The History of Hip Hop Music

To define hip hop as synonymous with rap would be incomplete. As a musical genre, it certainly is well rooted in rap music, but as you study its history, it becomes clear how the music has expanded into an entire culture. But who were the originators? And who were some of the innovators? Here's a brief look at how Hip Hop grew from New York basements to worldwide influence.

The Roots

The roots for hip hop start in New York in the late 1970s. At house parties and block parties, DJs would play popular soul, funk, or R&B music, emphasizing "breaks"---the moments in the song when the music drops out for a percussion solo. The Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc helped spread the technique, which was popular in his native country, throughout New York. DJs would later team up with "MCs," who would deliver rhymes over the music, to create rap.

Early Pioneers

Kool Herc and the Herculoids were one of the first MC teams to begin performing around New York. But it was not long before Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Afrikaa Bambaataa's Universal Zulu Nation rose to prominence. Among the first known hip hop recordings was the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," which featured the group's three MCs rhyming over a disco track. As rap's popularity grew, groups like Run DMC and solo artists like LL Cool J started to gain national fame and set the standard for artists to follow.

The Subculture

As the music grew in popularity, its influence would spread away from the turntables and microphones. Breakdancing came out of many of the early block parties and was spread thanks to documentaries like Beat Street and Wild Style. Artists began to carve their own fashion identities that were quickly adopted by fans. Run DMC, for instance, were famed for their large Adidas tennis shoes that were worn without shoelaces.

The New School

A new wave of artists in the late-1980s and early 1990s took the sound and innovated it in many different ways. The politically-charged group Public Enemy delivered intense rhymes with social themes over a wall-of-sound type musical production. The rise of the West Coast saw the spawn of NWA and the Gangsta Rap style---an often violent, sometimes profane but usually true-to-life account of life in inner city neighborhoods. Jazz also had a large influence in the shaping of hip hop's new school. Some artists, most notably Guru, began to rap over classic jazz tracks, giving the genre more soulful sounds.

Hip Hop and Neo-Soul

Hip hop has musically expanded to go beyond the range of rap music. It itself encompasses a subgenre known as Neo-Soul. Artists like Erykah Badu, John Legend and D'Angelo popularized a blending of 1960s and 70s soul music with R&B, jazz and rap and are considered in the same vein as rap acts like Common, The Roots and Mos Def.