The history of Hip Hop

In the late 1980’s, alternative hip hop was formed by West coast, East coast and southern acts and started to become part of the mainstream in the 1990’s. Hip hop originates from African culture and was influenced call and response patterns from religious ceremonies.  Soul singer James Brown is seen as ‘the godfather’ of hip hop music for their impact on the hip hop culture. When block parties became more popular in New York in the 1970’s, hip hop culture became ever present.

Hip hop or rap music is a genre consisting of stylized rhythmic music which normally goes with rapping which is a rhythmic and rhyming speech that’s chanted. This genre has four key, defining stylistic elements which are rapping, DJing, dancing and graffiti writing. Even more recent developed elements include beat boxing and sampling.

Hip hop is now seen as a lifestyle to go with the old cultural meanings. It is now seen to be all about beautiful women, expensive cars, big brand clothing, jewellery, alcohol, the latest gadgets, partying and represents an overall new image to before. This has changed due to people’s new partying lifestyles and ways of living to cope with economical and financial setbacks people are facing.

In the early days of hip hop music, it was known most strongly in New York but is now known internationally and is a main player in current charts. Since the rise of hip hop music, films such as ‘Honey’ have been made and based around that genre of music. This film shows how music can inspire and shape especially young people’s lives who come from the streets of New York and use this genre of music as an escape route.

In 1990, MC Hammer had massive mainstream success with a multi-platinum called ‘Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em’ which reached number 1 and still remains one of the best-selling albums for this genre. Famous songs such as ‘Can’t touch this’ are known well around the world and instantly attached to this genre and increased people’s awareness of the genre, further increasing it’s popularity. In the mid 2000’s, alternative hip hop became a main part of the mainstream of the music industry and the success of artists such as Kanye West with eventually led to many genres collaborating with rap singers.

Artists including Eminem, Black eyed peas, NIcki Minaj, Jay Z and Wiz Khalifa have kept the genre going through the big decline in hip hop sales which started in 2005. The United Kingdom is the second biggest consumer of hip hop music and every week consists of at least two tracks from that genre which shows a steady incline towards what used to be the ‘Golden age’ of hip hop back in the 1980’s-1990’s when every track brought out was seen to re-invent the genre and gained huge acclaim for that which helped the uprising of this genre of music.

History of music videos

The history of music videos

Music videos we now see day to day which are available to us at any time of the day were once un heard of and seen as completely irrelevant to selling records. The music video was invented with the main purpose to sell more records and to promote certain songs as well as the artist at the same time providing the audience with a clear constructed representation of a certain artist offering us a way in to their now celebrity lifestyles. Instead of just hearing the artist, with the music video we were now able to see them and relate to them. This kept a certain song on our mind and was employed as a promotional tool to help the artist/video director define to the viewing audience what they expected to see. These videos allowed artists to have reputations formed of them from these viewings which had a huge impact on artists reputation and helped to shape their careers as music was no longer just about sound but also about image to go with performance. These videos became gradually more and more important as they were collected and put on tapes or DVD’s for collectors items and easier viewing whilst keeping up with the ever changing and improving technologies surrounding the viewers. Many early music videos had a narrative and were constructed around the artist/directors ideology. Tim o’ Sullivan came up with the theory that all media texts tell us some form of story based around each individual producer/artists beliefs and offers us an opinion on the culture of that time period. Not only did these music videos become a new type of marketing tool but led the way for many new jobs as video directors who used these music videos as a stepping stone to further progress to directing a film one day.

In 1894 the first illustrated song named ‘little lost child’ was made from still images projected onto a screen. These were then followed in 1928 by ‘talkies’ which were many bands, dancers and vocalists coming together to make a short music film. The music video was just starting to take off by the time musical films became a genre when films had back in tracks from artist’s songs and ‘screen songs’ were made to encourage the audience to sing along and enjoy them selves whilst watching a series of cartoon films in 1930. By 1956 new stars of the music world were being discovered and exposed to the public as popular music alongside amounts of television exposure rose. In 1965 the first ever music video said to have been released. It was directed by D.A Pennabaker and was called ‘don’t look back’ which featured a man stood with words from the song on a piece of card turning them over whilst the song played. This video challenged the values of the past generation through the use of words. On looking teens and people in their early twenties looked at this through the director’s perspective.

Just a year earlier The Beatles brought out a short musical video directed by Dick Lester which contained lots of cuts like a video and shows the audience what their world was like as they were incredibly successful and popular at this time. A consistent image was created for them which was manufactured and almost perfected by their managers in order for them to appear a certain way to sell more records and become more successful. Close ups were also used to promote individuals in the band and allow the audience to almost get close to their favourite stars. At one point the soundtrack stops for the audience to hear how loud the girls in the video were screaming when they saw the Beatles to give viewers an insight into the hysteria surrounding them.

In the late 1970’s Top of the Pops started playing music and started the craze almost of showing music videos. Then in 1981, MTV started broadcasting and played 24hour music to viewers. The demand and importance for music videos was never as clear until now. Competition intensified as everyone could show their videos and present songs and artists to the public alongside everyone else. T.V showings now became more important as these videos defined a musician’s career. The first ever music video played on MTV was ‘Video killed the radio star’ by the Buggles which set the way for all artists after it.

Two years later, the most influential music video of all time was to be released and make an instant impact. The pop single ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson was a major hit and the video had a horror film narrative with a Ware wolf, graveyards, zombies, creepy looking houses and some very eerie night time scenes. These matched typical expectations of the audience from a horror type movie but promoted the song enormously at the same time. It also contained many codes such as Michael’s red trousers he wore which connoted he was evil in this movie and would cause some form of scary scene. Vincent Price was used as a voice over who became an iconic voice for scary films. The tempo of the music at certain points dictated to us what was going to happen in the film.

VH1 then launched in 1985 and signalled a wider audience according to demographics would be satisfied. A bigger section of music listeners were now catered for. Then, in 1995 Michael Jackson shocked he world once more by creating the most expensive music video of all time to date. An incredible 7million was spent on the video which saw it also become a big hit in the pop world.

From here on music was changed forever and in 2005, Youtube and iTunes came out over the internet which was also becoming increasingly popular around the world. This new level of music sales was due to 1million downloads on iTunes in the first 20 days and Youtube helped in the rise of music. In 2010, online music video views rose to a new level in the form of 183 million viewers. The internet took the music world by storm and meant unofficial music videos could come out and further progress their careers by using the internet as an advert for themselves. The internet was now as efficient source of promotion over sites such as Facebook and other social networking sites for musicians to further progress their careers. Now a days, musicians such as The Far East Movement use their own homes and post videos on Youtube to promote songs such as their ‘Like a G6’ track without spending mass amounts of money on advertising and other promotional methods previously used. Along with the rise in music videos, more and more artists are emerging over the internet such as Justin Bieber who from posting videos of him singing at home has become a worldwide pop phenomenon.