elements, or pillars, to hip hop music. These pillars originated in the 1970s and continue to

represent hip hop culture today:

 Deejaying: making music using record players, turntables, and DJ mixers

 Rapping: rhythmic vocal rhyming style

 Graffiti painting: also known as “graf” or “writing”

 Break dancing: a form of dance that also encompasses an overall attitude and style

All four of these elements remain signifiers of hip hop as a larger cultural movement.
Hip hop is typically broken into three phases: old school, new school, and 21st century. Old

school hip hop typically dates from the origination of the movement in the early 1970s up

until the mid-1980s. The first major hip hop deejay was DJ Kool Herc. Mixing percussive

beats with popular dance songs, Kool Herc was instrumental in developing the sounds that

became synonymous with hip hop, such as drum beats and record scratches. Influenced by

Kool Herc and his peers, hip hop deejays developed new turntable techniques, like needle

dropping and scratching. Kool Herc also popularized rapping, which drew upon the traditions

of West African griots, talking blues songs, and black power poetry, among others.

Towards the end of the old school hip hop era, the movement began to gain national

recognition. The Sugarhill Gang’s song “Rapper’s Delight” (released in 1979) rocketed up

the national music charts, ushering in a new wave of musicians, artists, and performers, while

also introducing people around the world to this new type of music.

By the mid-1980s, hip hop had firmly entered its new school era. The names that headed up

hip hop’s new school are more recognizable to a contemporary audience the Beastie Boys,

and Public Enemy. Each of these artists is responsible for making hip hop what we know

today. The Beastie Boys pushed deejaying further with their digital sampling. Public Enemy

pushed rap in new directions Public Enemy by using rap to push forward political ideology.

Other artists that came of age during hip hop’s new school era include Queen Latifah, who,

along with Salt-n-Pepa, brought women into the genre, the Fresh Prince, aka, Will Smith, and

M.C. Hammer, all of whom popularized hip hop music even more.
As hip hop grew in popularity, it expanded beyond its regional roots, too. In 1989, Straight

Outta Compton became the most prominent hip hop album to emerge from somewhere

besides New York City. The East Coast, West Coast divide evolved into a full on rivalry

between the two groups, which ended with the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur. From the

ashes of the rivalry between the East and West Coasts came late 1990s hip hop, which saw

artists like the Wu-Tang Clan, the Fugees, and Diddy reach new levels of popularity. Hip hop

became a worldwide phenomenon at this point, too with new audiences and artists emerging

in places like Tokyo, Cape Town, London, and Paris. By the turn of the century, hip hop was

the best-selling music genre in the United States.

The 21st century was a tough time for the music industry. The advent of streaming services

affected all genres, including hip hop. Despite the monetary effects of the shift in music

delivery, hip hop retains its prominence, influencing musicians of all genres. Over the last

decade, hip hop has moved further from its East and West coast roots. New epicenters for the

genre have emerged in New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, and Detroit, as well as in other cities

throughout the United States. Building off of the original four pillars that defined the genre,

hip hop artists touch every part of American culture, from dance to politics. While the future

of the music industry remains uncertain, one thing’s for sure: hip hop is here to stay.