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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Hip hop


Hip hop music is a style of popular music typically consisting of a rhythmic style of speaking called rap over backing beats performed on a turntable by a DJ. Rapping and DJing are considered two of the four elements of Hip hop, a cultural movement which began in New York City in the 1970s, predominantly among African Americans and Latinos (the other two elements are breakdancing and graffiti art). 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.
Origin of term
Coinage of the term hip hop is often credited to Keith Cowboy, a
rapper with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. Though Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was still known as disco rap, it is believed that Cowboy created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance, which was quickly copied by other artists; for example the opening of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang. Former Black Spades gang member Afrika Bambaataa is credited with first using the term to describe the subculture that hip hop music belongs to, although it is also suggested that the term was originally derisively used against the new type of music.Article from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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