Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is a style of music and a wider culture that began in New York City in the 1970s. The music puts spoken or chanted rhymes, called rapping, over strong beats. Today hip-hop is one of the most popular kinds of music in the world. It started in one neighborhood and spread to almost every country.

Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, a part of New York City, around 1973. A young Jamaican American DJ named Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, threw block parties in his apartment building. He used two record players to stretch out the drum breaks, the parts of songs where the singing stops and the beat takes over. Dancers loved these breaks. They would jump in and show off moves during them. That is how breakdancing got its name.

People often talk about hip-hop as having four main parts. The first is DJing, mixing and scratching records. The second is MCing, or rapping, which means speaking rhymes in time with the beat. The third is breakdancing, a style of dance with spins, freezes, and footwork. The fourth is graffiti art, painting bold letters and pictures on walls and trains. All four grew up together at the same parties.

The first big hip-hop hit was "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang in 1979. Suddenly, radio stations across the country were playing rap. In the 1980s, artists like Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and Public Enemy made hip-hop a national sound. Female rappers like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah pushed the music forward too. By the 1990s, artists from the West Coast and the South had their own styles. Hip-hop kept growing.

Many early hip-hop songs talked about life in poor city neighborhoods. Some songs were funny party tunes. Others spoke about racism, violence, and unfair police treatment. This mix of fun and serious messages is part of why hip-hop connected with so many young people. Fans saw their own lives in the lyrics.

Today hip-hop is everywhere. It shapes pop music, fashion, dance, and the way people talk. Artists rap in Spanish, French, Korean, Arabic, and dozens of other languages. In 2017, hip-hop passed rock to become the most listened-to music style in the United States. Not bad for a sound that started with one DJ, two turntables, and a block party in the Bronx.