Copyright © 2019 by Eric Reese
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Hip-hop is the streets. Hip-hop is a couple of elements that it comes from back in the days... that feel of music with urgency that speaks to you. It speaks to your livelihood and it's not compromised. It's blunt. It's raw, straight off the street - from the beat to the voice to the words.
NAS
These days, hip hop surrounds us really everywhere, whether it is on TV in the form of movies, music shows, or commercials, on the radio, or just in the streets, where various public places are aged-tagged, or when groups of young people make shows by breaking or rapping in front of randomly passing people in order to make some money, have fun and show what they can do. Shortly, nearly everyone has a certain idea about what is hip hop. It is such a complex area that includes music, dance, art such as graffiti, fashion, and many other fields which are connected with it, which still needs to be introduced and therefore the aim of this book is to make the further acquaintance of hip hop not only as a musical style, but as a whole phenomenon of hip hop culture which has been spreading among youth especially through the media across the whole world.
Since its creation, Hip Hop has had a cultural impact on youth all around the world. The youth specifically because the music, for many, is a reflection of their lives and is told in a way they can easily understand. Beginning in the South Bronx of New York in November of 1974, Hip Hop consisted mainly of DJing, breaking (break dancing), graffiti, and rapping. However, it is much more than just a kind of music. Many believe that the genre can be seen as a way of life, given that it also has brought about new ways of dressing, expression, and its unique outlooks on cultural, political, economical and intellectual factors in society.
There are several mistakes that circulate among people. For example, a lot of people think hip hop is only a musical style and that hip hop and rap is the same thing. Therefore, I would like to explain some terms that are concerned with hip hop at the beginning of this essay.
Firstly, hip hop is not only a musical style, it includes a large number of areas, and music is just one of them. It is quite difficult to define hip hop because of its complexity, but there are several definitions of this phenomenon such as a US pop culture movement originating in the 1980s comprising rap music, graffiti and break dancing" or a popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents, the most precious definition of hip hop can be found in Martin Fiedler's Hip hop Forever: "Hip hop is a lifestyle with a developed and colorful culture, its language, and fashion style, specific kind of music and thinking, which is constantly developing."
Another interesting opinion of what hip hop is, belongs to DJ and MC TC Izlam, who claims: "Hip hop is just a way of thinking, state of mind. To be a hip-hopper means to think freely." The second mistake that hip hop and rap can be used synonymously is also very common among people who do not understand this issue. From the definitions that are mentioned above is clear what hip hop means. Rap is "a rhythmic monologue with musical backing, "which means that it's just a lexical part of hip hop music which is just one of the several parts of whole hip hop culture.
The name "Hip Hop" is said to have been coined by Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins. Wiggins was a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, a Hip-Hip group formed in 1978 in the South Bronx. They were a large part of the genre's earliest pioneers. Other artists signifying the beginning of Hip Hop include The Sugar Hill Gang. Signed by Sylvia Robinson, they have been recognized as the first popular rap group. Their song, "Rapper's Delight," is still popular today. The first female group to release a Hip Hop single was known as The Sequence, releasing "Funk You Up" in 1979 while the first female solo artist to do so was Lady B in the same year.
We wrote on this topic in our second volume of the History of Hip Hop and is listing again to give background to those who are new to the series.
Hip hop culture contains four essential elements: DJing, MCing, graffiti art and b-boying. DJing and MCing symbolize a musical part, b-boying stands for a dance component, and graffiti represents a visual art constituent of this culture. Of course, these four elements did not originate at the same time, but their combination enabled hip hop to come into existence.
DJing
DJing is a fundamental means to produce hip hop music. The DJ is the abbreviation for the phrase ‘disc jockey’ – a person, who plays recorded, not live, music or sound for an audience. The very first disc jockeys were radio DJs, who played the music to radio listeners and in the 1950s, DJs started to perform “live” at various parties. Americans were always used to dancing at a bar to music from a jukebox, but paying for a DJ not playing “live” music was not very common.
In 1973, DJ Kool Herc took two turntables, which he connected to a mixer and he laid two identical records on the turntables. The mixer helps DJ in the smooth transition of sound from one turntable to the second one. Kool Herc played a break of one record and the same break of the second record, which he could easily repeat. This method is known as “mixing breaks”6 or “creating breakbeats”7. Herc played the music for an audience of dancers who are known as b-boys, or break boys, and b-girls or break girls. Under the influence of DJ Kool Herc, some of the b-boys such as Grandmixer DXT and Kurtis Blow became DJs too. Herc contributed to the development of DJing by creating a huge mobile sound system, because he knew how to connect more speakers and generate more electrical power to be able to make a louder sound. Another innovative DJ was Grandmaster Flash, who brought to perfection the Herc’s way of mixing two records. He developed a theory called a “quick mix theory,” which is based upon marking records and using a headset to be able to hear how is the second record combined with the first one before the audience can hear it via the loudspeaker and make a fluent transition from one record to the other.
Grand Wizard Theodore, a pupil of Grandmaster Flash, accidentally created a technique of DJing called "scratching." One day of the year 1975, when he was improving his DJing skills at home, his mother told him to turn down the volume. Because he did not hear it, she entered his room and he tried to stop the music by laying his hand on the playing record to stop its spinning. By moving it back and forward to keep the record quiet and be able to listen to his mother’s words, he noted that this movement creates a unique sound. It is necessary to mention that this technique is commonly used by DJs up to this day.
