#happy birthday hip hop

[aguycalledkwest]

If you happened to be in The Boogie Down Bronx on August 11, 1973, and you had a few quarters in your pocket, you may have become a witness to a world-changing event. At a Back to School Jam hosted in the rec room of his apartment complex, DJ Kool Herc, a teenage Jamaican immigrant, singularly invented a new art form that would evolve into a global phenomenon. By only playing the “break” — or the percussive dance sections of popular records — and using two turntables to create a loop of the instrumentals, Kool Herc gave birth to hip hop. Soon, this sound spread throughout the city and other DJs began to replicate his technique at their own parties. Afrika Bambaataa, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Grandmaster Flash were among those early pioneers who spun this idea into gold.

Herc and the other DJs were already “toasting” over the records they played. This tradition of talking rhythmically over the beat, encouraging partygoers to dance, and calling out their prowess as a DJ was commonplace. Often, an Emcee or MC would toast while a DJ spun and this partnership is what led to the invention of rap. Toasting was all improvisational “freestyling,” rapping brand new rhymes off the top of the head. Formalizing the toast into rhyming lyrics, creating more sophisticated sampling from existing songs, and adding new musical compositions ushered in a new era of music history.

Hip hop, however, has always been more than just music. Many early artists, especially Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation, saw it as a way to shift the culture, mitigate the gang wars, and provide an outlet for young Black and Brown people to express their frustrations with the wider socio-political climate in which they lived. The natural competition that existed between DJs, MCs, and B-Boys was more collaborative than adversarial and led to the creation of a complex and democratized culture where the only barrier between being the best was beating the best. The ingredients of this new culture, or what many historians call the “Pillars of Hip Hop,” were DJing, MCing, Break Dancing, Graffiti, and Knowledge of Self — meaning there were infinite ways to be a part of the movement, allowing for its rapid spread into mainstream culture.

Though the beginnings can be traced to that Jam in 1973, the first major rap record was released in 1980 and The Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight changed the game forever. Suddenly hip hop was not just for the rec rooms and gym jams — now it was for the radio, and very soon the revolution would be televised. Some of the early creators saw this as the downfall of the culture, worried that its spread would dilute its impact, but they could not foresee the way it would take over the music industry and ultimately influence the entire world. The DNA of hip hop has bled into fashion and beauty, film, dance styles, even sports, and other forms of entertainment and expression.

Many consider the Golden Age of Hip Hop to be the late 80s into the 90s. As it hit the mainstream, artists from other parts of the country began to put their own stamp on the art form, creating new sounds and distinct styles. West Coast rappers like Tupac Shakur, N.W.A., and Snoop Dogg, Southerners like Goodie Mob, OutKast, and DJ Screw, and Midwesterners like Slum Village, J Dilla, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony made hip hop their own. As major music labels signed these and other artists a new era began — the era of the Hip Hop Mogul. In the late 90s and early 2000s, rap super-producers like Puff Daddy, Dr. Dre, and Jay-Z turned their music into multi-billion dollar enterprises. For many years, hip hop was the number one music genre in the world, overtaking even pop and rock. Though hip hop became commercialized, the original elements endure and evolve.

Hip hop music, culture, style, and art is an ever-shifting landscape that is rooted in region and perspective. Rap is about one’s periphery and that means that the identity of those participating in its culture is the bedrock on which a worldwide community is built. Hip hop is in many ways a performance, an attitude, a presentation of self — and perhaps one of the few fully democratized cultures which only survives off the strength of what its participants deem dope. Hip hop, in every context including the theater, is a collective experience meant to pull from the energy surrounding it and give the beauty it bears right back to the people. Almost 50 years after Kool Herc dropped the needle on the break of “Apache” by The Incredible Bongo Band his iconic toasts still signal the power and endurance of Hip Hop: “Yes, yes y’all and you don’t stop.”

[jamesvirgodo]

Happy birthday to Hip Hop!

[freshthoughts2020]

LIVE FROM TRINOSOPHES: https://open.spotify.com/album/6Fnw5ObAu0e4ZeIhJ8Q5lf?si=GPtL0zi2QNWMT84Q9NdzGA

[nathjonesey-75]

Hipping and Hopping: I Was Raised By Hip-Hop

Today is a vitally important day for me in many ways. I am playing tonight as a launch party for my first track being released in collaboration with my friend, Ranj Kaler. It’s his EP and I played a part on the title track, Break The Chains. The pivotal link between another huge importance of today is that the sample I used in the track would not have come to use, were it not for the big birthday entity, Hip-Hop - which has turned fifty today.

So, what you read is not a test, I’m celebrating this feat.

I remember vividly the first time I was really exposed to the deeper side of Hip-Hop and the irony of it all. I would have been 12, with my more youthfully liberated friend Ceri owning an Ice-T cassette. Now, as a highly impressionable and sheltered kid - this was vastly different to Walk This Way and My Adidas, which would have been the only other tracks of the genre in my hearing experience. But while Ice-T and so many rappers of that generation were so scalded for their lyrics - the whole package was something I got hooked upon immediately.

And once one can was opened, I wanted to try all flavours of this new and edgy style of sound. After all, all I ever heard at home was a mixture of the Rocky IV soundtrack on repeat, ABBA, plus the fresher angle hip-hop’s sampling and verse. There was more to life than small town vanilla 2.4 family existence – there was a bigger world out there. Yet the South Bronx and the five boroughs which gave birth and rise to Hip-Hop may have been Mars in comparison with Llanelli in South Wales.

It opened my eyes to DJs and the whole relationship between them and MCs. Although in those days, the MC was always the more revered, my path to turntablism had already begun years earlier, as I had quite a record collection - my grandmother used to give me 7” singles, donated from the DJ at the local RAFA club. There was no Sugarhill Gang, nor Afrika Bambaataa - clearly South-West Wales wasn’t ready for that in the early eighties. But The Jam, Madness and Blondie were the more reputable of the small-sized vinyl stacked in my bedroom.

By 1989, I was already ordering Hip Hop Connection magazine from the newsagent next to my grandparents’ house, plus my journey into the collectors’ category began by buying 7” releases of Hip-Hop singles. Then, recording tracks from the radio onto tapes via Jeff Young’s Big Beat Show on Radio 1. Yet it was a broadcast on Channel Four that year which scratched the DJ life into me. The annual Technics DJ Competition was broadcasted one night. London’s Cutmaster Swift and his amazing styling, cutting and scratching was one routine I watched over and again in wonder.

So, by the age of fifteen, I had already been encouraged to think differently about life and music. Already having seen examples of culture - obviously not all positive - in fact learning the way of the sword about slavery and inequality wasn’t something which went over my head – it made me want the world to be very different. Hence the sample used on the track, from an outspoken civil rights activist of the 1960s (you can do the research on this one – wink-wink), which many will recognise – many may not.

“To be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a man; in this society, on this earth, on this day, which we intend to be which we intend to bring into existence…”

The words following those used in the sample and not used in Break the Chains – are the ones with which this great leader of the people became most synonymous. Public Enemy, one of my idolised bands along with KRS-One from Boogie Down Productions were the ones who made this recognition possible.

Since then – many versions of myself later; I’ve developed and merged my taste through a myriad of ages, of styles and from travelling and relationships; but the gravity of the most influential musical form from my own childhood remains. Alongside the invaluable memories – it took me until 2013 to finally see De La Soul live and until 2014 to see Public Enemy live. Both were done while living in Melbourne. The former saw my copy of Say No Go signed by the band, which is now up on my wall of frames. The latter was a sublime memory of seeing Flavor Flav play the saxophone during the set (many will still not know that he’s a multi-instrumentalist). But the politics, the samples, the effects and legal wrangles; the cutting, the scratching and the controversial law smashing – will always be a big part of my musical armoury.

Thank you Hip-Hop and a happy birthday to everyone in the community.

Peace, love, unity and having fun is what Afrika Bambaataa and James Brown sang about in 1985. We need it now as much ever.

[djevilninja]

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Hip Hop

Last Thursday (August 11, 2022) was the 49th birthday of Hip Hop. Since I was in my 90s R&B bag, I didn’t indulge, but this week I am - jamming old school (’79-’92, pre The Chronic) hip hop, including some select break beats & famous samples. I’ve refined my previous list - cutting some extraneous remixes, for example - but I’ve also added quite a few songs to the library. Hip hop, electro, hip house... that’s how I do.

[shootersonlyclub]

[itsbigseanny]

Sean Felder's Top 5 MCs of all time & thoughts on Jay Z being #1 rapper ...

[saturngalore]

CRUSH ON YOU 🌈

[miagomez-1509]

HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY (just one day later) TO THIS LEGEND!!! I LOVE HIM SOO MUCH 🥹💓🥲 and I wish he knows that, he’s an inspiration and he may not be perfect but no one is , to me he’s more than perfect. He became someone no one asked him to be in a lot of categories and that’s amazing. So happy late birthday to the GOAT 🐐.

10/17/1972 was the day a legend was born 💗💙

[247liveculture]

Happy birthday Big Daddy Kane! 👑

[royaltyrules816]

Happy 36th Birthday Kung-Fu Kenny Kendrick Lamar 🐐🎛🎚🎙🎧🎤👑

[mannyblacque]

via What's Culture | Instagram

50 years ago, Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc hosted at a “back to school jam” party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx, New York.

August 11th, 1973, Hip-Hop was born.

[fourtwentybuds]

Happy Birthday Eminem 🎂