HISTORY

The originators of hip hop include deejays like Disco King Mario, DJ Pete Jones, DJ Flowers, and many others. One of the amplifiers of early hip-hop, DJ Kool Herc, once said “Hip-hop is the voice of this generation. Even if you didn’t grow up in the Bronx in the ‘70s, hip-hop is there for you.” He went on to say in his 1984 book Hip Hop, "The inspiration for rap is James Brown and the album Hustler's Convention." It took decades of Black American musical styles to eventually evolve into what we know today as hip hop or rap. Today it's the most popular musical genre in the United States of America and is often dominating music charts.

In Hip Hop: A Culture of Vision and Voice, the Kennedy Center provides a detailed description of the elements of hip hop, which include the following:

MCing/Emceeing:  The lyricism. Being able to rap, or speak words as rhythms and rhymes.  More and more, MCs earned the right to grab the mic using freestyle skills to entertain and command a live audience. A “master of ceremonies” might make all the needed announcements; but the job of an MC then and now is to guide everyone’s good time with their energy, wit, and ability to interact with people on the floor. And good MCs don’t just demand the mic—the audience honors their skills by demanding they take it.  Rappers emerged as a somewhat distinct group as rap gained commercial success. They were the voices and characters that created and sold the records. In some ways, the talents and responsibilities of rappers overlap with MCs.

DJing:  The turntablism. Picking the right beat or record, spinning or playing it. A DJ’s sound system is a laboratory for making music magic. Twin turntables are standard, allowing the DJ to switch easily between songs, or spin and manipulate records in tandem to create effects or unique musical combinations. The turntables are wired to a receiver, amplifier, and earthquake-causing speakers. The DJ may use headphones to cue up the next song or song segment as the current music plays. Then he or she uses a mixer, or fader, to make transitions from one turntable to the other—hopefully without missing a beat. Today’s DJs often incorporate digitized and computerized components, as well. But most Hip-Hop purists frown on DJs who button-push preprogrammed playlists. Hip-Hop culture saves its greatest praise for inspired improvisation. Before the rise of Hip-Hop, the DJ’s basic role was relatively simple—spin records at a party, club, or on the radio. DJ Kool Herc’s keen observations changed that game. He noticed the energy on the dance floor went off the charts during the “breaks” of songs. Breaks are the instrumental sections in many pop and rhythm & blues numbers that highlight percussion and rhythm. 

Breakdancing:  The dances. B-boys and b-girls using movement to respond to the music and lyrics.

Graffiti:  The visual art. Spray painting a look or feel of the music and lyrics.  One element of Hip-Hop predates the music and dance scene itself—graffiti writing, or simply writing as the artists themselves call it. But it blossomed at the same time the music and dance scenes were finding their feet, and its wild and color-outside-the-lines improvisational style were influenced and inspired by the desire to create something new and fresh. Graffiti has been around since humans first painted, etched, or carved on rock walls. But urban youth put a new spin on it in the 1960s. In 1967, a Philadelphia teen named Darryl McCray spray painted his alias “Cornbread” wherever he could reach on walls and trains. (He was striving to impress a girl named Cynthia.) In 1968, the budding art form made the jump to New York City. The names JULIO 204, TRACY 168, and TAKI 183 became familiar sights here, there, and increasingly everywhere.

Knowledge:  The history of culture in America, and more specifically Black America.  Hip-Hop’s fifth element of “knowledge” teaches the Hip-Hop community about its identity and ways to express that identity. It places great importance on claiming a stake in one’s own education. “Knowing where YOU come from helps to show YOU where YOU are going,” writes legendary MC KRS-One. “Once you know where you come from you then know what to learn.”  (By the way, “KRS” stands for “Knowledge Reigns Supreme.”) 

Hip-Hop believes that people can take control of their lives through self-knowledge and self-expression. Knowledge influences style and technique and connects its artists under a collective Hip-Hop umbrella. It engages the world through Hip-Hop’s history, values, and ideas, and adds intellectual muscle to support and inform its music and moves and its poetry and art. Most importantly, it allows for a shared experience against an uncertain world.

EMANCIPATION

The instrumental we use for our rap in this lesson is from a song called “Decades” by 1200.  The song is about mass incarceration, which directly relates to the system of slavery.  In an article entitled “Does an Exception Clause in the 13th Amendment Still Permit Slavery?, History.com says:

The year the Civil War ended, the U.S. amended the Constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude. But it purposefully left in one big loophole for people convicted of crimes.

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Scholars, activists and prisoners have linked that exception clause to the rise of a prison system that incarcerates Black people at more than five times the rate of white people, and profits off of their unpaid or underpaid labor.

“What we see after the passage of the 13th Amendment is a couple of different things converging,” says Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.  “First, the 13th Amendment text allows for involuntary servitude where convicted of a crime.” At the same time, “black codes” in the south created “new types of offenses, especially attitudinal offenses—not showing proper respect, those types of things.”

POWER

The song “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy is an example of how hip-hop has been used to amplify the voices of people who have often felt powerless. The song talks about everything from the freedom of speech to racism in the entertainment industry. What makes hip-hop such a powerful tool for using your voice is that it is a genre heavily based on speaking. The only difference between rapping and speaking is that rapping uses rhyme and rhythm. Rappers like B.I.G. Krit, Kendrick Lamar, Common, and many others have used their raps to call for political change.

RAPPING

In our video lesson you start the beginning of rap but to finish it you need more rhyming words or a new scheme. Use the rhyme dictionary rhymezone.com to find rhymes or use the alphabet as a technique. Example: If you use the word “bee” then go down the alphabet to find other rhymes like dee, fee, gee, he, key, lee, me, knee, pea, see/sea, tee, or we. Our rhyme scheme was:

_______________ ME.
_________________ SEE.
_____________________ BE.
_______________________ FREE.
 

An example of how you could have completed this rap is:

Now they captured ME.
Jail is all I SEE.
I just wanna BE.
Out here living FREE.

You can continue rhyming with words that make the ee sound or start a new rhyming pattern by choosing a word that sounds totally different. Make sure your lines rhyming are in even numbers or it will sound off. Example: ME, SEE, BE, and FREE are 4 words in a row that rhyme, but if you used 3 words then ended with something else it wouldn’t sound complete. Try to add 12 more lines to create a full 16. These 16 lines or 16 bars are standard in hip hop. If you can’t think of a word to start each section use the example below:

_______________ ME.
_________________ SEE.
_____________________ BE.
_______________________ FREE.

_______________ GO.
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH GO?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH GO?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH GO?

_______________ DAY.
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH DAY?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH DAY?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH DAY?

_______________ JAIL.
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH JAIL?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH JAIL?
_______________ WHAT RHYMES WITH JAIL?

QUIZ

Can you make 4 lines using the rhyming words below?

STOW
SEW
FRO
YO