Sylvia Robinson is considered ‘the Godmother of Hip-Hop’

Sister Rosetta Tharpe is considered the godmother of rock 'n' roll

Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino are cited as the godfathers of rock ‘n’ roll, but the undisputed godmother is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel singer who crossed over to the secular world and changed the course of American music. Tharpe’s electric guitar playing influenced early rock ‘n’ roll.

The 1973 ‘back to school jam’ was the night hip-hop was born

Hip-hop began in New York’s Bronx borough 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.

Watch Diana Ross posthumously induct Billie Holiday into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Holiday was posthumously inducted into the Hall in 2000 for her influence on the generations that followed her. Fittingly, Diana Ross, who played Holiday in a 1972 biopic, did the honors. She took the opportunity to sing an acapella verse of "Strange Fruit" and then offer some honorific poetry: "In this, a lesson: Artist, handle with care. Don't lose yourself in the music, beware stardom's glare."

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 Micki Minaj.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Champagne has a rich history in hip-hop

The drink is both aspirational and a bragging right. Famous artists name-check brands like Cristal, and up-and-comers long for the day when sparkling wine will flow like water. The trend traces back to the early 1990s and Branson B., “hip-hop’s unofficial sommelier.” The Harlem-based artist would bring bottles of his favorite bubbly to parties, celebrations, and, crucially, recording studios, where friends like the Notorious B.I.G. were laying down some of rap’s foundational tracks.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples

Hip-hop music began with the looping of popular breakbeats, but it evolved with DJs and producers learning to chop and flip samples from obscure records and turn them into rap classics. This video illustrates how sampling evolved through the music's five-plus decades.

Robinson is among the league's greatest figures

Robinson won Rookie of the Year and played in the majors for 10 seasons, winning a World Series in 1955. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962. The Dodgers retired his number, 42, in 1972, and MLB retired it league-wide in 1997.

Musician Gladys Bentley defied gender norms during the Harlem Renaissance

The singer and pianist was known for performing in a white tuxedo, something out of the ordinary for a woman in the 1920s and '30s. She was also openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still widely considered taboo. In the late '50s, she claimed she'd undergone a medical treatment to awaken her "womanliness," which scholars believe was a reaction to the retrenched homophobic attitudes of the McCarthy Era.

Judee Sill's admirers hear a legend gone before her prime

The singer-songwriter released only two albums in her lifetime: 1971's self-titled and 1973's "Heart Food." Critics and contemporaries (including Graham Nash and David Crosby) praised both, though they were commercial flops. She died of a drug overdose in 1979 and had grown so obscure by then that no obituary was published. In the early 2000s, her recordings were reissued and found a new generation of fans.

The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ is a quintessential ‘wall of sound’ record

The 1963 single features one of the most recognizable drum beats in the world; many critics consider the song the greatest pop recording of all time. If nothing else, it’s a definitive example of both the classic girl group sound and Phil Spector’s ingenious ‘Wall of Sound.’

Hip-hop legend Lauryn Hill had a recurring role on 'As the World Turns'

Hill is primarily known for her music career, both in the pioneering group the Fugees and as a solo artist. But before breaking records as a musician, she was an actor. Her career started in 1991, in high school, with a recurring role on "As the World Turns."

Jackie "Moms" Mabley was the first woman to headline solo at the Apollo Theater

The comic's act was based on a classic archetype: the fed-up mother who was going to tell it to you straight. She perfected her craft on the Chitlin Circuit, where she became a cultural icon in the Black community, and then had significant mainstream success starting in the 1960s.

Roosevelt resigned from a prominent women's organization after it barred a Black singer from performing

When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Marian Anderson to perform at their Washington hall in 1939 because she was Black, Roosevelt publicly cut ties with the group. She worked to arrange an alternative outdoor concert for Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, which drew a crowd of 75,000.

Billboard's early music charts were racially segregated

In 1942, the publication introduced the Harlem Hit Parade chart, listing the top 10 records sold at select record stores in the majority-Black borough of New York. In 1945, it changed the chart’s name to Most Played Juke Box Race Records, using the music industry term (“race record”) that identified recordings by Black artists, even if they played music markedly similar to the white artists on the other charts.

2025 marked the first time in 35 years a hip-hop song wasn't in the top 40

The Billboard Hot 100 chart dated October 25, 2025, didn't have any rap or hip-hop songs in its top 40 singles, something that hadn't happened since Feb. 2, 1990. One explanation is a Billboard methodology change, and another is Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl."

Prince pioneered what would come to be known as 'the Minneapolis Sound'

Inspired by eclectic artists like Sly and the Family Stone, as well as lesser-known mentors and peers in the Twin Cities, Prince blended R&B, rock, pop, new wave, soul, funk, punk, and more, creating a sound that defied easy categorization.

Tom Robbins wrote comedy for the counterculture

Robbins passed away at the age of 92, leaving behind a catalog filled with surreal and comic explorations of the American counterculture. But his early success led some to disregard the prophetic and nuanced storytelling in his books.

Nina Simone's childhood home was preserved in 2017

Four visual artists purchased the home in Troy, North Carolina, in 2017 to preserve it as an arts space. The house is where Simone, a jazz legend and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, learned to play piano.

An early Sly and the Family Stone live recording was discovered in 2002

A live recording of the legendary funk band in 1967—shortly before their mainstream breakthrough—was found in 2002 by two of the band's unofficial archivists. However, the full recording, "The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967," wasn't released until 2025.

Motown Records used the assembly line for songwriting

In the 1960s, Motown Records was the world's most reliable rock 'n' roll label and the home of the Supremes. That success was largely due to its songwriting process, a finely tuned assembly line model inspired by Motown owner Berry Gordy's time working at the Ford Motor Company.

Sylvester's 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)' is a definitive LGBTQ+ anthem

The 1978 dance hit was all about self-acceptance, inspired by the artist's difficult experience growing up gay in a Pentecostal church. The song has influenced numerous contemporary artists and inspired an off-Broadway musical.

Grace Hopper won the Data Processing Management Association's 'Man of the Year' award

The inaugural recipient of the award—symbolic of the male-dominated nature of computer science—was honored in 1969 for her contributions to the development of COBOL and the first compiler. Hopper would also become the first woman from any country and the first American to be recognized as a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.

When Beyoncé had a last name

Before she was the mononymous superstar, Beyoncé Knowles was one-fourth of Destiny’s Child, the biggest girl group of the 2000s. This oral history of the group’s early days delves into their first hit and why two members were suddenly dismissed after the release of the group’s second album. Read it here.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Langston Hughes performed with Muddy Waters at the Newport Jazz Fest

Hughes became involved with the Rhode Island music festival in 1956, sensing an opportunity to introduce the predominantly white audience to Black culture. In 1960, he helped book Muddy Waters for a blues session that featured the music alongside Hughes' poetic explanation of its history. The final song of the set, "Goodbye Newport Blues," found Waters' pianist singing lyrics Hughes had written earlier that day.

Viral pop artists create systems of participation, not just music

Musicologist (and Swift expert) Paula Clare Harper weighs in on the factors that make music go viral. Tracks designed for shareability that feed well into content algorithms on streaming platforms are able to grow in popularity, with traditional human gatekeepers sidelined.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.