Hip-hop music also known as rap music has been around since the 1970’s. The United States had heard the music which focused on rhyming while speaking the words. This type of music generally consisted of dance beat music and words of lifestyle. This new style of music had formed its own culture and category in the music industry. Many rappers and hip-hop artists were from an African American heritage. There were several techniques that were born because of the era of hip-hop. The music had created DJ’s scratching records to make different sounds while the artists performed rap songs. The sound was different and many people had begun imitating the sounds of scratching records.
The hip-hop and rap music had intrigued people to try a new form of dancing. The music related a uniqueness of the sound it offered to dancers and club atmospheres. The new style of dance was referred to as break dancing. This type of dancing was related to the rap music era. Beatboxing was another form of music that was associated with rap music. This was a way that rap music could explore other sounds entwined in the music sound. People who make noises with their mouths when the rap music was playing and it gave the music a different sound effect. The outbreak of graffiti became huge in this time frame. People felt they could paint and draw on walls on the streets to symbolize their identity and skills. Graffiti is normally performed with paint and the art work is of pictures or words that relate to the artist. The first record that came out involving rap music was called Rappers Delight. The 1980’s is when rap and hip-hop music became extremely popular.
Rappers like Tupac Shakur was very popular until is murder in the mid- 1990’s. He rapped to songs that were personal to him and spoke volumes to the listeners of the music industry. He wrote, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” . Many of the rap and hip hop artists wrote their songs from experience life and poverty. The music has evolved over the years with new sounds, techniques and styles of rap. The present day rap artists like Flo Rider have presented a song called I cry. This song has a different sound than Tupac Shakur. The rap styles are more dominant than they were 30 years ago.
The rappers who paved the road for future rappers had changed how music was interpreted, sung, and composed. There was a controversy because of the types of songs that were being made and the messages that were being portrayed. Some of the rap artists would talk about drugs, sex, prison, crime, violence, and gangs. People were not happy with their kids listening to this type of music, and the message that it displayed to the influenced children.
Hip-Hop artists like Janet Jackson had a huge impact on the style and sound that type of music portrayed. Janet and Tupac had played in a movie together and had sung in similar manners. Janet was a Hip-Hip icon and Tupac was a rising star of Rap. Not every rap or hip-hop sound is similar. Every sound, song, and artists have a different sound and technique that brings a uniqueness in the music that they are producing. People who hear these songs can pick up on the differences that make them their own style and category.
The artists were not singing and rapping about prisons, drugs and sex to influence the young generation. They sang about these experience in their lives and wanted to tell their own story no matter how dramatic and violent. It was a way of expression through music.
Work Cited
Shakur, Tupac. "The Rose That Grew From Concrete." All Poetry (2015): 1. Web.
