Hip Hop History and What It’s About

Note: If I’ve got something wrong or missed out something or you just wanna share your take on it… please feel free to comment.

Also, I cannot recommend Hip Hop Evolution enough! It’s so well done!

I’ve been wanting to write this for ages since a lot of uninformed folks confuse hip hop expression or being gangsta in the wrong way and mistake it with being a thug, a vandal etc. Even though it is part of the attitude it’s not all there is… especially being a gangsta and being a G. Most of this info I’ve tried remembering from The History of Hip Hop book I’d read ages back. If there is one thing you must ALWAYS remember is that hip hop is a form of expressing yourself… from your clothes, your moves, your attitude, being a G without getting in a fight kinda thing… its about your flavor, execution and pulling it off well… like myself! So lets get down to it shall we.

A bit of history first…
See there was a mass migration of black folks in like 50s or so. Lots of people moved from South USA to North as job prospects were better… the racism issues were less… you know segregation and all. So black folks got crammed up north and def didn’t wanna go back to the old ways in the south. This is where the Projects came in. The government could not provide all the jobs it promised and stuff. And so these folks had parties at like basketball courts or places which had street lights so as to tap the electric juice from such power supplies to play their radios, turntables and microphones etc. Now I guess they still carried on partying as they did… Swing dancing and stuff right… BUT… it evolved. A new crowd experiencing new situations and all right… which gave birth to hip hops elements.

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Hip Hops Main Elements
1 – DJing/Turntableism
2 – Breaking/Breakdancing/B-boying
3 – Graffiti
4 – Rapping/MCing
– Other sub elements include: beatboxing, dressing, lingo, attitude… hell Viv even recommended a vid purely about shoes and how they had to be fly! Customised laces, cleaning, colouring them in, etc… for that Google vid Just For Kicks.

Each of these elements by now has diversified and evolved into lots of sub catagories so I wont get into it too deep. Now the first 3 have recently been hating on the 4th because rapping found so much success and didn’t not bring the other elements along with it. The way I see it… for the first 3 you needed skill and practice so it was harder for everyone to get into while rapping… well you don’t need any tool or exceptional skills. But anyway thats my thought on it.

1 – DJing/Turntableism
If I remember correctly. Folks used to tap into the power supply to hook up their turntables and just play music normally. It went something like… first it was just one deck and then evolved to two to keep the music nonstop and then either someone made a mistake by moving the record while playing or someone felt creative… oh yeah someone was waiting for the next song to play and held the other track in place and then moved it back and forth and the idea bulb struck. After which folks tried out different stuff and evolved it more and more… Viv hooked me up with the ‘Scratch’ documentary about it where for some reason these guys have a fascination for space/alien stuff??? DJ Kool Herc gets a lot of props here as he used to just make a ‘break’ which is basically the part of the song with just beats and loop it. Theres an article on the most recent chopped and screwed style on Universal somwhere.

2 – Breaking/Breakdancing/B-boying
Now while the music was going on folks would bust moves especially during the mentioned ‘breaks’. I’m sure Capoeira comes into this somewhere… but yeah folks would ‘battle’… trying to out do each other. Hell back then even the Gangs used to settle disputes with a battle on the dancefloor… solos or crews etc. Note: Back then Gangs were more like political activists or if it really got down and dirty it used to end up in melees and not gun fire. The flier the combos you did the more props you got and the more your opponent would lose face or have to bust fresher flier moves. There was a big controversy over the ‘breakdancing’ term and apparently that’s the name the media gave to it so it’s not used too much by true hip hoppers. There’s lots of styles… hell too many to mention but the main ones are uprock/toprock which includes upright footwork, glides/slides, boogaloo, popping, locking, krumping and floor moves which are pretty acrobatic. Again popping and locking has issues coz some call it pop locking and what not. Get it right alright!

3 – Graffiti
Gangs come into it as they used to ‘tag’ or claim their turf, or it was used as political activism and most of these artist were big in the rest on the hip hop elements or scene. So while the DJ did his thing and dancers did theirs… these guys were expressing them selves on the walls and trains. Um… think thats about it. Google vid Wild Style to get the idea.

4 – Rapping/MCing (Also called spitting)
We get to the most controversial element. This one has the deepest history as it’s a form of storytelling, giving out props, bigging up folks or showing off. I think again Kool Herc started it off. While the DJ did his thing and the dancers were busting moves… the MC would big up folks with fly moves, announce next events kinda thing and find ways to make it rhyme or flow or just scat it. Some say the roots are in Jamaica as there they MC as a way to boast and toast while others say Africa where folks would storytell to music and yet others say jazz. Some say it’s an acronym for Rhythm and Poetry or shlack others say it came from a much used english word. I say whatever man coz lots of things in history you can’t really tell for sure. Anyway there’s so many styles now… flow, freestyle… I don’t know proper names or if they do have names but there’s dissing, earlier mentioned story telling, bigging up or boasting, gangsta rap, speed rap, philosophical, etc etc. It has a lot to do with the latest slang or slang itself. It can be judged on speed, flow, metaphors, etc etc. I personally owe a lot to rap especially gangsta rap coz it gave me an avenue to get out my aggression, helped me LOADS with english (trust me!) coz it got me writing down the lyrics and reading. My folks used to say they need to get school subjects in rap form to get me to read or know it coz I knew my stuff word for word. I see why so many get into it but after a while I got bored of the same content especially the mainstream stuff coz its bitches, guns, drugs, thugs, money and self praise. Thank god Viv hooks me up with some diverse refreshing stuff. I’ll leave it here coz I could go for pages.

So there you have it… a quick tour around Hip Hop. If you aint hip hop and find these guys attitude aggressive… it’s just their ‘front’. You should check out a B-boy/DJing event to see that in the end it’s all about love and giving/getting respect. If course you could dress to get respect or do you and respect yourself no matter what others say coz even if you look the flyest you’ll still get a diss now and then and its part of the game baby. Just don’t be a hater if you’re not into the scene. It’s helped keep a lot of people involved in creative and constructive stuff you know.

Note: As much as I was dying to use some lingo I’ve kept it pretty user friendly. If you ever do want to know a word used please check out http://www.rapdict.org/Main_Page and type the word in the search bit. I started out with that ages back but now use more of http://www.urbandictionary.com since it has Naruto’s lingo, lots more definitions, origins and examples too ;o)

Example: Since I just got back from the gym and Genie is on my case to go for a drink I’ll say something like… Fall back yo, I was getting deezed at the gym, so now… I’mma lay in the cut and bust a nut.

Ok I covered the bits I wanted to… like I said if you got more to add… you’re more than welcome to edumacate peeps.

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