Hip Hop

A Brief History

Hip hop includes at least four elements: MCing, DJing, B-girling/B-boying, and graffiti. Additional elements of hip hop include fashion, slang, beatboxing—an improvisational exercise of the mouth—and R&B music. Hip hop is a polyrhyth-mic practice that merges the percussive instruments and chant circles of West African traditional folk music, the call and response of Black gospel sermons, the improvisation of blues and jazz, and the cadence of Black arts movement poetry.

The origin of hip hop is heavily contested as it combines many aesthetics of West African and West Indian cultural performance. Hip hop's genesis is largely accredited to Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc, who began throwing block parties in the South Bronx in 1973. Jeff Chang writes that the 1970s was a time of social upheaval as the dreams of the civil rights movement fell flat in the South Bronx with the relocation of Yankee Stadium, massive deindustrialization, White and Black middle class flight to the suburbs as houses were razed for an expressway, and the construction of urban renewal public housing projects. The music reflected these harsh social conditions as “good times” disco died out. Known for his Hercules sound system, Herc would loop and mix the bridge between verses repeatedly (“the breaks”), switching between two records. To keep the momentum, MCs would chant over records in a style similar to the toasting of Jamaican DJs.

Hip hop, in its earliest form, was a live impro-visational event inspired by the interaction between performers and the crowd. Hip hop sprouted from a culture of idleness due to rampant unemployment, social program cuts, and overcrowded housing. As Robin D. G. Kelley suggests, the bodies of Black and Latino youth were used as sites of competitive labor to advertise their distinct, individualized work and create financial and social networking opportunities. Crews divided by neighborhoods would battle, on benign and hostile terms, for bragging rights on the dance floor.

“We on Award Tour!” Hip Hop across the Globe

Hip hop has always been a global process. Mixtape cassettes, magazines, music videos, and hip hop films have been circulating throughout parts of Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean since the early 1980s. Historically, forms of popular culture are exchanged along migration routes between the United States and other countries as people travel for work, military/government service, education, health care, and leisure. Hip hop's global presence has intensified with advancement in technologies of travel, communication, and immediate access to worldwide information. Digital media have transformed sound production and the recording process. Consumers can now become producers and manipulate sound into an infinite composition of remixes. Hip hop aficionados identify, engage, and collaborate with one another across geographical distance through free profile sites, blogs, chat rooms, and podcasts, along with Web sites such as Nomadic Wax, http://AfricanHipHop.com, http://okayplayer.com, http://flight808.com and cell phone text messaging and ringtones. For instance, North Carolina–based rapper Phonté, half of the group Little Brother, recorded and released 2004's The Foreign Exchange: Connected album with Dutch producer, Nicolay, entirely over instant messaging and e-mail.

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