The History Of Hip Hop

The history of hip hop is one that has been born upon the back of a group of silenced youth. Inner city youth felt that not only were they not getting a fair shake at a quality life but that they weren’t even being heard. Our history shows that when expression is suppressed something bad, oftentimes aggressive is about to follow. In the case of hip hop thankfully the aggression was not expressed in the form of violence but rather in a movement that would change not only the urban areas close to its birth but our society as a whole!

In the beginning, hip hop wasn’t even regarded as hip hop. In the mid to late 70s young black and Latino youths from the Bronx were looking for a way to express themselves and started to have open microphones at house events which they would use to perform a type of poetry over any song that was currently playing. This was the creation of rap music. Although rapping might seem simple to a novice the fact of the matter was not anybody had the skill to express themselves in this manner. So another form of self expression related to rap was born in the form of break dancing. individuals might be found not only at events but on street corners with hardly anything more then a boom box and a piece of cardboard, dancing for self expression and even for money in some cases. The final form of expression is the most controversial one! Some youth couldn’t rap nor might they dance but they had to find an outlet or a way in which they might furthermore be a part of this movement. What they did have was the ability to draw. This art form which to most is considered graffiti was now renamed “tagging” in the hip hop community. Whether you agree with the way in which they went about showing off their skill, no one might take away the fact that they truly were skill ed. Tagging was when the artist of one clique or crew would create a symbol or phrase that was now his group’s logo and spray paint this on subway trains. Why subway trains and not just walls? Well, the fact that the subway system ran throughout the city was advertisement of his crew to the other respective crews. It became a game in the sense that if you might place your tag over top another groups tag you would have essentially performed the hip hop version of a check mate!

So what is hip hop? Hip hop is the combination of all three of the above mentioned facets. Rapping, break dancing and graffiti art are all equal forms of the hip hop movement. Some could argue the message that some hip hop sends but the fact that these men and women are artists isn’t even debatable. Hip hop has been a feeling much before it ever became a means of expression and it will stay a way of life long after all of the forms expression is gone!