American culture

Hip hop

Hip hop music is a style of popular music. It is composed of two main components: rapping (MC'ing) and DJing (audio mixing and scratching); along with breakdancing and graffiti (tagging), these are the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement which began among African Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York City in the early 1970s.

The terms rap and rap music are often used to describe hip hop music; the terms rap music and hip hop music are generally synonymous, although rap music is usually not used to describe hip hop songs without vocals.

Many hip hop heads, as participants of the culture are called, arbitrarily separate the two terms by labeling the more commercial recordings as rap music, and the more underground-based recordings as hip hop music. Hip hop music is also erroneously used at times to describe related genres of music, such as contemporary R&B, which are primarily sung; while singing is present in several hip-hop songs, the main vocal is always rapped.

Most typically, hip hop consists of one or more rappers who chant semi-autobiographic tales, often relating to a fictionalized counterpart, in an intensely rhythmic lyrical form, making abundant use of techniques like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme.

The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually referred to as a "beat" because of the emphasis on rhythm, performed by a DJ, a record producer, or one or more instrumentalists. This beat is often created using a sample of the percussion break of another song, usually a funk, rock, or soul recording. In addition to the beat, other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes, a track can be made up of just the beat by itself, as a showcase of the skills of the DJ or producer.

Hip hop arose in New York City when DJs began isolating the percussion break from funk or disco songs. The role of the emcee (MC) arose to introduce the DJ and the music, and to keep the audience excited.

The MCs began by speaking between songs, giving exhortations to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually, this practice came to be more stylized, and was known as rapping.

By 1979, hip hop had become a commercially recorded music genre, and began to enter the American mainstream. It also began its spread across the world. In the 1990s, a form called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world.