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.