Hip hop music

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Hip hop music (Rap)
Stylistic origins:	Jamaican Dancehall toasting alongside the rhythms of R&B, disco, and funk
Cultural origins:	late 1960s/early 1970s: Kingston, Jamaica - early 1970s South Bronx, New York City
Typical instruments:	Turntable, rapping, drum machine, sampler, synthesizer, human beatboxing
Mainstream popularity:	Since late 1980s in the United States, worldwide beginning in early 1990s, among best-selling genres of music by early 2000s.
Derivative forms:	Trip hop, Grime
Subgenres
Abstract - Alternative - Chopped and screwed - Christian - Conscious - Crunk - Gangsta - G-funk - Hardcore - Horrorcore - Hyphy - Instrumental - Jazz rap - Latin rap - Mobb - Nerdcore - Old school - Pop rap - Snap
Fusion genres
Country rap - Electro hop - Freestyle - Hip house - Hip life - Ghettotech - Hip hop soul - Miami bass - Neo soul - New jack swing - Ragga - Rapcore - Reggaeton - Urban Pasifika
Regional scenes
African - American: (East - West - South - Midwest) - British - French - Japanese - Salvadoran - Others...
Other topics
Beatboxing - Breakdancing - Collaborations - DJing (Turntablism) - Hip hop culture - Fashion - Graffiti - History - Rapping - Roots - Timeline

Hip hop music is a style of popular music, typically consisting of a rhythmic, rhyming vocal style called rapping (also known as emceeing) over backing beats and scratching performed on a turntable by a DJ. Emceeing, DJ-ing, breakdancing and graffiti art comprise the four elements of Hiphop, a cultural movement which began in New York City in the 1970s, predominantly among African Americans and Latinos.^[1] The term rap music is sometimes used synonymously with hip hop music, though it is also used to refer specifically to the practice of rapping.

Typically, hiphop music consists of one or more rappers speaking/chanting semi-autobiographic tales, or often, coded information in an intensely rhythmic lyrical form, making abundant use of techniques like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. Though rap may be performed a cappella, it is more common for the rapper(s) to be accompanied by a DJ or a live band providing an appropriate beat. This beat is often from the percussion of a different song, usually rock, funk, or soul, and is sometimes sampled. In addition to the beat, other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Though rap is usually an integral component of hiphop music, instrumental and non-rap Electro acts such as Planet Patrol are also defined as hiphop music groups.

Hiphop arose in New York City when DJs began isolating the percussion break from funk or disco songs. The role of the emcee (MC) arose to introduce the DJ and the music, and to keep the audience excited. The MCs would speak between songs, giving exhortations to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually, this practice came to be more stylized, and was known as rapping. By 1979, hiphop had become a commercially recorded music genre, and began to enter the American mainstream. It also began its spread across the world. In the 1990s, a form called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hiphop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world.

Roots of Hip hop (1970s)

Main article: Roots of hip hop

The roots of Hiphop are found in African-American and West African music. The griots of West Africa are a group of traveling singers and poets, whose musical style is reminiscent of hiphop. Within New York City, griot-like performances of poetry and music by artists such as The Last Poets and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin had a great impact on the post-civil rights era culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Hiphop arose during the 1970s when block parties became common in New York City, especially the Bronx. Block parties were usually accompanied by music, especially funk and soul music. The early DJs at block parties began isolating the percussion breaks to hit songs, realizing that these were the most dance-able and entertaining parts; this technique was then common in Jamaica and had spread via the substantial Jamaican immigrant community in New York City, especially the "godfather" of hiphop, DJ Kool Herc.

Dub had arisen in Jamaica due to the influence of American sailors and radio stations playing R&B. Large sound systems were set up to accommodate poor Jamaicans, who couldn't afford to buy records, and dub developed at the sound systems (refers to both the system and the parties that evolved around them). Herc was one of the most popular DJs in early 70s New York, and he quickly switched from using reggae records to funk, rock and, later, disco, since the New York audience did not particularly like reggae. Because the percussive breaks were generally short, Herc and other DJs began extending them using an audio mixer and two records. Mixing and scratching techniques eventually developed along with the breaks. (The same techniques contributed to the popularization of remixes.) Such looping, sampling and remixing of another's music, usually without the original artist's knowledge or consent, can be seen as an evolution of Jamaican Dub music, and would become a hallmark of the hiphop style.

Later DJs such as Grandmaster Flash refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting.^{[citation needed]} As in dub, performers began speaking while the music played; these were originally called MCs; Herc focused primarily on DJing, and began working with two MCs, Coke La Rock and Clark Kent—this was the first emcee crew, Kool Herc & the Herculoids. Originally, these early rappers focused on introducing themselves and others in the audience (the origin of the still common practice of "shouting out" on hiphop records). These early performers often emceed for hours at a time, with some improvisation and a simple four-count beat, along with a basic chorus to allow the performer to gather his thoughts (such as "one, two, three, y'all, to the beat, y'all").

Later, the MCs grew more varied in their vocal and rhythmic approach, incorporating brief rhymes, often with a sexual or scatological theme, in an effort at differentiating themselves and entertaining the audience. These early raps incorporated similar rhyming lyrics from African American culture, such as the dozens. While Kool Herc & the Herculoids were the first hiphoppers to gain major fame in New York, more emcee teams quickly sprouted up. Frequently, these were collaborations between former gang members, such as Afrikaa Bambaataa's Universal Zulu Nation (now a large, international organization). Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC."^[2] During the early 1970s, breakdancing arose during block parties, as b-boys and b-girls got in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive, frenetic style. The style was documented for release to a world wide audience for the first time in Beat Street.

Although there were many early MCs that recorded solo projects of note, such as DJ Hollywood, Kurtis Blow, and Spoonie Gee, real notoriety didn't appear until later with the rise of soloists with big stage presence and drama, such as LL Cool J. Most early Hiphop was dominated by groups where collaboration among the members was integral to the show.(Toop:2000, 94)

Origin of term

Coinage of the term hiphop is often credited to Keith Cowboy, a rapper with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. Though Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was still known as disco rap, it is believed that Cowboy created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.^[3] Cowboy later worked the "hiphop" cadence into a part of his stage performance, which was quickly copied by other artists; for example the opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang.^[3] Former Black Spades gang member Afrika Bambaataa is credited with first using the term to describe the subculture that hiphop music belongs to, although it is also suggested that the term was originally derisively used against the new type of music.^[4]

Context

The reasons for the rise of hiphop are found in the changing urban culture within the United States during the 1970s. Perhaps most important was the low cost involved in getting started: the equipment was relatively inexpensive, and virtually anyone could MC along with the popular beats of the day. MCs could be creative, pairing nonsense rhymes and teasing friends and enemies alike in the style of Jamaican toasting at blues parties or playing the dozens in an exchange of wit. MCs would play at block parties, with no expectation of recording, in the way of folk music. The skills necessary to create hiphop music were passed informally from musician to musician, rather than being taught in expensive music lessons.

Another reason for hiphop's rise was the decline of disco, funk and rock in the mid- to late 70s. Disco arose among black and gay male clubs in America, and quickly spread to Europe, where it grew increasingly sunny, bright and pop. Once disco broke into the mainstream in the United States, and was thus appropriated, its original fans and many other listeners rejected it as pre-packaged and soul-less. While many remember the white teens shouting "disco sucks" at every available opportunity, often in racist and homophobic contexts, inner-city blacks were similarly rejecting disco and disco-fied rock, soul and funk (which was virtually everything on the radio at the time).

If disco had anything redeemable for urban audiences, however, it was the strong, eminently danceable beats, and hiphop rose to take advantage of the beats while providing a musical outlet for the masses that hated disco. Disco-inflected music (though comparatively little actual disco) was one of the most popular sources of beats in the first ten or twelve years of hiphop's existence. In Washington DC, go go also emerged as a reaction against disco, and eventually mixed with hiphop during the early 1980s, while electronic music did the same, developing as house music in Chicago and techno music in Detroit.

Along with the low expense and the demise of other forms of popular music, social and political events further accelerated the rise of Hiphop. In 1959, the Cross-Bronx Expressway was built through the heart of the Bronx, displacing many of the middle-class white communities and causing widespread unemployment among the remaining blacks as stores and factories fled the area. By the 1970s, poverty was rampant. When a 15,000+ apartment Co-op City was built at the northern edge of the Bronx in 1968, the last of the middle-class fled the area and the area's black and Latino gangs began to grow in power.

Stylistic diversification

In the mid-1970s, Hiphop split into two factions. One sampled disco and focused on getting the crowd dancing and excited, with simple or no rhymes; these DJs included Pete DJ Jones, Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood and Love Bug Starski. On the other hand, another group were focusing on rapid-fire rhymes and a more complex rhythmic scheme. These included Afrika Bambaataa, Paul Winley, Grandmaster Flash and Bobby Robinson. During the transition into the early 1980s, many felt that Hiphop was a novelty fad that would soon die out. This was to become a constant accusation for at least the next fifteen years. Some of the earliest rappers were novelty acts, using the themes to Gilligan's Island and using sweet doo wop-influenced harmonies.

With the advent of recorded hiphop in the late 1970s, all the major elements and techniques of the genre were in place. Though not yet mainstream, it was well-known among African Americans, even outside of New York City; hiphop could be found in cities as diverse as Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Houston.

Philadelphia was, for many years, the only city whose contributions to Hiphop were valued as greatly as New York City's by Hiphop purists and critics. Hiphop was popular there at least as far back as 1976 (first record: "Rhythm Talk", by Jocko Henderson in 1979), and the New York Times dubbed Philly the "Graffiti Capital of the World" in 1971, due to the influence of such legendary graffiti artists as Cornbread. The first female solo artist to record hiphop was Lady B. ("To the Beat Y'All", 1980), a Philly-area radio DJ. Later Schoolly D helped invent what became known as gangsta rap.

1980s

The 1980s saw intense diversification in hiphop, which developed into a more complex form. As technology evolved so did the practice of looping break into breakbeats; the emergence of samplers and sequencers allowed the beats to be manipulated with greater precision and granularity and recombined in more complex new ways than was possible with vinyl alone. In 1984, Marley Marl accidentally caught a drum machine snare hit in the sampler; this innovation was vital in the development of electro and other later types of hiphop. In 1989, DJ Mark James under the moniker "45 King", released "The 900 Number", a breakbeat track created by synchronizing samplers and vinyl. (Toop, 2000)

The content evolved as well. The simple tales of 1970s emcees were replaced by highly metaphoric lyrics rapping over complex, multi-layered beats. Some rappers even became mainstream pop performers, including Kurtis Blow, whose appearance in a Sprite commercial made him the first hiphop musician to be considered mainstream enough to represent a major product, but also the first to be accused by the hip-hop audience of selling out. Another popular performer among mainstream audiences was LL Cool J, who was a success from the release of his first LP, Radio.

Hiphop was almost entirely unknown outside of the United States prior to the 1980s. During that decade, it began its spread to every inhabited continent and became a part of the music scene in dozens of countries. In the early part of the decade, breakdancing became the first aspect of Hiphop culture to reach Germany, Japan and South Africa, where the crew Black Noise established the practice before beginning to rap later in the decade. Meanwhile, recorded hiphop was released in France (Dee Nasty's 1984 Paname City Rappin') and the Philippines (Dyords Javier's "Na Onseng Delight" and Vincent Dafalong's "Nunal"). In Puerto Rico, Vico C became the first Spanish language rapper, and his recorded work was the beginning of what became known as reggaeton.

Politicization

The first rap records (Fatback Band's King Tim III, Grandmaster Flash's Super Rappin and The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight) were actually recorded by live musicians in the studio, with the rappers adding their vocals later. This changed with DJ records such as Grandmaster Flash's Adventures on the Wheels of Steel (known for pioneering use of scratching, which was invented by Grandwizard Theodore in 1977) as well as electronic recordings such as Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa and Run DMC's very basic, all electronic Sucker MC's and Peter Piper which contains genuine cutting by Run DMC member Jam Master Jay. These early innovators were based out of New York City, which remained the capital of Hiphop during the 1980s. This style became known as East Coast hiphop.

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five released a "message rap", called The Message, in 1982; this was one of the earliest examples of recorded hiphop with a socially aware tone.

In 1987, Public Enemy brought out their debut album (