Inner City
Learn About Hip Hop Music
Hip-hop music has been the catalyst for the whole hip-hop culture, it’s a combination of beats and superimposed vocals, similar to rapping, in fact hip hop is often mistaken for rap music. However, hip-hop is a lot more than just rap music, it comes with a rich history and has influenced the youth culture significantly.
Hip Hop music was "invented" in the early seventies in New York by a Jamacian DJ called DJ Kool Herc, and from its roots in the US, it has gone on to influence music around the globe.
Herc moved from Reggae to funk, disco and rock, and took the short percussive breaks and started to extend them with the help of an audio mixer and two records. His unique brand of music soon became a hit, with musicians and performers (emcees) taking his beats and superimposing their vocals over them.
Hip hop music is used by the musicians and performers to confront issues such as racism and poverty, taking stories of inner city Afro Americans who have lived the dream, working their ways out of the poverty and discrimination culture to become successes.
By the mid-70's, hip hop music had been divided into two distinct groups. One group focused on dancing and the other side focused on rapid style rhymes. As the 1980′s came round, simple vocals were replaced with far more complex lyrics rapping over the multi layered beats.
The 1990's saw the start of what became known as gangster rap which glorified the gang culture that was growing either side of the Atlantic. Hip Hop by this time had truly become a significant genre in mainstream music, influencing a wide variety of popular music.
Following the 1980's, elements of hip hop have been used in a real diversity of music genres. Whole generations have been influenced by hip hop music and as a result fashion too has been strongly influenced, with a whole range of hip hop clothing having been developed.
If you’re a hip hop fan, and are interested in making your own beats or producing your own hip hop music, take a look at this beat making software, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to do!
Inner City – Good Life (HQ)
