Standing on the shoulders of giants…

This course is all about new music. From its conception, I wanted to limit the scope of it to only include content relevant to this century. However, as you will see across many of these modules, providing a bit of history and context will ultimately aid and inform us when listening to current music. With that being said, let’s look into the origins of hip-hop and rap in the U.S.

Development from Jazz

We’ll talk about the modern developments of jazz in a later module, but it’s important to provide a bit of context here. Jazz, historically at least, refers to the genres of music developed by African-American communities out of the southern United States in the early 1900s. Originating in New Orleans and eventually spreading to the other major cultural centers of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, jazz grew in popularity as both a cultural expression by African-Americans and its subsequent appropriation by white band leaders in the 1930s and 1940s. As the century progressed into the 1950s and beyond, jazz continued to develop and branch into a myriad of different popular genres that we hear today including, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and what we know colloquially as pop music.

Again, this is an embarrassingly simplified history of Jazz for now. We’ll dive into more detail about it in Module 12 of this course. If you would like a head start on your jazz history, however, check out this timeline of styles periods here. Throughout these branching genres, you will see the through lines of compositional techniques and styles utilized throughout the periods, and this is going to be the case with most genres we look at. I will try my best to note those connections as we come across them, but for now, let’s get into hip-hop!

 Hip-Hop as a Genre

Like I alluded to in the previous paragraphs, many developments of these genres are defined by their physical location - and this is the case with hip-hop as well. By the 1970s hip-hop was codified in the boroughs of New York City, specifically in the Bronx. The art form of hip-hop was essentially born out of public performances and block parties where DJ’s would improvise new techniques and sound effects on turntables.

In this form, hip-hop isn’t necessarily a specific set of stylistic qualities within an expression of music, but also dance, art, and performance. The Harlem Gallery of Science has an article in which it outlines the “Five Pillars of Hip-Hop” and describes them with real examples. In the article, you will also be introduced to DJ Kool Herc, often considered the progenitor (or one of many) of hip-hop. Read the article by clicking here before moving on to the next section.

DJ’s and MC’s

Throughout these early years of hip-hop, there were plenty of claims to the origination of certain techniques and styles. While I will feed into these claims as I talk about the following artists, know that there are just as many faces that are forgotten in the development of hip-hop as there are artists considered “grandparents.” It may help to think of these peoples as small points in the broader picture that exemplifies the development of hip-hop.

DJ Kool Herc, also known as Clive Campbell, is a Jamaican-American who is largely considered the “father of the breakbeat.” Breakbeat, now broadly considered a genre unto itself, was a technique that looped the percussion breaks in popular songs to extend the time listeners could dance to them, hence the term of breakdancing that is associated with hip-hop. The block parties he DJ’d in the Bronx are considered legendary and would serve as the foundation to definitive stylistic developments in the genre - specifically performance techniques utilized on turntables.

DJ Grandmaster Flash, Joseph Saddler, is a Barbadian-American who is often considered a direct contemporary of DJ Kool Herc, for better or for worse. Grandmaster Flash extended the looping and break techniques Kool Herc demonstrated into fully realized conceived performances. By marking vinyl records with writing implements, Grandmaster Flash would mark areas on the record where he could spin forward and back too, creating new sound effects and created beats not found on the original record.

If you’re not familiar with what vinyl records are or how they work, you may be lost in how I am describing this. Check out this video from our favorite Midwest electronics distributor, Sweetwater. Although it may seem hyper-technical, you should be able to get a good picture of how both vinyl records and turntables work!

Original Music Production and Groups

As I referenced before, the most immediate development past DJ’ing and MC’ing would be the hip-hop and rap groups that followed. These groups utilized the techniques from the ’70s and early ’80s and used them to begin a new era of hip-hop which propelled the genre into the mainstream.

Salt-N-Pepa is a hip-hop group that was first formed in Queens, another borough of New York City. The group consisting of Cheryl James (Salt), Sandra Denton (Pepa), and formerly Diedra Roper (Spinderella) is still active today. Though produced by Hurby Azor, Salt-N-Pepa was considered the first all-female rap group, as well as the first all-female group to go platinum with a remixed version of their single Push It. This song and others of the time included sampling and quoting which are techniques still widely used today - but were used extensively in the ‘80s and ’90s.

Dr. Dre, Andre Young, is the defacto businessperson of hip-hop. Dre grew up in Los Angeles and took after his predecessors from New York, building the west coast scene along with many other hip-hop groups of the time. Dre and the work he did with N.W.A. was particularly controversial at the time, featuring unabashedly direct lyrics that criticize the worst of America’s systems and the reality of growing up in the city. N.W.A.’s album “Straight Outta Compton” was a key moment in this controversy as one of the tracks elicited a letter from the California F.B.I. for its reference to police. Due to the direct misogynistic lyrics that are peppered throughout the album, I won’t include an example here, but the album and Dr. Dre’s other works can be found on Spotify and elsewhere.

In the modern era of hip-hop, Dr. Dre is still producing music and has been the leader of several record labels, as well as the creative director of several electronic products, such as Beats by Dre.

And Many, Many Other Artists… I chose to highlight these musicians because they exemplify certain styles, techniques, or achievements throughout the history of hip-hop and rap. However, for every artist listed here are 10 more that are just as popular, and 50 more that contributed to the genres but never saw commercial success. This is often going to be the case when we look back on the more historical aspects of popular music, which in itself is very recent history - so keep in mind the broader perspective as we move forward.

Into the 21st Century

When talking about where these genres are in the context of today’s music, and where they will be in the future, we can look to the two driving factors in the development of hip-hop, rap, and R&B; culture and technology. As we just saw with early artists in these genres, they are almost exclusively defined by Black-American artists using state-of-the-art technology to create new art. Today, the umbrella of artists who consider themselves to be hip-hop or rap musicians is ever-expanding to include diverse cultural perspectives with a focus on stylistic aesthetics. Meanwhile, novel music technology continues to become more accessible to young musicians who will inevitably bring in new developments to the genre.

For all intents and purposes, you can consider this module a part one of two. In Module 5, we’ll get into more listening and examples of modern-day hip-hop, and discuss further the proliferation of technology that makes these genres more accessible. Until then, however, we’ll be looking at some more components of music to help strengthen our understanding of future examples.