The History Of

By Naomi Diaz

Ahhh yes; our beloved era of the 90s’, the realest of them all. It was a time where an abundance of powerful, beautiful culture was put into the spotlight of the media, becoming the iconic, unforgettable trend of the century. e baggy clothing, name-embezzled chains, blinding grillz, hoop, and bamboo earrings with nails that go for miles that everyone loved to rock way-back-when are massive products of Black, African American, and Latino culture. Now, let’s backpedal; where did all of this exactly come from?

Hip-hop is the cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s; the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and in uential art form.

Allow me to break it down; let’s take a look at the actual words: “hip-hop.” e rst word, “hip,” originates from the Senegalese language known as Wolof, stemming from the word, “hipi.” is term directly translates “to open one’s eyes and see,” and it is typically used as a term of enlightenment.

e second word, “hop,” originates from the English language, signifying movement. We bundle all of these components together, thus producing the term, “hip-hop,” essentially meaning “intelligent movement.” ere are 5 essential pillars to hip-hop, cra ed by their founding fathers in New York City: deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” (pronounced“em-ceeing”) meaning “master of ceremony”. Rhyme; correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry. Gra ti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing.” Break dancing, or “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language. And lastly, “knowledge of self/consciousness.”

Of course, we can never truly appreciate what we presently know without tuning into the deep history of hip-hop: the godparents. e beginnings of the dancing, rapping, and deejaying components of hip-hop were bound together by the shared environment in which these art forms evolved.

DJ Kool Herc and other pioneering hip-hop deejays such as Grand Wizard eodore, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash isolated and extended the break beat, con-

Read the full article here: On e.org juring a revolution that would extend beyond imaginable. Flourishing in an instant, hip-hop culture came into the media with a boom; it quickly became a stunning image in the wake of the 80s’. Hip-hop artists from places other than New York City began to make their mark.

Later on in the 90s, lyricists on the come up found their spotlight to bathe in and mics to split amplifying revelations of rapid re. Never failing to taint the stage oor with their in uence, their titles always remain iconic on the tongues of the children of the generations. Not to mention the unforgettable hip-hop groups that took form in in uence of the paradigmatic soloists that roamed before them. is tradition of evolution in the art embedded in the art as a whole symbolizes unity in which hip-hop perpetuates, particularly applied to communities of color.

As the century turned, the music industry began to weaken and entered a crisis. Hip-hop su ered at least as severely as or worse than other genres, with sales tumbling down throughout the decade. Along with this setback, the industry experienced a new level of hate and backlash. Su ering with the perpetuated negative stereotypes from society, hip-hop came face-to-face with the pop industry, competing to reserve its place in a spotlight. It was a trivial process to attempt to plow through this su ocating turmoil; however, simultaneously, it eventually solidi ed its standing as the dominant in uence on global pop and youth culture. With all of the pressures of accessibility the intricacy and subversive nature of earlier MCs had largely been pushed to the “alternative”/“underground” scene upside-down. Regardless of hip-hop’s own internal struggles, the music’s global impact constantly continued to expand. In the wake of the early 2000s’, tons of new lyricists emerged into the genre that we know of today. e revolutionary contributions of these legends gi ed the later generations this unforgettable culture. is is a gi , allowing us the ability to identify multitudes of aspects categorized under this culture in the present. Although hip-hop now will never– and I repeat NEVER– emulate how it used to be back-in-theday, this long history will extend onward, lacing this era with descendants that continue to carry out this beautiful blessing on the planet.