Hip Hop Essays - African-American Culture, Hip Hop, Rapping

hip hop Hip-Hop is one of the newest forms of music. It has expanded and is now the most popular form of music for people ages 11-25. In the last 2 years, hip-hop is the most lucrative form of music. It has sold billions of records and has made record companies billions of dollars. Hip-Hop was started in New York City in the late 70s by the cities youth. Hip-Hop was more than just music, it was a culture. It involved many things such as style, of dress, break dancing (a new form of dancing) and the most contraversial, grafitti(a form of art ). All of these aspects are part of the hip-hop culture. Hip-Hop was influenced by many different forms of music such as Rhythm and blues, Rock-n-Roll and Jazz. At parties the disc jockey would have two turntables(phonographs) and a mixer. He would play two different records at the same time creating a whole new sound. Soon poetry was added to hip-hop. While the Dj was creating a new sound, the poet or emcee would say poetry over the beat. This marked the signature sound for hip-hop. In the beginning hip-hop was looked at as just a fad that would eventually die out. But it proved different. It soon became popular all throughtout the city and was them called rap or Rhythm and Poetry. The first rap record to be released was by a group called Sugar Hill Gang and was called Rappers Delight. This record did exceptionally well. The success of this record led to the release of many other record on independent labels. Major record labels seen the success of these records and began signing rap artist. Hip-Hop gain even more success for they were able to get their product around displayed around the country. Even with all the success Rap artist were still not look at as important artist to major record labels. In 1993 Hip-Hop was finally looked at as a big money maker in the music industry. It became known world wide. Now Hip-Hop is the main money maker in the music industry. It grossed over 2 billion dollars in sells in 1998, topping all other forms of music. This