It’s hip-hop’s 50th birthday! Check out its evolution: born from musical breaks, it reshaped genres and cultures. A blend of self-expression, from rap to dance, even worldwide influence
It was born in the break, all those decades ago — that moment when a song's vocals dropped, instruments quieted down and the beat took the stage.Something new, coming out of something familiar.
A musical form, a culture, with reinvention as its very DNA would never, could never. Hip-hop spread, from the parties to the parks, through New York City’s boroughs and then the region, around the country and the world. Those looking for a hip-hop starting point have landed on one, turning this year into a 50th-birthday celebration.
Englewood, New Jersey youth joined in, crafting rhymes to match the beats. By 1979, they tried out as rappers for Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records. The Sugarhill Gang released"Rapper's Delight," a hit that reached number 36 on Billboard's Top 100 and even topped charts in various European countries.
“If you couldn’t sing or play an instrument, you could recite poetry and speak your mind. And so, it became accessible to every man.” “There’s so many different pockets ... so many ways to exist,” she says. “It’s not about what other people have done, you can always recreate the blueprint,” she adds. The emphasis on self-expression has also meant that over the years, hip-hop has been used as a medium for just about everything.
Other figures like Common and Kendrick Lamar have also turned to a conscious lyricism in their hip-hop, with perhaps none better known than Public Enemy, whose “Fight the Power” became an anthem when it was created for filmmaker Spike Lee's 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing," which chronicled racial tension in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. Some in hip-hop pulled no punches, using the art form and the culture as a no-holds-barred way of showcasing the troubles of their lives.
Hip-hop hasn't just been changed; it has made change. It has gone into other spaces and made them different. It strutted through the fashion world as it brought its own sensibility to streetwear. It has revitalised companies; just ask Timberland what sales were like before its work boots became de rigueur hip-hop wear.
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