What do you know about hip-hop? Part 2

Stylistic diversification

Pete DJ Jones, Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood and Love Bug Starski were disco-flavored early hip hop DJs. Others hip hop musicians focused on rapid-fire rhymes and more complex rhythmic schemes. Afrika Bambaataa, Paul Winley, Grandmaster Flash and Bobby Robinson were members of this group. During the transition into the early 1980s, many felt that hip hop was a novelty fad that would soon die out. This was to become a constant accusation for at least the next fifteen years.

The first hip hop recording was probably the New Jersey-based Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight in 1979. By the 1980s, all the major elements and techniques of the genre were in place. Though not yet mainstream, hip hop was by now well known among African Americans, even outside of New York City; it could be found in cities as diverse as Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, San Antonio, TX, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Houston.

Despite the genre's spreading popularity, Philadelphia was, for many years, the only city whose contributions to hip hop were valued as greatly as New York City's by fans and critics. Hip hop music was popular there at least as far back as the late 1970s (the first Philadelphia hip hop record was "Rhythm Talk", by Jocko Henderson in 1979), and the New York Times dubbed Philadelphia the "Graffiti Capital of the World" in 1971. A Philadelphia-area radio DJ, Lady B, was the first female solo hip hop artist to record music ("To the Beat Y'All", 1980). Later Schoolly D, another Philadelphia-based artist, helped invent what became known as gangsta rap.


1980s

The 1980s saw intense diversification of hip hop which developed into a more complex form. As technology evolved so did the practice of looping break into breakbeats; the emergence of samplers and sequencers allowed the beats to be manipulated with greater precision and granularity and recombined in more complex new ways than was possible with vinyl alone. In 1984, Marley Marl accidentally caught a drum machine snare hit in the sampler; this innovation was vital in the development of electro and other later types of hip hop. In 1989, DJ Mark James under the moniker "45 King", released "The 900 Number", a breakbeat track created by synchronizing samplers and vinyl.

The content evolved as well. The tales of 1970s MCs were replaced by highly metaphoric lyrics rapping over complex, multi-layered beats. Some rappers even became mainstream pop performers, including Kurtis Blow, whose appearance in a Sprite commercial made him the first hip hop musician to be considered mainstream enough to represent a major product. Another popular performer among mainstream audiences was LL Cool J, who was a success from the release of his first LP, Radio.

Hip hop was almost entirely unknown outside of the United States prior to the early 1980s. During that decade, it began its spread to every inhabited continent and became a part of the music scene in dozens of countries. In the early part of the decade, breakdancing became the first aspect of hip hop culture to reach Germany, Japan and South Africa, where the crew Black Noise established the practice before beginning to rap later in the decade. Meanwhile, recorded hip hop was released in France (Dee Nasty's 1984 Paname City Rappin') and the Philippines (Dyords Javier's "Na Onseng Delight" and Vincent Dafalong's "Nunal"). In Puerto Rico, Vico C became the first Spanish rapper, and his recorded work was the beginning of what became known as reggaeton.



Turntablism

While early hip hop arose through the decline of funk and disco while still employing their musicianship, there was the rise of artists who employed the use of the turntable as an instrument in itself. Hip hop turntablist DJs use turntable techniques such as beat mixing/matching, scratching, and beat juggling to create a base that can be rapped over. Turntablism is generally focused more on turntable technique and less on mixing. Each scratch of the turntable is considered unique due to the complex waveforms produced and employing digital sampling is considered an affront to a true Turntablist. Prominent artists included the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, The X-Ecutioners, and the Beat Junkies.