Reply With QuoteThe first thing you have to know about hip hop is that it's not just music, but a whole culture. The same could be said about any kind of music I suppose but in hip hop it's even more emphasized.
It all started in New York in the mid-70's. DJ's such as Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa used to organize parties in abandoned houses, parks or even on the streets, sometimes even in legal places. The DJ's were playing mostly old funk and soul (Jimmy Castor, Incredible Bongo Band, etc) music. At some point one of the DJ's (probably Kool Herc) noticed that the dancers used to go crazy during the breakdown parts of songs when only drums and sometimes bass was audible. He thought about it and started to use two copies of the record simultaneosly, making the break last as long as he wanted by rewinding the other record to the start of the break while the other one was playing, thus playing the break part for as long as he wanted. People loved that and many DJ's followed. At some point Grandmaster Flash thought that just playing the records was not enough and decided to ad some MC's (basicly just people who were doing simple poetry to the rhythm of the music) to enhance his shows. A few years later someone thought about recording that and released the first hip hop records. They (especially Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight that used a part of Chic's Good Times, recreated by Sugar Hill Record's studio band) became an overnight success. Over the next 20 years it slowly build it's way up to the multi-million business it is now.
Besided the music, hip hop includes:
DJ'ing: Playing records is where it all started so it is (for me at least) the most important thing in hip hop. Instead of simply beat-mixing hip hop DJ's usually perform all kinds of tricks with their turntables, such as scratching and beat-juggling.
MC'ing: Also called rapping. Performing poetry to the rhythm of music. It's a bit hard to explain, but rapping is not always the same as just talking to the rhythm of music. There's a slight, but hard to define, difference between the two. Someone else can probably explain why something like the Last Poets is not hip hop music (to me at least), although it fulfills all the criteria.
Dancing: Dancing, especially breakdancing and body-popping (also called electric boogie), while not mandatory, is something most people in hip hop enjoy. The culture was originally just about playing music for people to dance to so it still remains an essential part of hip hop, although modern hip hop styles have taken the music far away from it's dancefloor roots.
Graffiti: Painting logos and pictures with spray paint in walls and other public places, usually without permission.
Those things form this mystic thing called hip hop. It's a bit hard to define what constitutes for something to be hip hop, as someone can be hip hop by just doing one of the things listed above while someone could do them all without being hip hop. Above anything else, it's a way of living.
Note: When writing the above, I was very tired. Faulty grammar and some mistakes can exist.
Originally Written by Masdefi
Bookmarks