History of Hip-Hop Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

History of Hip-Hop - Essay Example This essay begins from explanation that the music that is known to us today as hip-hop was then called disco rap. It was a man named Keith Cowboy, a rapper with the band Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five that coined the famous term â€Å"Hip-hop†. The term â€Å"hip-hop† that is analyzed in the first part of the essay was used for the first time in print by Steven Hagar, an author in his work the Village Voice in the year 1984. But this does not imply that the Keith Cowboy was the true pioneer of hip-hop music and culture, but on the contrary, hip-hop was there even before Cowboy was born, only then it was known by a different name. This essay tries to trace the history of hip-hop. And for that one will need to go about four decades back to the 1970’s, to the city of Bronx. The essay describes the history of the music genre to 21th century and to the times when the rappers started incorporating serious issues into their lyrics. The Jamaican born Clive Campbe ll who later famously came to be known as Kool Herc or DJ Kool Herc can be said to be the ‘godfather‘ of hip-hop music. Essay focuses not only on his impact to the genre, but also provides the reader with detailed analysis on the 80s and 90s history of hip-hop. The 80’s saw a dramatic change in the hip-hop scenario. The hip-hop of the 70’s got more complex as it developed more. A glance of Hip-Hop through the 80’s, the 90’s and the new Millennia is also described by the researcher. In concluion, the researcher suggests to enjoy the present scenario of hip-hop music and what will follow next.... MC would just go on about pairing nonsensical rhyming words, making a clown of their friends and enemies with their witty words, hence taking the shape of folk music. It was later, that the rappers started incorporating serious issues into their lyrics. (History, n.d.) DJ Kool Herc the Pioneer of Hip-Hop The Jamaican born Clive Campbell who later famously came to be known as Kool Herc or DJ Kool Herc can be said to be the 'godfather 'of hip-hop music. He was born in Jamaica on April 16th 1955 and was a Jamaican DJ by profession. The credit for making hip-hop music what it is today goes to DJ Kool Herc. He was the one to experiment with the segregation of the instrumental part of a record and give more emphasis to the drumbeat or the "break". He used two turn tables, a set up used by the DJs and the same record in each of the turn tables hence elongating the break of the beat. This method of breaking the beat of the hard funk and rock records and mixing them with Latin percussion then formed and still forms the basis of hip-hop music. Later Kool Herc used dancers to dance in tune to his prolongated breaks and guess what, there were break-dancer. Kool Herc influenced many other greats of hip-hop including the Afrika Bambaataa and Joseph Saddler a.k.a. Grandmaster Flash who later starte d DJ-ing in Kool's fashion. It was due to Kool's impact that Bambaataa a notorious general one timer of the Black Spades gang in Bronx converted himself and his followers into the non-violent group of Zulu Nation. Of this transition period Steven Hagar writes, "For over five years the Bronx had lived in constant terror of street gangs. Suddenly, in 1975, they disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived. This happened because something better came along to replace the gangs. That