Hip-Hop – Conclusion

Overview

Hip-hop is a combination of four artistic mediums: graffiti, breakdancing, DJing, and MCing. In this lesson, we focus on the music of hip-hop, including the role of the DJ and the MC. Hip-hop music developed in the 1970s as a combination of aesthetics from disco, funk, and other African American and Afro-Caribbean musics. DJs began mixing, juxtaposing, and manipulating records to create new and innovative sounds, and MCs would deliver spoken messages over these sounds. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, hip-hop began to be recorded and released commercially in the United States. Some of the most commercially successful hip-hop groups of the 1980s, such as the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, blended rap with the sounds and styles of rock music. By the late 1980s, hip-hop had become a dominant commercial force in the American popular music scene.

Objectives

Recall the Jamaican influences on hip-hop
Recall the role of the DJ and the MC in early hip-hop
Recall some of the earliest commercial hip-hop and hip-hop-influenced recordings
Examine the role rock music played in the success of groups such as Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys

Conclusion

LL Cool J

By the mid-1990s, rap was outselling all other genres of music in the United States. A genre of music that had started in New York neighborhoods and was performed by African American and Afro-Caribbean musicians had grown into a global phenomenon. The earliest successful rap groups were those that had a hard edge to their flow and who incorporated the sounds of rock music into their songs. Although rock and rap did intersect at various points in the 1990s, for the most part, the two genres went their separate ways after the 1980s. We will return to the influence of rap in a later lesson as we consider the phenomenon of the rock-rap musical hybrid in the 1990s.

“Graffiti writers were the most interesting people in hip hop. They were the mad scientists, the mad geniuses, the weird ones.”

-Adam Mansbach

“If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.”

-Afrika Bambaataa

"[The Beastie Boys] have never allowed their music to be used in commercials, and are unlikely to ever do so, as Yauch stated in his will that he would like all future requests to be denied."

Songfacts