1. GENRE RESEARCH
Hip Hop Music

2. Hip Hop itself…
 Hip hop music is a music genre consisting of a
stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies
rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is
chanted. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a
subculture defined by four key stylistic elements:
MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching, break dancing, and
graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling (or
synthesis), and beatboxing.
 While often used to refer to rapping, "hip hop" more
properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture.
The term hip hop music is sometimes used
synonymously with the term rap music, though
rapping is not a required component of hip hop music;
the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip
hop culture, including DJing and
scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

3. The term ‘hip-hop’
 Hip hop is the combination of two separate slang
terms—"hip", used in African American English as
early as 1898, meaning current or in the now, 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 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.
 Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into
his stage performance. The group frequently
performed with disco artists who would refer to
this new type of 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.

4. Back in the day…
 In the 1970s an underground urban movement
known as "hip hop" began to develop in the South
Bronx area of New York City focusing on emceeing
(or MCing), breakbeats, and house parties.
 Starting at the home of DJ Kool Herc at the high-
rise apartment at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the
movement later spread across the entire borough.
Rap developed both inside and outside of hip hop
culture, and began in America in earnest with the
street parties thrown in the Bronx neighbourhood of
New York in the 1970s by Kool Herc and others—
Jamaican born DJ Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell is
credited as being highly influential in the pioneering
stage of hip hop music, Herc created the blueprint
for hip hop music and culture by building upon the
Jamaican tradition of impromptu toasting, boastful
poetry and speech over music.
 This became Emceeing - the rhythmic spoken
delivery of rhymes and wordplay, delivered over a
beat or without accompaniment—taking inspiration
from the Rapping derived from the griots (folk
poets) of West Africa, and Jamaican-style toasting.
 Melle Mel, a rapper/lyricist with The Furious Five, is
often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call
himself an "MC".

5. The influence of Disco
 Hip hop music was both influenced by disco music and a backlash
against it. According to Kurtis Blow, the early days of hip hop were
characterized by divisions between fans and detractors of disco
music. Hip hop had largely emerged as "a direct response to the
watered down, Europeanised, disco music that permeated the
airwaves", and the earliest hip hop was mainly based on hard funk
loops.
 However, by 1979, disco instrumental loops/tracks had become the
basis of much hip hop music. This genre got the name of "disco
rap". Ironically, hip hop music was also a proponent in the eventual
decline in disco popularity.
 In Washington, D.C. go-go emerged as a reaction against disco and
eventually incorporated characteristics of hip hop during the early
1980s. The genre of electronic music behaved similarly, eventually
evolving into what is known as house music in Chicago and techno
in Detroit.

6. New School
 The new school of hip hop was the second wave of hip hop
music, originating in 1983–84 with the early records of Run-
D.M.C. and LL Cool J. As with the hip hop preceding it
(which subsequently became known as old school hip
hop), the new school came predominately from New York
City.
 The new school was initially characterized in form by drum
machine-led minimalism, with influences from rock music. It
was notable for taunts and boasts about rapping, and socio-
political commentary, both delivered in an aggressive, self-
assertive style. In image as in song its artists projected a
tough, cool, street b-boy attitude.
 These elements contrasted sharply with the funk and disco
influenced outfits, novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers and
party rhymes of artists prevalent prior to 1984, and
rendered them old-school. New school artists made shorter
songs that could more easily gain radio play, and more
cohesive LPs than their old school counterparts.
 By 1986 their releases began to establish the hip hop album
as a fixture of the mainstream. Hip hop music became
commercially successful, as exemplified by the Beastie
Boys' 1986 album Licensed to Ill, which was the first rap
album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts.