User:Headbeater

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I'm a British student, finishing a degree in Mandarin Chinese. My interests in wikipedia projects vary enormously, but my main focus is on hip-hop related topics, especially the pages Hip hop, Hip hop music, and History of hip hop music. Below is a proposed hip hop page (work in progress), as the current one is in a terrible state.

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Hip hop (also spelled hip-hop or hiphop) is both a cultural movement and a genre of music developed in New York City in the 1970s primarily by African Americans and Latinos.^[1] Since first emerging in The Bronx and Harlem^[2], the lifestyle of hip hop culture has today spread around the world.^[3]

The four historic "elements" of hip hop are: MCing (rapping), DJing, urban inspired art/tagging (graffiti), and b-boying (or breakdancing). The most known "extended" elements are beatboxing, hip hop fashion, and hip hop slang.

When hip hop music developed in the 1970s, it was originally based around DJs who created rhythmic beats by "scratching" with record players, and "rapping" (a rhythmic style of chanting).

Contents 1 Etymology 2 History of hip hop 2.1 1970s 2.1.1 DJs: rhythmic grooves from the turntable 2.1.2 Rapping and emceeing 2.2 1980s 3 Legacy and Social Impact 4 Global Hip hop 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading

[edit] Etymology

The word hip was used as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as early as 1904. The colloquial language meant "informed" or "current," and was likely derived from the earlier form hep. Hip hop pioneer and South Bronx community leader Afrika Bambaataa credits the first use of the term "Hip Hop," as it relates to the instant culture to Lovebug Starski a DJ who put out a single called "The Positive Life" in 1981.^[4]

Keith Cowboy, a rapper with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five has been credited with the coining of the term hip hop in a musical sense. Though Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was still known as disco rap, Cowboy claimed to have "created" the term 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.^[5] Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance, which was quickly copied by other artists; for example the opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang.^[5]

Bambaataa, a former Black Spades gang member, is credited with first using the term to describe the subculture that hip hop music belongs to, although it is also suggested that the term was originally used derisively against the new type of music. ^[6]

[edit] History of hip hop

Main article: History of hip hop music

[edit] 1970s

[edit] DJs: rhythmic grooves from the turntable

In the early 1970s, Clive Campbell, a Jamaican born DJ who went by the name "Kool Herc," arrived in New York City. In Jamaica, Herc was known for his dancehall beats, a key component to the movement of music in NYC and the Bronx. This idea of dancehall had nothing to do with where the music was played, but more of a feeling of getting the people of Kingston, Jamaica to get on their feet and dance. This music, known as reggae, became a staple in the new music made in the Bronx. ^[7] Herc introduced the Jamaican tradition of toasting, or boasting impromptu poetry and sayings over Reggae, Disco and Funk records, during parties held in parks in the Bronx, New York.

Herc and other DJs would tap into the power lines at public basketball courts to connect their equipment and perform. Their equipment was composed of huge stacks of speakers, turntables, and one or more microphones.^[8] Herc was also the developer of break-beat deejaying, 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.

Later DJs such as Grandmaster Flash refined and developed the use of breakbeats, including cutting and scratching.^[9] The Bronx building "where hip hop was born" is 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where Kool Herc started spinning records,^[10] and is now eligible to be listed on the national and state register of historic sites. 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 Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight."

[edit] Rapping and emceeing

Main article: Rapping

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 Caribbean-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.

Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC".^[11]

[edit] 1980s

Hip hop as a culture was further defined in 1983, when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force released a track called "Planet Rock." Instead of simply rapping over disco beats, Bambaataa created an innovative electronic sound, taking advantage of the rapidly improving drum machine and synthesizer technology. The appearance of music videos changed entertainment: they often glorified urban neighborhoods, commonly called ghettos.^[12]. The music video for Planet Rock showcased the subculture of hip hop musicians, graffiti artists and breakdancers. Many hip hop-related films were released between 1983 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 laying down scrap linoleum or cardboard, setting down portable "boombox" stereos and spinning on their backs in Adidas tracksuits and sneakers to music by Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, Herbie Hancock, EPMD, Soulsonic Force, Jazzy Jay, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Stetsasonic, just to name a few. 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 & 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."^[13]

During the 1980's, hip hop also embraced the creation of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Early pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh, 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] Legacy and Social Impact

Main article: Hip hop culture

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, Kool DJ Herc began organizing dance parties in his home in the Bronx. The parties became popular and were moved to outdoor venues to accommodate for the amount of people attending. New York City teenagers, after years of gang violence, were looking for new ways to express themselves. ^[14] 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.” ^[15] Tony Tone, a member of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that “Hip-hop saved a lot of lives.”^[16] Hip hop culture became an outlet and 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.”^[17] Inspired by Kool DJ Herc, once-gang leader 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.^[18]

With the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, however, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of gangsta rap.^[19]

Though created in the United States by African Americans and Latinos, hip hop culture and music is now global in scope. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., Brazil, Japan, Africa, 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.^[20] 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."^[21] Through its international travels, hip hop is now acknowledged as a “global musical epidemic,”^[22] and has diverged from its ethnic roots by way of globalization and localization. Although some non-American rappers may still relate with young black 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.”^[23] 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.

[edit] Global Hip hop

There is much to be said concerning hip hop on a global level. 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. “From West Orange, New Jersey, to Dakar, Senegal, every where hip hop goes, it’s turned music upside down - jump-starting traditions as it breaks the older down.”^[24] Different hip hop sounds and styles differ from region to region, but there is also a lot of crossbreeding. In each separate hip hop scene there is also constant struggle between “old school” hip hop and more localized, newer sounds.^[25] Regardless of where it is found, the music often targets local disaffected youth.^[26] Hip hop has given people a voice with which to express themselves, and even hope to live a better life, and its cultural influence is therefore also widespread. “There is no question that Hip Hop's influence has spread the world over. From the Bronx to Beirut, Kazakhstan to Cali, Hokkaido to Harare, Hip Hop is the new sound of a disaffected global youth culture."^[27] Though on the global scale the influence from American culture is heavy, cultures world wide have embraced and transformed hip hop with their own traditions and beliefs. “Global Hip Hop succeeds best when it showcases Hip Hop's influence on cultures that reside outside the main arteries of the African Diaspora.”^[28] 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.”^[29]

Often lumped as "world music" for the American consumer, hip hop from countries outside the United States has a striated presence in the United States. Consumers listen to world music for various reasons, and author Jeff Chang attributes the idea of a cipher to the classical view of a hip hop consumer: "...the essence of hip-hop is the cipher, born in the Bronx, where competition and community feed each other."^[30] Those consumers who constitute the cipher itself differ from those who consume the music without any involvement in cipher-like activity. It's a general truth that those not involved in the idea of a cipher have less invested in the culture of the music and therefore are less dedicated to the music, but of course these feelings are largely voiced by those who are involved in the cipher of a type of music. In Chang's literal sense, "the cipher is the circle of participants and onlookers that closes around battling rappers or dancers as they improvise for each other."^[31]. Figuratively, though, the cipher of a given genre of music is made up of the individuals who make their own presence known in that field in one way or another. In the broad field of global hip hop, there is a wide variety of consumers (those involved in the "cipher" and those not, as well as everyone in between).

[edit] See also

• Hip hop culture
• Hip hop music
• Hip hop production
• Hip hop dance
• Hip hop fashion
• Hip hop theatre
• Hip-hop magazines
• 2007 in hip hop
• Dancehall
• Reggaetón
• Rhythm
• Beats (music)
• Universal Hip Hop Parade
• National Hip Hop Political Convention

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Wunderlich, Annelise. "Cuban Hip-hop: Making Space for New Voices of Dissent." In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 167-79. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
• Sellin’ Out: An Essay on Commercial Hip Hop by Amrita Singh
• The "Death" of Hip-Hop by David Drake
• Theses on Hip-Hop by the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project
• The Globalization of Hip-Hop Culture by Eric Richardson
• Don't blame hip-hop for society's sexism by Cousin Jeff

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