Run-D.M.C brought hip hop to a larger audience through performances on MTV. Each of these artists is responsible for making hip hop what we know today. The names that headed up hip hop’s new school are more recognizable to a contemporary audience: Run-D.M.C, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy. The Sugarhill Gang’s song “Rapper’s Delight” (released in 1979) rocketed up the national music charts, ushering in a new wave of musicians, artists, and performers, while also introducing people around the world to this new type of music.īy the mid-1980s, hip hop had firmly entered its new school era. Towards the end of the old school hip hop era, the movement began to gain national recognition. Kool Herc also popularized rapping, which drew upon the traditions of West African griots, talking blues songs, and black power poetry, among others. Influenced by Kool Herc and his peers, hip hop deejays developed new turntable techniques, like needle dropping and scratching. Mixing percussive beats with popular dance songs, Kool Herc was instrumental in developing the sounds that became synonymous with hip hop, such as drum beats and record scratches. The first major hip hop deejay was DJ Kool Herc. Old school hip hop typically dates from the origination of the movement in the early 1970s up until the mid-1980s. Hip hop is typically broken into three phases: old school, new school, and 21st century.
New hip hop full#
In this article, we cover the full history of hip hop dance and music and include a helpful hip hop history timeline for reference. For the first few decades that the term was around, hip-hop wasn’t just about music: it also referred to art, style, dance, and philosophy. Although widely synonymous with rap music today, hip-hop actually got its start as a full-on cultural movement in the 1970s.