Hip-hop Culture

Hip-hop culture is an art movement that emerged in New York City, in the borough of The Bronx; Primarily within the black community. Hip Hop as an art form and culture has been heavily influenced by both male and female artists. It is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing; other elements include graffiti, beatboxing, hip hop language, and hip-hop fashion.
Many cite Hip Hop's emergence as beginning in August 1973 when brother–sister duo DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell hosted the first documented indoor hip hop party and culture event in the Bronx; Helping to spark the rise of the genre. However many hiphop pioneers and historians contend that Hip Hop did not have just one founding father. The black Spades street gang and Disco king Mario of the Bronxdale Houses are also considered a vital part in the early origins of Hip Hop culture and music. As Disco King Mario was hosting and organizing outdoor Hip Hop Culture events, and park jams that predated DJ Kool Herc's 1973 indoor Hip Hop party. Dj Kool Herc was among the attendees at those early Disco King Mario Hip Hop events. Since then Hip hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world. These elements were adapted and developed considerably, particularly as the art forms spread to new continents and merged with local styles in the 1990s and subsequent decades. Even as the movement continues to expand globally and explore myriad styles and art forms, including hip-hop theater and hip hop film, the four foundational elements provide coherence and a strong foundation for hip hop culture.

Hip hop is simultaneously a new and old phenomenon; the importance of sampling tracks, beats, and basslines from old records to the art form means that much of the culture has revolved around the idea of updating classic recordings, attitudes, and experiences for modern audiences. Sampling older culture and reusing it in a new context or a new format is called "flipping" in hip hop culture. Hip hop music follows in the footsteps of earlier African-American-rooted and Latino musical genres such as blues, jazz, rag-time, funk, salsa, and disco to become one of the most practiced genres worldwide.

In the 2000s, with the rise of new media platforms such as online music streaming services, fans discovered and downloaded or streamed hip hop music through social networking sites beginning with Blackplanet & Myspace, as well as from websites like YouTube, Worldstarhiphop, SoundCloud, and Spotify.

Etymology

Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term"Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". '' JET'' (April 2, 2007), pp. 36–37. in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army by scat singing, in alternation, the made-up words "hip" and "hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into his stage performance. The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of music by calling them "hip hoppers". The name was originally meant as a sign of disrespect, but soon came to identify this new music and its broader culture. Therefore, the words chosen are probably not related to contemporary definitions for either "hip" or " hop", although that pair of words in conjunction had been swirling in the public lexicon since at least the 1950s, with older folks describing the parties of the youth as "hippity hops".

As the name was getting established, the words were a signature part of some songs. The song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang, released in 1979, begins with the phrase ''"I said a hip, hop, the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, and you don't stop"''. The 1980 hit "Rapture" by Blondie contains a rapping part with the line ''"And you hip-hop, and you don't stop, just blast off, sure shot."'' Lovebug Starski — a Bronx DJ who put out the single "The Positive Life" in 1981 – and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new "disco rap" music. Bill Alder, an independent consultant, once said, "There was hardly ever a moment when rap music was underground, one of the first so-called rap records, was a monster hit ('Rapper's Delight' by the Sugar Hill Gang on Sugarhill Records)."

Hip Hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa also credits Lovebug Starski as the first to use the term "Hip Hop" as it relates to the culture. Bambaataa, also did much to further popularize the term. The first use of the term in print, referring specifically to the culture and its elements, was in a January 1982 interview of Afrika Bambaataa by Michael Holman in the East Village Eye. The term gained further currency in September of that year in ''The Village Voice,'' in a profile of Bambaataa written by Steven Hager, who also published the first comprehensive history of the culture with St. Martins' Press.

History

1970s

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.SpearIt, Muslim Hip Hop in the age of Mass Incarceration https://ssrn.com/abstract=2767194 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, graffiti artist and breakdancer Cindy Campbell organized a Hip Hop "back to school" party with her brother featured as the deejay. Kool Herc 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. Cindy produced and funded this party that became the "Birth of Hip Hop", thus she has been called the Mother of Hip Hop and the First Lady of Hip Hop. Kool Herc's turntablist style became known as "breakbeat" – an essential element of modern hip hop. Music critic Peter Shapiro wrote that Herc's innovation "laid the foundations for hip hop", also noting that "it was another DJ, Grandwizard Theodore, who created its signature flourish in 1977 or 1978" – "scratching".

A second key musical element in Hip Hop 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", a performance where men tried to outdo each other in originality of their language and tried to gain the favor of the listeners. 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. The role of the MC originally was as a Master of Ceremonies for a DJ dance event. The MC would introduce the DJ and try to pump up the audience. The MC spoke between the DJ's songs, urging everyone to get up and dance. MCs would also tell jokes and use their energetic language and enthusiasm to rev up the crowd. Eventually, this introducing role developed into longer sessions of spoken, rhythmic wordplay, and rhyming, which became rapping.

By 1979, hip hop music had become a mainstream genre. It spread across the world in the 1990s with controversial "gangsta" rap. Herc also developed upon break-beat deejaying,Browne, P. ''The guide to United States popular culture'' Popular Press, 2001. p. 386 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. According to Herc, "breaking" was also street slang for "getting excited" and "acting energetically"

DJs such as Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching. The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s, DJs were releasing 12-inch records where they would rap to the beat. Influential tunes included Fatback Band's "King Tim III (Personality Jock)", The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", and Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'", all released in 1979. Herc and other DJs would connect their equipment to power lines and perform at venues such as public basketball courts and at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York, now officially a historic building.

The equipment consisted of numerous speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones. By using this technique, DJs could create a variety of music, but according to ''Rap Attack'' by David Toop "At its worst the technique could turn the night into one endless and inevitably boring song". KC The Prince of Soul, a rapper-lyricist with Pete DJ Jones, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".

Street gangs were prevalent in the poverty of the South Bronx, and much of the graffiti, rapping, and b-boying at these parties were all artistic variations on the competition and one-upmanship of street gangs. Sensing that gang members' often violent urges could be turned into creative ones, Afrika Bambaataa founded the Zulu Nation, a loose confederation of street-dance crews, graffiti artists, and rap musicians. By the late 1970s, the culture had gained media attention, with ''Billboard'' magazine printing an article titled "B Beats Bombarding Bronx", commenting on the local phenomenon and mentioning influential figures such as Kool Herc.Forman M; M. Neal, ''That's the joint! The hip-hop studies reader'', Routledge, 2004. p. 2.

The New York City blackout of 1977 saw widespread looting, arson, and other citywide disorders especially in the Bronx where a number of looters stole DJ equipment from electronics stores. As a result, the hip hop genre, barely known outside of the Bronx at the time, grew at an astounding rate from 1977 onward.Jody Rosen
"A Rolling Shout-Out to Hip-Hop History"
, ''The New York Times'', February 12, 2006

DJ Kool Herc's house parties gained popularity and later moved to outdoor venues to accommodate more people. Hosted in parks, these outdoor parties became a means of expression and an outlet for teenagers, where "instead of getting into trouble on the streets, teens now had a place to expend their pent-up energy.". Tony Tone, a member of the Cold Crush Brothers, stated that "hip hop saved a lot of lives".

For inner-city youth, participating in Hip Hop culture became a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with the risk of violence and the rise of gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that "people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting". Inspired by DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa created a street organization called Universal Zulu Nation, centered around Hip Hop, as a means to draw teenagers out of gang life, drugs and violence.

The lyrical content of many early rap groups focused on social issues, most notably in the seminal track "The Message" (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which discussed the realities of life in the housing projects. "Young black Americans coming out of the civil rights movement have used hip hop culture in the 1980s and 1990s to show the limitations of the movement." Hip hop gave young African Americans a voice to let their issues be heard; "Like rock-and-roll, hip hop is vigorously opposed by conservatives because it romanticizes violence, law-breaking, and gangs". It also gave people a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."

In late 1979, Debbie Harry of Blondie took Nile Rodgers of Chic to such an event, as the main backing track used was the break from Chic's "Good Times". The new style influenced Harry, and Blondie's later hit single from 1981 "Rapture" became the first major single containing hip hop elements by a white group or artist to hit number one on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100—the song itself is usually considered new wave and fuses heavy pop music elements, but there is an extended rap by Harry near the end.

1980s

In 1980, Kurtis Blow released his self-titled debut album featuring the single " The Breaks", which became the first certified gold rap song. In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released the electro-funk track "Planet Rock". Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa and producer Arthur Baker created an electronic sound using the Roland TR-808 drum machine and sampling from Kraftwerk. "Planet Rock" is widely regarded as a turning point; fusing electro with hip hop, it was "like a light being switched on", resulting in a new genre.Toop, p.146

The track also helped popularize the 808, which became a cornerstone of hip hop music; ''Wired'' and ''Slate'' both described the machine as hip hop's equivalent to the Fender Stratocaster, which had dramatically influenced the development of rock music. Released in 1986, Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys became the first rap LP to top the Billboard album chart. Beastie Boys were also one of the first white hip hop artists and a highly influential band in the history of hip hop, ranked as No.12 most influential band by Spin Magazine.

Other groundbreaking records released in 1982 include " The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, " Nunk" by Warp 9, "Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop)" by Man Parrish, "Magic Wand" by Whodini, and "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren. In 1983, Hashim created the influential electro funk tune " Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)", while Warp 9's " Light Years Away"(1983), "a cornerstone of early 80s beat box afrofuturism", introduced socially conscious themes from a Sci-Fi perspective, paying homage to music pioneer Sun Ra.

Encompassing graffiti art, MCing/rapping, DJing and b-boying, hip hop became the dominant cultural movement of the minority-populated urban communities in the 1980s. The 1980s also saw many artists make social statements through hip hop. In 1982, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee recorded " The Message" (officially credited to Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five), a song that foreshadowed the socially conscious statements of Run-DMC's " It's like That" and Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos".

During the 1980s, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing

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