Etymology
The phrase hip hop is a combination two separate slang terms—"hip", used as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as early as 1898, meaning current or in the know, and "hop", for the hopping movement.
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term hip hop in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.[7] Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance.[8] The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of MC/DJ-produced 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 culture.
The opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang, in addition to the verse on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's own "Superrappin'", were both released in 1979. Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music. 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, former leader of the Black Spades gang also did much to further popularize the term.[8][9][10]
Herc and other DJs would tap into the power lines to connect their equipment and perform at venues such as public basketball courts and at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York, a historic building "where hip hop was born".[13] Their equipment was composed of numerous speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones.[14] By using this technique DJs could create a variety of music. According to Rap Attack by David Toop “At its worst the technique could turn the night into one endless and inevitably boring song” (12).[15] 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".[16
Herc was also the developer of break-beat deejaying,[17] 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, rock, and records with Latin percussion, 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".[18] Herc's terms b-boy, b-girl and breaking became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture, before that culture itself had developed a name.[citation needed]
Later DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching.[19] The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s DJs were releasing 12" records where they would rap to the beat. Popular tunes included Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" and The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight".[16]
Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Rapping is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting. Rap developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 1970s by Kool Herc and others. It originated as MCs would talk over the music to promote their DJ, promote other dance parties, take light-hearted jabs at other lyricists, or talk about problems in their areas and issues facing the community as a whole.[citation needed] Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".[20]
In the late 1970s an underground urban movement known as "hip hop" began to develop in the South Bronx area of New York City. Encompassing graffiti art, bboying, rap music, and fashion, hip hop became the dominant cultural movement of the minority populated urban communities in the 1980s. Graffiti, rapping, and bboying 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.[21]
Hip hop as a culture was further defined in 1982, when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released the seminal electro-funk track "Planet Rock". Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa created an electronic sound, taking advantage of the rapidly improving drum machine Roland TB-303 synthesizer technology, as well as sampling from Kraftwerk.[22]
The appearance of music videos changed entertainment: they often glorified urban neighborhoods.[23] The music video for "Planet Rock" showcased the subculture of hip hop musicians, graffiti artists, and b-boys/b-girls. Many hip hop-related films were released between 1982 and 1985, among them Wild Style, Beat Street, Krush Groove, Breakin, and the documentary Style Wars. These films expanded the appeal of hip hop beyond the boundaries of New York. By 1985, youth worldwide were embracing the hip hop culture. The hip hop artwork and "slang" of US urban communities quickly found its way to Europe and Asia, as the culture's global appeal took root.
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),[24] 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".[25]
During the 1980s, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh,[26] Biz Markie and Buffy from the Fat Boys made beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and other body parts. "Human Beatbox" artists would also sing or imitate turntablism scratching or other instrument sounds.
Tony Tone, a member of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that "hip hop saved a lot of lives".[28] Hip hop culture became a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with violence and gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that "people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting".[29][broken citation] 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 and violence.[28]
The lyrical content of many early rap groups concentrated on social issues, most notably in the seminal track "The Message", which discussed the realities of life in the housing projects.[30] "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."[31] 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 romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs".[31] It also gave young blacks a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."[31]
With the commercial success of gangsta rap in the early 1990s, however, emphasis shifted from social issues to drugs, violence, and misogyny. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has been largely disregarded by mainstream America.[32]
Although some non-American rappers may still relate with young urban Americans, hip hop now transcends its original culture, and is appealing because it is “custom-made to combat the anomie that preys on adolescents wherever nobody knows their name.”[36] Hip hop is attractive in its ability to give a voice to disenfranchised youth in any country, and as music with a message, it is a form available to all societies worldwide.
From its early spread to Europe and Japan to an almost worldwide acceptance through Asia and South American countries such as Brazil, the musical influence has been global. Hip hop sounds and styles differ from region to region, but there is also a lot of crossbreeding. Unlike the old genres, which popularized throughout the nation via radio, hip hop tends to hold on to its regional identity.[37] Regardless of where it is found, the music often targets local disaffected youth.[38]
Hip hop has given people a voice to express themselves, from the "Bronx to Beirut, Kazakhstan to Cali, Hokkaido to Harare, Hip Hop is the new sound of a disaffected global youth culture."[38] Though on the global scale there is a heavy influence from US culture, different cultures worldwide have transformed hip hop with their own traditions and beliefs. "Global Hip Hop succeeds best when it showcases ... cultures that reside outside the main arteries of the African Diaspora."[38] Not all countries have embraced hip hop, where "as can be expected in countries with strong local culture, the interloping wildstyle of hip hop is not always welcomed".[39]
As hip hop becomes globally available, it is not a one-sided process that eradicates local cultures. Instead, global hip hop styles are often synthesized with local styles. Hartwig Vens argues that hip hop can also be viewed as a global learning experience.[40] Hip hop from countries outside the United States is often labeled "world music" for the American consumer. Author Jeff Chang argues that "the essence of hip hop is the cipher, born in the Bronx, where competition and community feed each other."[41]
Hip hop has impacted many different countries culturally and socially in positive ways. "Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hip hop in their communities to address environmental justice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education."[42]
While hip hop music has been criticized as a music which creates a divide between western music and music from the rest of the world, a musical "cross pollination" has taken place, which strengthens the power of hip hop to influence different communities.[43] Hip hop's impact as a "world music" is also due to its translatability among different cultures in the world. Hip hop's messages allow the under-privileged and the mistreated to be heard.[40] These cultural translations cross borders.[42] While the music may be from a foreign country, the message is something that many people can relate to- something not "foreign" at all.[44]
Even when hip hop is transplanted to other countries, it often retains its "vital progressive agenda that challenges the status quo."[42] Global hip hop is the meeting ground for progressive local activism, as many organizers use hip hop in their communities to address environmental injustice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education. In Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant and working class youths. Indigenous youths in countries as disparate as Bolivia,[45] Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to advance new forms of identity.[citation needed]
The phrase hip hop is a combination two separate slang terms—"hip", used as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as early as 1898, meaning current or in the know, and "hop", for the hopping movement.
Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been credited with coining the term hip hop in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.[7] Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance.[8] The group frequently performed with disco artists who would refer to this new type of MC/DJ-produced 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 culture.
The opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang, in addition to the verse on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's own "Superrappin'", were both released in 1979. Lovebug Starski, a Bronx DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981, and DJ Hollywood then began using the term when referring to this new disco rap music. 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, former leader of the Black Spades gang also did much to further popularize the term.[8][9][10]
[edit] History
See also: Roots of hip hop
Jamaican born DJ Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell is credited as being highly influential in the pioneering stage of hip hop music,[11] in the Bronx, after moving to New York at the age of thirteen. Herc created the blueprint for hip hop music and culture by building upon the Jamaican tradition of toasting—impromptu, boastful poetry and speech over music—which he witnessed as a youth in Jamaica.[12]Herc and other DJs would tap into the power lines to connect their equipment and perform at venues such as public basketball courts and at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York, a historic building "where hip hop was born".[13] Their equipment was composed of numerous speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones.[14] By using this technique DJs could create a variety of music. According to Rap Attack by David Toop “At its worst the technique could turn the night into one endless and inevitably boring song” (12).[15] 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".[16
Herc was also the developer of break-beat deejaying,[17] 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, rock, and records with Latin percussion, 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".[18] Herc's terms b-boy, b-girl and breaking became part of the lexicon of hip hop culture, before that culture itself had developed a name.[citation needed]
Later DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jay refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching.[19] The approach used by Herc was soon widely copied, and by the late 1970s DJs were releasing 12" records where they would rap to the beat. Popular tunes included Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" and The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight".[16]
Emceeing is the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Rapping is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting. Rap developed both inside and outside of hip hop culture, and began with the street parties thrown in the Bronx neighborhood of New York in the 1970s by Kool Herc and others. It originated as MCs would talk over the music to promote their DJ, promote other dance parties, take light-hearted jabs at other lyricists, or talk about problems in their areas and issues facing the community as a whole.[citation needed] Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five, is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".[20]
In the late 1970s an underground urban movement known as "hip hop" began to develop in the South Bronx area of New York City. Encompassing graffiti art, bboying, rap music, and fashion, hip hop became the dominant cultural movement of the minority populated urban communities in the 1980s. Graffiti, rapping, and bboying 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.[21]
Hip hop as a culture was further defined in 1982, when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released the seminal electro-funk track "Planet Rock". Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa created an electronic sound, taking advantage of the rapidly improving drum machine Roland TB-303 synthesizer technology, as well as sampling from Kraftwerk.[22]
The appearance of music videos changed entertainment: they often glorified urban neighborhoods.[23] The music video for "Planet Rock" showcased the subculture of hip hop musicians, graffiti artists, and b-boys/b-girls. Many hip hop-related films were released between 1982 and 1985, among them Wild Style, Beat Street, Krush Groove, Breakin, and the documentary Style Wars. These films expanded the appeal of hip hop beyond the boundaries of New York. By 1985, youth worldwide were embracing the hip hop culture. The hip hop artwork and "slang" of US urban communities quickly found its way to Europe and Asia, as the culture's global appeal took root.
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),[24] 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".[25]
During the 1980s, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh,[26] Biz Markie and Buffy from the Fat Boys made beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and other body parts. "Human Beatbox" artists would also sing or imitate turntablism scratching or other instrument sounds.
[edit] American society
Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with dance and artwork battles. In the early 1970s, DJ Kool Herc began organizing dance parties in his home in the Bronx. The parties became so popular they were moved to outdoor venues to accommodate more people. City teenagers, after years of gang violence, were looking for new ways to express themselves.[27] These outdoor parties, hosted in parks, 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."[28]Tony Tone, a member of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that "hip hop saved a lot of lives".[28] Hip hop culture became a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with violence and gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that "people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting".[29][broken citation] 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 and violence.[28]
The lyrical content of many early rap groups concentrated on social issues, most notably in the seminal track "The Message", which discussed the realities of life in the housing projects.[30] "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."[31] 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 romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs".[31] It also gave young blacks a chance for financial gain by "reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns."[31]
With the commercial success of gangsta rap in the early 1990s, however, emphasis shifted from social issues to drugs, violence, and misogyny. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has been largely disregarded by mainstream America.[32]
[edit] Global innovations
Though created in the United States by Jamaican Americans, hip hop culture and music is now global in scope. The Middle East, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., Pakistan, Poland, India, China, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean have long-established hip hop followings. According to the U.S. Department of State, hip hop is "now the center of a mega music and fashion industry around the world," that crosses social barriers and cuts across racial lines.[33] National Geographic recognizes hip hop as "the world's favorite youth culture" in which "just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene."[34] Through its international travels, hip hop is now considered a “global musical epidemic,”[35] and has diverged from its ethnic roots by way of globalization and localization.Although some non-American rappers may still relate with young urban Americans, hip hop now transcends its original culture, and is appealing because it is “custom-made to combat the anomie that preys on adolescents wherever nobody knows their name.”[36] Hip hop is attractive in its ability to give a voice to disenfranchised youth in any country, and as music with a message, it is a form available to all societies worldwide.
From its early spread to Europe and Japan to an almost worldwide acceptance through Asia and South American countries such as Brazil, the musical influence has been global. Hip hop sounds and styles differ from region to region, but there is also a lot of crossbreeding. Unlike the old genres, which popularized throughout the nation via radio, hip hop tends to hold on to its regional identity.[37] Regardless of where it is found, the music often targets local disaffected youth.[38]
Hip hop has given people a voice to express themselves, from the "Bronx to Beirut, Kazakhstan to Cali, Hokkaido to Harare, Hip Hop is the new sound of a disaffected global youth culture."[38] Though on the global scale there is a heavy influence from US culture, different cultures worldwide have transformed hip hop with their own traditions and beliefs. "Global Hip Hop succeeds best when it showcases ... cultures that reside outside the main arteries of the African Diaspora."[38] Not all countries have embraced hip hop, where "as can be expected in countries with strong local culture, the interloping wildstyle of hip hop is not always welcomed".[39]
As hip hop becomes globally available, it is not a one-sided process that eradicates local cultures. Instead, global hip hop styles are often synthesized with local styles. Hartwig Vens argues that hip hop can also be viewed as a global learning experience.[40] Hip hop from countries outside the United States is often labeled "world music" for the American consumer. Author Jeff Chang argues that "the essence of hip hop is the cipher, born in the Bronx, where competition and community feed each other."[41]
Hip hop has impacted many different countries culturally and socially in positive ways. "Thousands of organizers from Cape Town to Paris use hip hop in their communities to address environmental justice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education."[42]
While hip hop music has been criticized as a music which creates a divide between western music and music from the rest of the world, a musical "cross pollination" has taken place, which strengthens the power of hip hop to influence different communities.[43] Hip hop's impact as a "world music" is also due to its translatability among different cultures in the world. Hip hop's messages allow the under-privileged and the mistreated to be heard.[40] These cultural translations cross borders.[42] While the music may be from a foreign country, the message is something that many people can relate to- something not "foreign" at all.[44]
Even when hip hop is transplanted to other countries, it often retains its "vital progressive agenda that challenges the status quo."[42] Global hip hop is the meeting ground for progressive local activism, as many organizers use hip hop in their communities to address environmental injustice, policing and prisons, media justice, and education. In Gothenburg, Sweden, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) incorporate graffiti and dance to engage disaffected immigrant and working class youths. Indigenous youths in countries as disparate as Bolivia,[45] Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Norway use hip hop to advance new forms of identity.[citation needed]
