Hip-Hop: Big Blog 1

 January 26, 2021

Buckle up! This is a hefty dose of blogging. 

Bright colors, raw lyrics, brown skin, braids, puffs, gold chains, graffiti, turntables, disco, hair picks, iced-out grills, Cadillacs, velour tracksuits, sneaker-heads, bucket hats, snapbacks, clear gloss-brown liner, boomboxes, Black Power, breakdancing, legacy, movements, progress.These are the things that come to mind when I hear the word “Hip-Hop”. Did you notice that most of the things I listed aren’t music terms or expressions? That’s because Hip-Hop is more than a genre, it’s a culture; a lifestyle. In order to explain this, I have broken this blog up into sections. Let’s start off with the basics.




5 ELEMENTS OF HIP-HOP: There are debates about how many elements of Hip-Hop there are, but from what I understand, the five basic elements are: deejaying (aka turntables), emceeing (aka rapping/rhyming), graffiti (aka graf), and b-boying (aka breakdancing). A man by the name of Afrika Bambaataa, the titled grandfather of Hip-Hop, laid these terms out and later added a fifth element (knowledge) to the mix.




FUEL TO THE FIRE: Let’s take a trip back to 1970s Bronx, NY, a time of industrial decline. Job importance shifted from factory workers and assembly lines to creatives and scientists. There was political unrest and the economy had collapsed. The majority of the white middle class migrated into the suburbs to escape the tension of the times, causing a huge shift in the demographic of urban areas. All of a sudden, African Americans, Puertoricans, and Carribean immigrants made up most of the demographic left in the city. This combination of oppression and political unrest led to crime, gang violence, and poverty running rampant throughout the city. Because of this rise in violence, many businesses shut down, leaving many people unemployed and without entertainment. Since there wasn’t much else to do, these newly abandoned buildings and open spaces were used by the youth to host block parties. At these parties various deejays, emcees, and dancers set up their mobile sound systems and turntables, pulled out the cardboard to breakdance on, and got to partying. Note: These mobile systems were introduced by Jamaican culture (syncretism, aye?!) In addition to this, brick walls were used for artistic expression, hence graffiti! People (demographically, people of color) felt abandoned and were dealing with mass amounts of violence on every corner, onset by poverty, onset by oppression and a bad economy. They were at the bottom of this heap of rubble. So, they turned their pain into art; Hip-Hop.




PEOPLE BEHIND THE MOVEMENT: There were a few prominent pioneers at the backbone of this movement: DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. DJ Kool Herc aka Clive Campbell, was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. During his teen years, his family moved to the Bronx and he would deejay at parties. He usually talked or “toasted” over the records he was spinning, as was stylistic of the Jamaican deejays that he had grown up listening to. At these parties, he noticed that people usually waited to dance until they heard the drum breaks (or rhythm only sections without words or other music) in the music. So, he figured out a way to loop these drum beats using two separate records. Check out this article to read about the specifics of his self-titled “merry go-round” that was later dubbed as the “break beat”. The break beat gained popularity a year later at his sister’s birthday party on August 11th, 1973, when he performed his refined trick in front of a huge crowd. On this day, the break beat became a cornerstone of hip-hop beats as we know them.




Afrika Bambaataa is another deejay who embarked on a journey to turn violence around. He joined a powerful gang named the Black Spades and rose to the top as a warlord. As the popularity of gangs decreased, he started a peaceful group named the Zulu Nation, which included many of his followers from the Black Spades. His goal was to spark social change and draw kids away from gangs through Hip-Hop. Many details from his childhood are not public knowledge, but we do know that his name comes from a Zulu chief from the 19th century. Overtime, he began to amass a larger following, especially with the help of his followers and after performing for various White crowds in Manhattan. At his parties, he would deejay and preach the five elements of Hip-Hop. He is responsible for verbally labeling Hip-Hop as a culture and a movement. In the early 80s he had developed a new genre called Electro Funk, which inspired various subgenres such as: freestyle, miami bass, electronica, house, etc. He is now recognized as the Amen Ra (supreme-god) of Hip-Hop! Go him! Read more about him here.




Grandmaster Flash was prominent in the deejay world for all of the techniques that he invented, such as: cutting, punch phrasing, scratching, and backspin. He organized a group called Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 1976, which became one of the well-known acts of the time. Their hit song, “The Message” helped rap to become its own genre and moved lyrics toward topics detailing the harsh reality of the times. Thus bringing awareness to more social issues. Flash also reportedly manipulated the vinyls with his elbows, toes, and other objects (nice flex, ha!) You can read more about that here. In 2007, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

COOL MUSIC STUFF: Okay, so we have established the fact that Hip-Hop is about more than just music, but this is a music class so let’s talk about music things for a bit. So, hip-hop was influenced by a lot of the popular genres that came before it, like: jazz, soul, funk, r&b, rock and roll, etc. That musical foundation had to come from somewhere, right? But there’s also a technological side to Hip-Hop. Deejays and producers needed a more efficient way to create breakbeats and samples. Enter the TR-808! This drum machine did it all (or most of “it all”...”it all” was still being discovered, ya know?) Samplers also became popular because they allowed deejays to mix, switch, edit, and rearrange drum-breaks from different songs. Eventually, better versions of samplers came out, like the AKAI S900. With this emerging technology, producers were able to loop, layer, sequence, and add effects to music. Yahoo! The greatest turntable was the Technics SL-1200, gaining fame for its reliability. As I mentioned earlier, lyrics became less about rhyme and more about wit. It seems like the goal was to address social issues and talk about life in a way that intrigued listeners and made them think. So rap became metaphorical in many ways.




THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP-HOP: Hip-Hop became huge in the mid-1980s. New rappers and groups like RUN DMC came onto the steam, which helped Hip-Hop to become more mainstream. These artists would experiment with fusion (Ex. RUN DMC fused hip-hop with hardcore rock). Independent labels like Def Jam and Prism Records also became more prominent, producing Hip-Hop records rapidly in order to keep up with its high demand. Hip-Hop artists and deejays were big on sampling (using clips from other songs and media in their own music). Back then, copyright laws were not as strict (or technically in existence). This drew in crowds from various music backgrounds and cultures. In addition to its rise on the music scene, Hip-Hop fashion, hairstyles, and dialect (Ebonics) became popular (remember, Hip-Hop is a culture).




TIME FOR CHANGE: So, eventually artists became more vocal about not receiving any compensation for their music that was being sampled in these hit records. Because the law got involved and getting permission from record labels and artists was so expensive and cumbersome, Hip-Hop was forced to take a turn. Producers had to start making original beats. Therefore, Hip-Hop lost a lot of its influences from parent genres like jazz, for example. This need for innovation proved to be a minor setback as Hip-Hop became the best selling genre in the 90s and is obviously alive and well today!




If you’re still reading this, bless your heart for making it this far! Enjoy this playlist (explicit content warning!!!)

Bibliography

PQ, Rory. (2019, November 25). HIP HOP HISTORY: FROM THE STREETS TO THE MAINSTREAM. iconccollective.edu. https://iconcollective.edu/hip-hop-history/

Greenburg, Zack O'Malley. (2009, July 9) The Man Who Invented Hip-Hop. forbes.com. https://www.forbes.com/2009/07/09/afrika-bambaataa-hip-hop-music-business-entertainment-cash-kings-bambaataa.html?sh=5ab4820c676d

NA. (2021). Afrika Bambaataa. history.hiphop. https://history.hiphop/afrika-bambaataa/

History.com Editors. (2021, January 26). Hip hop is born at a birthday party in the Bronx. HISTORY. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hip-hop-is-born-at-a-birthday-party-in-the-bronx