How It All Started

Hip-Hop’s origin is shadowed and often confused because of the current sexist, violent, and vulgar lyrics that currently pass for mainstream rap music.

Little is brought up on how hip-hop was a developed on self-expression from the ghetto youth emitting their everyday struggles into music, dance, and art.

Three overlooked interconnected events that each influenced the evolution of Hip-Hop were turntables, break dancing, and graffiti.

Hip-Hop’s early development is deeply rooted in Jamaican culture. Immigrants and slaves that were singers and poets, known as griots, brought their style of chanting over rhythmic beats that would eventually transform into modern day Hip-Hop. (Rhodes, The Evolution of Rap Music in the United States)

 African American musicians such as DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa were innovators of manipulating turntables to emphasize the “break” in a song. This technique was developed into what we know today as creating “beats.” (Reynolds, Pop View) Performers who danced to these “breaks” coined themselves the name “break dancers” or “b-boys.” 

Bambaataa founded and organized one of the first break dance crews known as The Zulu Kings.

Kool Herc hosted parties in Morris Heights, Bronx, where break dancers would congregate in a circle trying to best the next man’s dance move.

This was the youth’s response to settling arguments between rival groups instead of resorting to violence.

This was also a time were women expressed themselves through music and break dancing as well.

MC Sha-Rock was the first female emcee and the first female break dancer to send hip-hop mainstream.  

Sha-Rock was one of four members of Funky Four Plus One and is the creator of the word “b-girl.”

Early hip-hop opened a creative gateway for ghetto youth to express themselves in non-violent alternatives, but that would soon change with the uprising of “gangster rap.”

Gangster rap promoted the use of drugs, alcohol, violence, domestic abuse, and the objectification of women through rappers’ lyrics. Their lyrics took aim at women labeling them “hoes” and “bitches” belittling them to animals.

This “ugly side” of hip-hop, as I like to think of it, is magnified to be viewed as what hip-hop represents.

The unspoken reality about these vulgar lyrics is that they were verbal manifestations of the hardships rappers and ghetto youth encounter daily.

The west coast rappers that brought this gangster lifestyle into the media spotlight were N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitudes), Snoop Dogg, and DJ Quik.

N.W.A. exploded into the hip hop scene with their hit “Fuck Tha Police” off their album Straight Outta Compton.

“Fuck Tha Police” was a song responding to the L.A.P.D.’s racist acts of brutality three years prior the Rodney King video surfacing.  Regardless of being warned by the FBI, N.W.A. didn’t hold back.

Although the majority of N.W.A.’s lyrics were cut-throat, violent, and vulgar, others spoke of inner-conflicts of being an African American.

"Why not call myself a nigger?/It's better than pulling the trigger and going up the river/And then I get called nigger anyway.... I guess I'll be a nigger for life."

N.W.A. justifies the hardcore material in their lyrics by stating they’ll be judged as reckless and dangerous regardless of their actions, so they pose the question: ‘Why not become reckless and dangerous?’

These lyrics depicting everyday scenarios in the ghetto were never intended to be a message sent to the youth. Rapper and producer of N.W.A., Dr. Dre was quoted saying, "We ain't doing this shit to send out no messages.”

“We in this shit to get paid. If you say some shit that's real and people are getting into it, then you're going to get some flak," Dre continued.

Critics and listeners may refuse to believe that there is a significant message in rap lyrics due to its graphic content, but it roots from the same principle hip-hop was based on; speaking your mind.

Resources:

Light, Allan. Beating Up The Charts.Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beating-up-the-charts-19910808