Hip-hop
Hip-hop is a genre of popular music that emerged in the early 1970s alongside an associated subculture in the African-American and Caribbean immigrants communities of New York City. The musical style is characterized by the synthesis of a wide range of techniques, but rapping is frequent enough that it has become a defining characteristic. Other key markers of the genre are the disc jockey, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks. Cultural interchange has always been central to the hip-hop genre; it simultaneously borrows from its social environment while commenting on it.
The hip-hop genre and culture emerged from block parties in ethnic minority neighborhoods of New York City, particularly the Bronx. DJs began expanding the instrumental breaks of popular records when they noticed how excited it would make the crowds. The extended breaks provided a platform for break dancers and rappers. These breakbeats enabled the subsequent evolution of the hip-hop style. Many of the records used were disco due to its popularity at the time. This disco-inflected music was originally known as disco rap and later described as "old-school hip-hop".
In the mid-1980s, hip-hop began to diversify as electro music started to inform the genre's new school. The period between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s became known as hip-hop's "golden age", as the genre earned widespread critical acclaim and generated massive sales. Across the United States, several regional scenes emerged, most notably on the East and West Coasts, as well as in the South, which included the Houston, Atlanta and Memphis rap scenes. This era saw the emergence of popular styles such as G-funk, boom bap and gangsta rap, as well as more experimental genres like alternative hip-hop and jazz rap, which stemmed from the Native Tongues movement, alongside progressive and conscious hip-hop.
In the late 1990s to mid-2000s, the popularity of hip-hop further expanded with the club-oriented "bling era". The late 2000s and early 2010s saw the rise of the "blog era" and Internet rap, with young artists using the Internet to cultivate a following. In the mid-to-late 2010s, trap music and Soundcloud rap surged in popularity, which led to several commercially successful artists. In 2017, hip-hop became the bestselling genre of popular music in the United States and had also developed its own regional variations around the world.
Etymology
"Hip-hop" has been in use since the 17th century to mean a succession of hops. In George Villiers' 1671 play The Rehearsal, Prince Volscius exits a scene awkwardly with one boot on and the other off. The director of the scene exclaims, "to go off hip hop, hip hop, upon this occasion, is a thousand times better than any conclusion in the world".A common variation on "hip hop" is "hippity hop", which was in wide usage by the 19th century. It appears in works like a poem from 1882 where four children sing, "Hippity hop to the candy Shop!" It was a common refrain in skipping games.
Many dance steps include a hop. By the 18th century, "hop" began to be used interchangeably with "dance" as both a noun and a verb.
Usage
An early usage of "hip hop" in recorded popular music is found in The Dovells' 1963 dance song "You Can't Sit Down", "...you gotta slop, bop, flip flop, hip hop, never stop". A decade later, Disco disc jockeys would pepper their sets with exhortations to the crowd, which is why the emerging style was originally known as "disco rap". One of DJ Hollywood's chants was "hip hop de hippy hop the body rock". Lovebug Starsky recalls originating the phrase when he messed up the change between records, "I picked up the mic and just started saying 'a hip hop, hip hop, de hibbyhibbyhibbyhibby hop'", claiming credit for inventing the name by 1979.In another version of Starsky's tale, he coined "hip-hop" with Keef Cowboy from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five as they traded jibes at a friend who was going into the Army. Kidd Creole recalls the scene without Lovebug present, "Cowboy was on the mic playin around doing that Army cadence: Hip/Hop/Hip/Hop...Disco was king at the time, and the Disco crowd referred to us as those 'Hip Hoppers', but they used it as a derogatory term. But Cowboy was the first one I heard do that to music, as part of his crowd response."
The phrase was in common usage by the time The Sugarhill Gang recorded "Rapper's Delight" in 1979. The chorus begins, "I said a hip-hop, the hippie, the hippie/To the hip, hip-hop and you don't stop the rockin'".
By the early 1980s, hip-hop's definition had expanded into "the all inclusive tag for the rapping, breaking, graffiti-writing, crew fashion wearing street sub-culture". Afrika Bambaataa was instrumental in turning the term into a positive force through his Universal Zulu Nation. Their social movement was anti-drug and anti-violence.
As rappers began to dominate hip-hop, the terms became synonymous. However, hip-hop's definition has always applied to its entire culture. Its four principal elements include rapping, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti art. Knowledge is sometimes described as a fifth element, underscoring its role in shaping the values and promoting empowerment and consciousness-raising through music.
KRS-One identified additional elements: self-expression, street fashion, street language, street knowledge, and street entrepreneurialism. He also recognized girls' Double Dutch jump rope as a key stylistic component of breakdancing.
In addition to borrowing from the culture, hip-hop simultaneously comments on it. From its roots in the Bronx to its current global reach, hip-hop has served as a voice for the disenfranchised, shedding light on issues such as racial inequality, poverty, and police brutality.
Historical background
Hip-hop's initial medium was the turntable. Vinyl records were the primary source for DJs who reworked songs into new material for dancing. The process echoed the appropriation of styles that created jazz decades earlier. The genres hip-hop initially assimilated were wide-ranging, but its primary sources were disco and funk records.Nowhere was this cross-pollination of musics better typified than in the Caribbean island of Jamaica, where AM radio signals from Miami, Florida, were audible. In the late 1950s, the U.S. stations played much more invigorating rhythm and blues music than the staid BBC which was syndicated by the island's only radio channel, Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. American DJs like Jocko Henderson and Jockey Jack introduced R&B records and jive talking to the island. Local DJs soon began setting up sound systems for outdoor parties. A vibrant music scene emerged. The jive of American DJs transmuted into toasts in Jamaican Patois.
Jive talk popularized black-appeal stations in the post-war era. Its double entendres were a godsend to radio, re-invigorating ratings at flagging outlets. It emerged from traditions like call and response, signifyin', the dozens, capping, and jazz poetry. The transition from oral tradition to the commercial airwaves was exemplified by WDIA disc jockeys like Nat D. and Rufus Thomas. Their on-air jive was honed during their hosting duties at the Palace Theatre's Amateur Night on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. D.J's like Chicago's Al Benson, Austin's Doctor Hep Cat, and Atlanta's Jockey Jack spoke the same rhyming, cadence-laden rap style. They might introduce a great musician like, "Here is a guy that will move you in from the outskirts of town because he breathes natural gas...so droop to listening to a real gone cat whose loaded his knowledge box in the house of the righteous, and can lo blow." Many white DJ's like John R Richbourg on Nashville's WLAC emulated the southern 'mushmouth' and jive talk, and switched out swing music for blues and bebop. The jive-talking rappers of 1950s radio inspired musical comedians like Rudy Ray Moore, Pigmeat Markham, and Blowfly, along with soul singer James Brown. They have been called "godfathers" of hip-hop music.
The rhythmic speech of rap is an ancient practice, first codified by the Greeks. In 20th-century Western music, it was a widely used practice in everything from sprechstimme to the talking blues. The roots of rapping in African-American music are easily traced to the griots in West African culture. Bo Diddley made several influential talking records, and the gospel group The Jubalaires' 1946 song "Noah" is frequently seen as a forerunner of rap. Other notable talking records were Muhammad Ali's I Am the Greatest and Pigmeat Markham's "Here Comes the Judge". Ali's patter was an enormous influence on hip-hop. He was known as a "rhyming trickster" due to the funky delivery of his boasts, trash talk, and indelible phrases. Many of his monologues were freestyle improvisations which would become a vital skill Old-school hip-hop rappers.
In New York City, spoken-word poetry by artists like The Last Poets, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, and Gil Scott-Heron had a significant impact on the post-civil rights era. They helped establish the cultural environment in which hip-hop music was created.
During these proto-rap years in America, Jamaican music regularly featured talking records like U-Roy and Peter Tosh's "Righteous Ruler" and King Stitt's "Fire Corner" in 1969. Jamaican DJs were also heavily remixing recorded music to generate new sounds. Duke Reid would preside over his sound system, tweaking knobs until the record he was playing became unrecognizable. In the studio, artists like King Tubby would strip the vocals out of records to create a new version. The public appetite for these remixes became so strong that singles were released with the original on one side and the "version" on the other. The eclectic stew of production techniques came to be known as dub music, and it is the strongest artistic precedent for hip-hop.