Hip hop culture Totally Explained

Hip hop is a subculture, which is said to have begun with the work of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Afrika Bambaattaa. The four main aspects, or "elements", of hip hop culture are MCing (rapping), DJing, urban inspired art/tagging (graffiti), and b-boying (or breakdancing). The most known "extended" elements are beatboxing, hip hop fashion, hip hop slang.

DJing

While hip hop didn't invent DJing, it has extended its boundaries and techniques. The first hip hop DJ was Kool DJ Herc, who created hip hop through the isolation of "breaks" (the parts of albums that focused solely on the beat). In addition to developing Herc's techniques, DJs Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Grandmaster Caz made further innovations with the introduction of scratching.
Traditionally, a DJ will use two turntables simultaneously. These are connected to a DJ mixer, an amplifier, speakers, and various other pieces of electronic music equipment. The DJ will then perform various tricks between the two albums currently in rotation using the above listed methods. The result is a unique sound created by the seemingly combined sound of two separate songs into one song. A DJ shouldn't be confused with a producer of a music track (though there's considerable overlap between the two roles).
In the early years of hip hop, the DJs were the stars, but their limelight has been taken by MCs since 1978, thanks largely to Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash's crew, the Furious Five. However, a number of DJs have gained stardom nonetheless in recent years. Famous DJs include Grandmaster Flash, Mr. Magic, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Scratch from EPMD, DJ Premier from Gang Starr, DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions, DJ Pete Rock of Pete Rock & CL Smooth, DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill, Jam Master Jay from Run-DMC, Eric B., Funkmaster Flex, Tony Touch, DJ Clue,DJ Focus, DJ Q-Bert. The underground movement of turntablism has also emerged to focus on the skills of the DJ.

Rapping

Rapping, also known as Emceeing, MCing, Rhyme spitting, Spitting, or just Rhyming, is the rhythmic delivery of rhymes, one of the central elements of hip hop music and culture. Although the word rap has sometimes been claimed to be a backronym of the phrase "Rhythmic American Poetry", "Rhythm and Poetry", "Rhythmically Applied Poetry", or "Rhythmically Associated Poetry", use of the word to describe quick and slangy speech or repartee long predates the musical form. Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a grey area among speech, prose, poetry, and song. Rap is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, Caribbean-style toasting, and American Blues and Jazz roots.
Rapping developed both inside and outside of hip hop since Jamaican expatriate Kool Herc first began doing his dancehall toasting in New York in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the success of groups like Run-DMC led to a huge wave of commercialized rap music. By the end of the 1990s, hip hop became widely accepted in mainstream music. Underground Hip-hop rapping from the 2000s has complex rhythms, cadences, an intricate poetic form, and inventive wordplay. Rap lyrics convey the street life from which hip hop originally emerged with references to popular culture and hip-hop slang. Although rap has become an international phenomenon, many types of rap deal with issues such as race, socioeconomic class, and gender.

Graffiti art

Modern hip hop graffiti originated in Philadelphia, PA, and it quickly spread to New York City. The book Subway Art (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1984) and the TV program Style Wars (first shown on the PBS channel in 1984) were among the first ways the mainstream public were introduced to graffiti. Quickly, the rest of the globe imitated and adapted hip hop graffiti. Today, there are also strong scenes in Europe, South America, Australia and Japan.
Graffiti has long been vilified by those in authority, although very little graffiti has anything to do with gangs, violence and drugs. In most jurisdictions, creating graffiti art on public property without permission is a criminal offense punishable by fines and incarceration.

Breakdancing

B-boying, also known as breaking, breakdancing, or B-girling (for women) by its practitioners and followers, is a dynamic style of dance. The "B" in B-boy stands for break, as in break-boy (or girl).The term "B-boy" originated from the dancers at DJ Kool Herc's parties, who saved their best dance moves for the break section of the song, getting in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive, frenetic style. According to the documentary film The Freshest Kids, a history of the b-boy; DJ Kool Herc describes the b in b-boy as short for breaking which at the time was slang for "going off" also one of the original names for the dance. However, early on the dance was known as the "boiong" (the sound a spring makes). Breaking was briefly documented for release to a world wide audience for the first time in Style Wars, and was later given a little more focus in the fictional film Beat Street.
Breakdancing is one of the major elements of hip hop culture, commonly associated with, but distinct from, "popping", "locking", "hitting", "ticking", "boogaloo", and other funk styles that evolved independently during the late 1960s in California. It was common during the 1980s to see a group of people with a radio on a playground, basketball court, or sidewalk performing a breakdancing show for a large audience.
Breaking began to take form in the South Bronx alongside the other elements of hip hop. The name of the first B-Boy crew was The Zulu Kings. "Hip-hop" as a form of dance is becoming more popular. Hip hop dance comes from breakdancing, but doesn't consist wholly of breakdancing moves. Unlike most other forms of dance, which are often at least moderately structured, hip hop dance has few (if any) limitations on positions or steps.

Beatboxing

Beatboxing, popularized by Doug E. Fresh, considered by many to be the "fifth element" of hip hop, is the vocal percussion of hip hop culture. It is primarily concerned with the art of creating beats, rhythms, and melodies using the human mouth. The term beatboxing is derived from the mimicry of the first generation of drum machines, then known as beatboxes. As it's a way of creating hip-hop music, it can be categorized under the production element of hip-hop, though it does sometimes include a type of rapping intersected with the human-created beat.
The art form enjoyed a strong presence in the '80s with artists like the Darren "Buffy, the Human Beat Box" Robinson of the Fat Boys and Biz Markie showing their beatboxing skills. Beatboxing declined in popularity along with break dancing in the late '80s, and almost slipped even deeper than the underground. Beatboxing has been enjoying a resurgence since the late '90s, marked by the release of "Make the Music 2000." by Rahzel of The Roots (known for even singing while beatboxing).
As it grew and developed into a multi-billion dollar industry, the scope of hip hop culture grew beyond the boundaries of its traditional four elements. KRS-ONE, a rapper from the golden age of hip hop, names nine elements of hip hop culture: the traditional four and beatboxing, plus hip hop fashion, hip hop slang, street knowledge, and street entrepreneurship. He also suggests that hip hop is a cultural movement and that the word itself had to reflect this. He spells it Hiphop (one word, capital "h") and this is reflected in his Temple of Hiphop.

Social impact

Lifestyle

The late 1990s saw the rise in popularity of the "bling-bling" lifestyle in rap music, focusing on symbols of wealth and status like money, jewelry, cars, and clothing. Although references to wealth have existed since the birth of hip hop, the new, intensified "bling-bling" culture has its immediate roots in the enormously commercially successful mid-to-late nineties work (specifically, music videos) of Puff Daddy and Bad Boy Records as well as Master P's No Limit Records. However, the term was coined in 1999 (see 1999 in music) by Cash Money Records artist Lil Wayne on B.G.'s hit single "Bling-Bling", and the Cash Money roster was perhaps the epitome of the "bling-bling" lifestyle and attitude. Though many rappers, mostly gangsta rappers, unapologetically pursue and celebrate bling-bling, others, mostly artists outside of the hip hop mainstream, have expressly criticized the idealized pursuit of bling-bling as being materialistic. The bling-bling lifestyle is only a small part of the hip hop lifestyle that emerged in the 1990s. Traditionally the culture values community and respect creating a forum for minorities to express themselves while dealing with problems of society. This freedom of expression lead to more garish displays and evolved in to the bling-bling lifestyle.

Product placement

Rappers often discuss at length the cars they drive and the drinks they consume and glorify the excess, decadence and luxury. In 2005, a proposed plan by McDonalds, which would have paid rappers to advertise McDonalds food in their music, was leaked to the press.
After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Oakland, California group The Coup was under fire for the cover art on their Party Music, which featured the group's two members holding a detonator as the Twin Towers exploded behind them. Ironically, this art was created months before the actual event. The group, having politically radical and Marxist lyrical content, said the cover meant to symbolize the destruction of capitalism. Their record label pulled the album until a new cover could be designed.
The use of profanity as well as graphic depictions of violence and sex creates challenges in the broadcast of such material both on television stations such as MTV, in music video form, and on radio. As a result, many hip hop recordings are broadcast in censored form, with offending language "bleeped" or blanked out of the soundtrack (though usually leaving the backing music intact), or even replaced with "clean" lyrics. The result – which quite often render the remaining lyrics unintelligible or contradictory to the original recording – has become almost as widely identified with the genre as any other aspect of the music, and has been parodied in films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember, in which a character – performing in a parody of a hip hop music video – performs an entire verse that's blanked out. In 1995 Roger Ebert wrote:
In a way to circumvent broadcasting regulations BET has created a late-night segment called "Uncut" to air uncensored videos. Not only has this translated into greater sales for mainstream artists, it has also provided an outlet for undiscovered artists to grab the spotlight with graphic but low production quality videos, often made cheaply by non-professionals. Perhaps the most notorious video aired, which for many came to exemplify BET's program Uncut, was "Tip Drill" by Nelly. While no more explicit than other videos, its exploitative depiction of women, particularly of a man swiping a credit card between a stripper's buttocks, was seized upon by many social activists for condemnation. The segment was discontinued in mid 2006.

Media

Television

Hip-hop has had a profound effect on the style and content of all of television. There have been a number of television shows devoted to or about hip-hop. For a long time, BET was the only television channel likely to play much hip hop, but in recent years the mainstream channels VH1 and MTV have added a significant amount of hip hop to their play list. Overall however, BET plays more hip hop than MTV and VH-1.

Magazines

Hip hop has several major American magazines devoted to it, including XXL, Scratch, The Source and Vibe. Many individual cities have produced their own local hip hop newsletters, while hip hop magazines with national distribution are found in a few other countries. The 21st century also ushered in the rise of online media, and hip hop fan sites now offer comprehensive hip hop coverage on a daily basis.

Film

Hip hop and film have been related since hip-hop's conception and have become even more related in the 21st century. During the early 1990s, African-Americans experienced a film renassiance, sparked by the popularity of hood films, in-depth looks at urban life, focusing on violence, family, friends and hip-hop. There have also been a number of hip hop films, movies which focused on hip-hop as a subject.

Diversification

Though hip hop is itself its own genre, it has also spawned dozens of sub-genres which incorporate a style of production or rapping which dominates their music. Though it began a stereotypically African American music, it has since spread to all people of the world.

World hip hop

Like jazz, and all musics created by African Americans, hip-hop is one of the few musical genres seen as thoroughly, entirely American. With it's popularization all over the world, however, it's now an international, rather than American, genre of music.
In France, hip hop music and culture has been appropriated by African and Arab teens to describe their political and economic disenfranchisement, the racism they face and the housing projects many live in outside the city of Paris. Cuba's hip hop movement is used to express political discontent and to decry the poverty found in that island nation under Fidel Castro's leadership.
The United Kingdom's styles of hip hop differ strongly from its American roots due to the nation's colonial history in the Caribbean and India. An influx of immigrants from these regions, particularly from the 1960s and '70s has led to a hip hop generation that has been born of immigrant parents and greatly influenced by their heritage, but who are firmly rooted in the Anglo culture. Interestingly, more female rappers have achieved mainstream success in the U.K. than in America. Among the more well-known are Ms. Dynamite and Lady Sovereign who toured the U.S.in 2007 with Gwen Stefani and Akon. Japan has a burgeoning hip hop scene that mirrors the youths' interest in all things African-American. A fashion style known as ganguro has evolved where by Japanese women darken their skin, wear flashy make-up and perm their hair or wear blond extensions in order to imitate hip hop beauty ideals. Artist King Giddra released the song "911" which compares the September 11th attacks to the bombing of Hiroshima. Other artists of note include Rhymester, Zeebra, Scha Dara Parr, DJ Krush. American record label Def Jam has staked their interest in the scene by opening label Def Jam Japan for this market.

Religion

Religion and spirituality are important to many successful mainstream and underground artists. It is no surprise given the significant influence "the church" (Protestant denominations, mainly) has in African-American communities. Not only historically has faith provided solace, sanctuary and strength, but in contemporary America, "the church" refers to an entire support system, lifestyle and identity.
Hip hop musicians especially, draw inspiration for their music from the mysteries of the world. Religion and hip-hop are very closely related, if only because the subject manner of rapping runs from violent and amoral to godly and righteous. Many embrace this paradox wholeheartedly and see no contradiction. Kanye West made this distinction in his song "Jesus Walks" where he repeatedly declares his devotion to Jesus while noting that "They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, video tapes/But if I talk about God my record won't get played Huh?".

Islam

Islam has been a spiritual and political force within African-American communities in the United States since at least the 1960s when the Nation of Islam gained national attention under the dynamic leadership of Malcolm X (who subsequently left and disavowed his support of the group while remaining a Muslim). Many conscious hip hop artists, who see their music as a tool for political and social change, have embraced Islam. A short list of Muslim rappers: Freeway, Mos Def, Paris, A Tribe Called Quest, Ghostface Killah, Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Jus Allah, Vinnie Paz, Beanie Sigel, and Jurassic 5. The Nation of Gods and Earths gained a significant presence in hip hop with the emergence of the Wu-Tang Clan. All nine members, and several affiliates, are affiliated with the nation, as are other artists such as Eric B. and Rakim, Jadakiss, Nas, and Big Daddy Kane. The Wu-Tang often drop references to the nation's teachings in their lyrics. RZA even published a book "The Wu-Tang Manual" which in part, explained these references. The entire Brand Nubian group lineup are members of The Nation; also, Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian, released an album in 2006 entitled The 5% Album. Islam has affected the evolution of hip hop because of the number of rappers who have been Muslim.
Internationally, Islam figures prominently in French hip hop, where the majority of artists are Muslims of primarily Algerian descent, in Arabic hip hop, and in Iranian hip hop.

Judaism

The only Jewish artists to have gained large-scale success in hip hop are the Beastie Boys, although Orthodox Jew Matisyahu has recently gained considerable attention. Remedy is a Jewish affiliate of the Wu-Tang Clan. Former The Roots member and producer Scott Storch is also Jewish. Less well known is Princess Superstar. Judaism hasn't been a major force in hip hop for the fairly obvious reason that it isn't a major force in the spiritual lives of African-American communities from which most hip hop artists in the United States originate. Recently the hip hop scene in Israel, where the majority of rappers are Jewish - though there are many Arab and Black artists as well - has gained international attention.

Christianity

Christian Hip hop is by far the most common form of overtly religious hip hop and many of the artists in this sub-genre are actually ordained ministers. Artists of note include Cross Movement, GRITS, Da' T.R.U.T.H., Flame, Lecrae, Tedashii, Trip Lee, Sho Baraka, T-Bone, Mr. Del, (Formerly of Three Six Mafia), Righteous B, Toby Mac and many others.

Paganism

Though not as prominent as other religions in hip hop, pagan rappers include Emcee Lynx, a conscious hip hop artist from Oakland, California who self-identifies as a Druid, and The Heretics. There are many other less well-known artists as well.

Hinduism

Hinduism has gained prominence in the hip hop scene not only in India, but also in other parts of the world where there are large Hindu populations - and in the UK, particularly west London, and the Silicon Valley / South Bay region of California in particular. In India, hip hop music is often mixed with Bhangra and Electronica to produce a high-energy fusion incorporating traditional Hindu musical traditions and high-speed raps. Panjabi MC is one of the better known artists in this sub-genre and in 2003 the American rapper Jay Z covered his song "Mundian To Bach Ke". (External Link

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Legacy

Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of dance and artwork. However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, 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 its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.
Many artists are now considered to be alternative/underground hip hop when they attempt to reflect what they believe to be the original elements of the culture. Artists/groups such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Dilated Peoples, Dead Prez, Blackalicious, and Jurassic 5 may emphasize messages of verbal skill, unity, or activism instead of messages of violence, material wealth, and misogyny.
Though born in the United States, the reach of hip hop is global. Youth culture and opinion is meted out in both Israeli hip hop and Palestinian hip hop, while France, Germany, the U.K., 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. 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."

Resources

Chang, Jeff. "Can't Stop, Won't Stop".
Rose, Tricia (1994). "Black Noise". Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6275-0
Light, Alan (ed). (1999). The VIBE History of Hip-Hop. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80503-7
George, Nelson (2000, rev. 2005). Hip-Hop America. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-028022-7
Toop, David (1984, rev. 1991). Rap Attack II: African Rap To Global Hip Hop. New York. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1-85242-243-2 .
Fricke, Jim and Ahearn, Charlie (eds). (2002). Yes Yes Y'All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip Hop's First Decade. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81184-7
Corvino, Daniel and Livernoche, Shawn (2000). A Brief History of Rhyme and Bass: Growing Up With Hip Hop. Tinicum, PA: Xlibris Corporation/The Lightning Source, Inc. ISBN 1-4010-2851-9
Kitwana, Bakar (2004). The State of Hip-Hop Generation: how hip-hop's culture movement is evolving into political power. Retrieved December 4, 2006. From Ohio Link Database
"In the Heart of Freedom, In Chains": 2007 City Journal article on Hip Hop and Black America
McLeod, Kembrew. Interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee. 2002. Stay Free Magazine, issue 20. Retrieved from http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html on July 9, 2006.

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