Hip-Hop: Why we're talking about the groundbreaking movement

Plus the week's best takes

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Good morning. It's Saturday, Aug. 9, and we're bringing you the latest Society & Culture newsletter. Every week, we provide fascinating deep dives into the worlds of art, music, literature, film, food, sports, entertainment, and more.

This week, we're covering hip-hop, the cultural phenomenon that began in a Bronx apartment complex on Aug. 11, 1973. To celebrate that anniversary, we're diving into the genre's early days and how it redefined music for decades to follow.

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—Kevin Kearney, 1440 Society & Culture Section Editor

Looking for the Perfect Beat

Background

Hip-hop is a form of popular music and a cultural tradition that originated in urban areas of the United States in the 1970s.

Like rock ‘n’ roll and country, hip-hop is a folk music that relies on allusion and reinterpretation. In its more than five decades, hip-hop has profoundly impacted the look and sound of American culture and has grown into an international phenomenon.

New York State of Mind

Hip-hop began in the Bronx borough of New York with the “back to school jam,” an August 1973 dance party hosted by Cindy Campbell and her brother, DJ Kool Herc, in their apartment building’s recreation room. (See a collection of flyers for early hip-hop parties.)

Inspired by Jamaican dancehall culture and Manhattan’s disco scene, Herc used a new style that used two turntables, seamlessly mixing and looping “breakbeats”—isolated drum breaks from funk, soul, jazz, disco, and rock records—that kept dancers at the “back to school jam” moving. Herc’s technique would be the basis for modern sampling and hip-hop’s first few decades. (Hear 50 years of iconic breakbeats and samples.)

Similar parties began popping up around the city, with people dancing to the breakbeats—in a flashy, dexterous style called “breakdancing”—and masters of ceremonies, or MCs, rhyming over the music, a practice that harkens back to several traditions from the larger Black oral tradition.

That style of rhythmic “rapping” would come to be the most popular feature of hip-hop. In fact, the term “hip-hop” was coined by DJ Lovebug Starski, who simply liked how the word sounded when rapped to a beat. Eventually, “rap” and “hip-hop” would become synonyms for the music.

Paid in Full

Sylvia Robinson believed hip-hop could be more than party music. She began writing, producing, and releasing some of the music’s earliest singles through her Sugar Hill Records label, including the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message.” Robinson’s groundbreaking work led to her being called “the Godmother of hip-hop.”

Other hip-hop labels began sprouting up through the early ‘80s, like Def Jam, a label Rick Rubin started in a New York University dorm room.

As the culture spread to other areas of the country, its artists grew more inventive in what’s now considered the genre’s “Golden Era.”

Producers developed a lexicon of samples, thanks in large part to a collection of the best breaks, leading to a shared sonic language for the music that featured elaborate collages that spanned decades.

Meanwhile, rappers experimented on the mic with vivid storytelling and complex rhetorical techniques.

The Takeover

The freewheeling age of sampling in hip-hop ended with a copyright infringement lawsuit against Biz Markie for his song “Alone Again.” Following the case, many producers began using fewer samples to avoid similar lawsuits.

Ironically, the new sound only became more popular: In the late ‘90s and mid-2000s, hip-hop became a massive commercial success and an integral part of pop culture, thanks to blockbuster artists like Jay-Z and Eminem.

It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop

As its popularity grew, hip-hop was often criticized for glorifying violence, sexism, and homophobia, with a 2008 Pew Research poll finding that over 70% of Americans believed the music had a negative societal impact. For their part, many rap artists have argued they’re not endorsing the lyrics but simply reflecting the world around them.

In 2018, Kendrick Lamar was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his album “DAMN.,” making him the first artist from a genre other than jazz or classical to win the award. Critics noted that Lamar’s composition—which includes sonic nods to the culture’s long history and lyrics that grapple with its complications—was a significant moment for hip-hop.

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Explore Hip-Hop

The best female rappers of all time

Hip-hop has too many incredible female MCs to name, but this list does an admirable job of ranking the 25 greatest. Along the way, it breaks down how ‘80s artists like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah paved the way for ‘90s innovators like Missy Elliott and Lauryn Hill and more contemporary names like Doechii and Nicki Minaj. Read it here.

The story behind six seconds that changed music

“Amen, Brother,” a once-forgotten track from gospel group the Winstons, became one of music’s most sampled songs after a six-second snippet was featured on a popular breakbeat compilation. This short documentary explains how that happened and why “the Amen break” has such resonance. Watch it here.

The hallowed legacy of J Dilla

There are few names in hip-hop more revered than J Dilla, a producer who’s credited with redefining the feel of the music by playing with its timing. This video essay shows how he managed such an incredible feat, breaking down the technology and ingenuity that made it possible. Watch it here.

Grandmaster Flash's DJing masterclass

For some people, DJing is nothing more than pressing play on a few songs, but for hip-hop DJs, it’s a precise art form that requires real skill. Need proof? Watch this 1983 tutorial from Grandmaster Flash, one of the genre’s pioneering DJs, as he walks you through beatmatching and mixing on his spartan setup of two turntables and a basic mixer. Watch it here.

How Southern rap redefined the sound of hip-hop

Atlanta has long been the center of the hip-hop universe, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 1980s, most attention focused on New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, and Los Angeles, the epicenter of its burgeoning gangsta variant. This detailed history of Southern rap’s evolution explains how a once-overlooked region took over the culture. Read it here.

The Wu-Tang Clan's multipronged empire

“Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” is considered one of the greatest rap albums of all time, but it was just the start of a career that would eventually include dozens of solo albums, a clothing brand, and a video game. This retrospective breaks down how the Staten Island group made it happen. Read it here.

Cultural Context

Beyond our weekly deep dives, we love finding great takes on the culture currently shaping our lives. Here are some of the best reactions, profiles, and think pieces we encountered this week.

> Everyone Is Listening to Secular Praise Music. Yes, Even You.

Yahoo | Kelsey Weekman. It’s not religious music, exactly, considering the songs don't explicitly deal with faith, but recent singles from artists like Teddy Swims, Benson Boone, and others are using the elements of Christian music to create massive pop hits. (Read)

> Cheese and Packers Stories Help a Wisconsin Theater Thrive

NY Times | Elisabeth Vincentelli. Fish Creek, Wisconsin's Northern Sky Theater has found success by leaning into uniquely Midwestern stories, including regional retellings of Shakespearean classics. Vincentelli heads to Door County to talk with the people who make it possible. (Read)

> A Naked Attempt at Saving Comedy

The Ringer | Alan Siegel. The “Naked Gun” reboot arrived last week to critical acclaim. Siegel’s piece explores how a gag-filled comedy has become a rarity in Hollywood and whether the film, directed by the Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer, can change the trend. (Read)

> The ‘Slacker’ Teen Who Was More Than Just a Punchline

The Atlantic | Laura Bradley. Malcolm-Jamal Warner, famous for playing Theo on “The Cosby Show,” died last month. Bradley celebrates Warner’s nuanced, empathetic portrayal on the legendary show, suggesting it captured an authentic adolescent experience that often went unnoticed. (Read)

> My Journey to the Heart of the Forgotten Internet

BBC | Andrew Lloyd. Alarmed by the way AI is already altering the web, Lloyd set out to revisit the early internet before it disappears. What he found was a trove of charming, surprisingly earnest websites from a less cynical time online. (Read)

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