Hip-hop represents a realignment of America’s cultural aesthetics. “Rap is the music of necessity, of finding poetry in the c

Clive Campbell was one of the first DJs of the hip-hop culture. He was the first to use old funk records as his main play list while most DJs at the time were playing disco records in the late 1970s. DJ Kool Herc appealed more to an urban audience than to Manhattan based nightclubs. Campbell is credited with discovering the breakbeat in 1974, when a DJ takes two of the same record and switches back and forth between them in order to prolong the ‘break’, or instrumental part, of a song. The dancers often saved their best moves for the break segment thus being known as break boys, or b-boys. Herc’s innovations to DJ-ing created a totally new element in hip-hop culture, breakdancing. One impressionable youth who saw DJ Kool Herc’s shows was Afrika Bambaataa.

The revolution was kick started with the Sugarhill Gang’s hit which made its record company, Sugar Hill Records, an overnight powerhouse in a brand new market. The label enjoyed a number of successful singles including the “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 1982 which sold over one million copies worldwide. Although it made hip-hop enthusiasts ecstatic at hearing their music on the radio, they were angry by the ‘inauthenticity’ that the Sugar Hill Gang presented as hip-hop. Borrowed lyrics performed by a fabricated group. They answered Sugar Hill with an MC who called himself Kurtis Blow. The former Curtis Walker was the first b-boy to sign to a major label, Mercury Records. His song ‘The Breaks’ (1980) has been said to be the most pivotal recording in hip-hop history due to its wide audience response and exuberant lyrical phrases which modern day performers use even today to liven up a crowd. ‘The Break’ was the first million-plus, or platinum, selling single. Also, his remake of “The Night Before Christmas” entitled “Christmas Rappin’” earned him sales of 600,000 copies around the world. At a time when radio programmers were deep into the process of segregating the airwaves to a degree not seen since the pre-rock era, the true art of hip-hop was still being presented to a worldwide audience.

In its twenty years of existence, hip-hop has endured through music’s different phases like rock in the late 1980s, alternative music in the first half of the 1990s, and the reemergence of pop in the late 1990s. It has used its music to propel a movement in America’s youth. Hip-hop has “gained the most significant and most innovative cultural force since the emergence of rock’n’roll in the 1950s”(Light). Instead of creating music to cater to a certain demographic, hip-hop music caters to all demographics in the United States. In other words, unlike country music that is listened to by a select group of people, rap music is listened to and purchased by any and every race, color, and creed. It is “based on a real culture, giving it more permanence than earlier teen trends. People who want a part of hip-hop culture always have something new to latch onto, because the culture is always evolving”(Spiegler).

Breakdancers were getting notoriety. More and more of the day’s youth were learning and innovating breakdancing, or breaking. Competition is the very essence of every aspect of hip-hop, be it graffiti, MC-ing, DJ-ing. It was especially true in breaking which was welcomed by newcomers because of its innovations during the early 1980s. Breakdancing crews were widespread: Rock Steady in New York, Campbellockers in California, and Street Masters in Miami as well as countless other groups. Yet, its breakout of urban youth occurred with Charlie Ahearn’s motion picture Wild Style about the b-boy/graffiti scene in the South Bronx. The movie featured many legendary pioneers of the culture like Cold Crush Brothers, Busy Bee, Crazy Legs and the Rock Steady Crew, and Fab 5 Freddy. Around 1982 and 1983, the b-boy nation, as commonly referred to, reach its peak with mainstream exposure: Radio hits, tours, and mas

Some topics in this essay:
England People, Tupac Shakur, Public Enemy, York City, MCs Aside, Kool Herc, Enemy NWA, West Coast, Bronx York, Raising Hell, hip-hop culture, public enemy, west coast, dj kool, dj kool herc, hip-hop history, bad boy, tupac shakur, america’s youth, kool herc, sugar hill, death row records, bad boy entertainment, christopher wallace aka, sean ‘puffy’ combs,