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Overview

As both a musical genre and a mass culture movement, hip-hop was developed in the United States by inner-city African American and Latino American youth in the Bronx borough of New York City during the 1970s. Since then, the genre has developed more complex styles and spread around the world.

Be ready to:

Describe the four elements of hip-hop and explain their significance to hip-hop.

Identify members of the holy trinity of hip-hop and understand nonviolent ethos.

Name two individuals responsible for establishing the DJ as an authority figure.

Define gangsta rap, including notable artists and their songs.

Articulate how and why new jack swing and other hybrids emerged during the late 1980s.

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The Holy Trinity of Hip-Hop Culture (Continued)

Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Sadler on January 1, 1958), born in Barbados in 1958, but raised in the South Bronx, is the earliest and most important innovator of the turntable, the crossfader, and other techniques and technologies associated with the process of transforming the turntable into an indelible instrument of sound production.

DJ Kool Herc's break-beats concept was taken further by Grandmaster Flash, as it helped to bring hip-hop into the mainstream. Observing how Herc would occasionally miss beats while going between one turntable and another, Flash invented a way to shift turntables and keep the music playing without missing or skipping a beat. A wizard at electronics, Grandmaster Flash invented the one-ear headphone that allowed him to hear the music playing on one turntable while pre-cueing the following recording and thus avoid missing or skipping a musical beat.

Grandmaster Flash

Grandmaster Flash performing in 1999

Furthermore, as a student of electronics, Flash, as Keyes reports, "later invented an apparatus allowing him to cue-up a record while the other is played through the speakers. He accomplished this with an external amplifier, headphones (later a one-ear headphone), and a single-pole, double-throw switch, which he glued to his audio-mixer" (2002, 58).

Drawing on his understanding of turntable techniques, Flash also became an innovator of two other techniques, backspinning and punch-phrasing. Backspinning requires the use of two turntables with the same record; the DJ spins a record counterclockwise back to a specific part of the recording, repeating the process on the second record, thereby creating a loop-like effect. Punch-phrasing, also known as phasing, occurs when the DJ accents a particular segment of a record while playing a second recording on another turntable aided by the turntable's crossfader switch.

Grandmaster Flash back in the Bronx Strictly Vinyl

Another turntable technique, scratching, was invented by one of Flash's protégés, Grand Wizard Theodore . Scratching involves moving a record back-and-forth in a rhythmic matter while the tone arm's needle remains in the record's groove, creating a scratch-like sound.

Grand Wizard Theodore, inventor of scratch, talks about hip-hop DJing with Mark Katz

Scratching

Rakim

The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious...There was an integrity that people respected.

Quincy Jones

I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of Black music in America.