Hip hop music
is a genre of music typically consisting of a rhythmic style of speaking called rap over backing beats performed on a turntable by a DJ. Hip hop music is part of hip hop culture, which began in New York City in the 1970s, predominantly among African Americans and Latinos (the other two elements are breakdancing and graffiti art). [1] The term rap is sometimes used synonymously with hip hop music, though it originally referred only to rapping itself.
Rapping, also referred to as MCing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the performer speaks rhythmically and in rhyme, generally to a beat. Beats are traditionally sampled from portions of other songs by a DJ, though synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands are also used, especially in newer music. Rappers may perform poetry which they have written ahead of time, or improvise rhymes on the spot. Though rap is usually an integral component of hip hop music, DJs sometimes perform and record alone, and many instrumental acts are also defined as hip hop.
Hip hop arose in New York City when DJs began isolating the percussion break from funk or disco songs for audiences to dance to. The role of the MC was originally to introduce the DJ and the music, and to keep the audience excited. The MC would speak between songs, giving exhortations to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually, this practice became more stylized, and came to be known as rapping. By 1979, hip hop had become a commercially recorded music genre, and began to enter the American mainstream. It also began its spread across the world. In the 1990s, a form called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived by some as promoting violence, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop became a staple of popular music charts and is now performed in widely varying styles around the world.
Gangsta rap
is a subgenre of hip-hop music which developed during the late 1980s. 'Gangsta' is a corruption of the spelling of 'gangster'. After the national attention that Ice-T & N.W.A created in the late 80's, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip-hop.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, and religious leaders, who have accused the genre of homophobia, violence, profanity, promiscuity, misogyny, gang rapes, drive-by shootings, vandalism, thievery, drug use, racism, and materialism.
Some commentators (for example, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized it as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackface performance, in which performers – both black and white – were made up to look African American, and acted in a stereotypically uncultured and ignorant manner for the entertainment of white audiences. Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.
Old School
Some people use the term hip hop to refer to most hip hop from 1979 (when the first hip hop record by the Fatback Band, King Tim III, came out) to ca.84, when new rappers like LL Cool J and Run DMC as well as the Beastie Boys were developing their new styles. Some see Run DMCs Sucker MCs as the first new school record, because it no longer relied on music recorded in the studio by live musicians. Others see old school rap as spawning a period from 1979 to ca. 1990. Stilistically, both rap from 1979-1985 and rap from 1979-1990 is very heterogeneous, covering different styles like the electronic rap à la electro funk that started in 1982, the earliest rap recorded by live musicians in the studio that did not contain synthetic beats and scratching Sugarhill Gang Treacherous Three.
New School
Some people use new school rap as referring to rap records that no longer had the typical characteristsics of Old School rap à la Sugarhill Gang or electro funk. New school rap typically mixed computer beats with James Brown samples, especially the famous Funky Drummer break.
Bass
Hip hop related musical style that continues rapping and sometimes choruses. Musically, its roots can be found in electro funk. The music came into existence as part of Miami's stereo wars, when people tried to out-stereo each other, claiming that they had the most bass-heavy stereo system in their car. At the end of the 1980s, The 2 Live Crew got very popular because officials tried to ban their records which they deemed to be pornographic and hence dangerous. Apart from that, only few bass tracks succeeded in becoming part of the mainstream, most notably Tag Team's Whoomp There It Is. Bass music started out as an underground pheneomenon, and it basically still is. In Detroit, a new form of Bass called Ghetto Tech developed in the 1990s, and on the West Coast, Jonny Z provides his own brand of Chicano Bass. DJ Laz is a Cuban from Miami who mixed Latin music with bass. Other important artists include Luke, DJ Magic Mike, MC Shy D and MC ADE.
(*From Wikipedia.org)
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