Research Guides: 50 Years of Hip-Hop: Home

The Birth of Hip-Hop

Hip-Hop started as a cultural movement around the year 1970. It is an art, dance, style, and philosophy. The black collective The Last Poets released a self-titled spoken word album. Future artists would go on to use parts of this album in their own songs.

The official start of hip-hop is considered to be the party deejayed by DJ Kool Herc, for his sister's birthday. He kept records playing during the party, and mastered the technique of playing drum solos of multiple songs at the same time, otherwise known as a 'break-beat'.

In the 1970s, D.J. Kool Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell were famous for throwing parties in the rec room of their Bronx high-rise at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, which became known as the “birthplace of hip-hop.” - The New York Times

Pogrebin, Robin. “A Rapper's Delight: Hip-Hop Memorabilia Goes up for Auction.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 June 2022,

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/arts/design/kool-herc-christies-auction.html.

Old School Hip-Hop

Old school refers to Hip-Hop from its start in 1970 to the mid 1980s. Artists from this time period include DJ Kool Herc, Funky 4+1, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Many of the earliest DJs and Rappers did not record in the studio, preferring to perform in front of live audiences. Some hip-hop artists did record their music, but it remained relatively underground until 1979. This is when 'Rapper's Delight' by The Sugarhill Gang was released, and even placed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

From there rap and hip-hop started to become recognizable to mainstream audiences. IN 1980, Kurtis Blow was the first rapper to appear on natonal television. In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa, Fab 5 Freddy, and others went on an international tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcCK99wHrk0

New School Hip Hop

New School hip-hop started around 1984, with the emergence of artists such as mid1980s, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys.

The group Salt-N-Pepa made waves as one of the first major female hip-artists with their song 'Push It' in 1986. That same year, the Beastie Boys released their debut album, 'Licensed to III'.

In 1988, the group N.W.A. released 'Straight Outta Compton', one of the first hits from the west coast. N.W.A. are considered to be pioneers of the subgenre 'gangsta rap'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u31FO_4d9TY&t=1s

21st Century Hip-Hop

As the world moved into the 21st century, hip-hop continued to grow and evolve. Eminem, who had made his major label debut in 1999, continued to gain popularity for his music. Other artists in this on-going era include Nas, Jay-Z, Drake, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar.

Hip-hop artists have also continued to experiment and incorporate other genres, with 'Old Town Road' by Lil Nas X being a notable example.

Lusted, Marcia Amidon. Hip-Hop Music. Essential Library, an Imprint of Abdo Publishing, 2018.

Baker, Soren. The History of Rap and Hip-Hop. Lucent Books, 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvVfgvHucRY

Books

Hip hop matters : politics, pop culture, and the struggle for the soul of a movement by Watkins, S. Craig
Call Number: ML 3531 .W38 2005
ISBN: 9780807009826
Publication Date: 2005
The author explores the evolution of hip hop and the backlash against it, from Detroit Mayer Kwame Killpatrick, the nation's first hip hop mayor, to the reception of the music on college campuses, where debates over its misogyny thrive.
The history of rap & hip-hop by Baker, Soren
Call Number: ML 3531 .B35 2006
ISBN: 9781590187395
Publication Date: 2006
Hip-hop culture has grown from its humble beginnings in the South Bronx section of New York City into a significant and influential cultural movement. This volume examines the rich history and promising future of this musical genre. Created in the mid-1970s by poor Bronx residents with few resources, hip-hop has become a billion-dollar industry whose reach now stretches around the world. Hip-hop has influenced the way people make music, the way they dance, and the way they wear their clothes. It has also shaped people's political views and turned many people into entrepreneurs.
Hip-Hop Music by Lüsted, Marcia Amidon
Call Number: ML 3531 .L85 2018
ISBN: 9781532110306
Publication Date: 2018
Since its introduction in the 1970s, hip-hop has become a way of life. This title takes an inside look at hip-hop music. Hip-Hop Music examines the origins of many styles of hip-hop music, such as crunk and gangsta rap, and explores how they burst into the mainstream and went global. Features include a timeline, a glossary, essential facts, references, websites, source notes, and an index.
Check the technique : liner notes for hip-hop junkies by Coleman, Brian
Call Number: ML 3531 .C65 2007
ISBN: 9780812977752
Publication Date: 2007
A Tribe Called Quest . Beastie Boys . De La Soul . Eric B. & Rakim . The Fugees . KRS-One . Pete Rock & CL Smooth . Public Enemy . The Roots . Run-DMC . Wu-Tang Clan . and twenty-five more hip-hop immortals

It's a sad fact- hip-hop album liners have always been reduced to a list of producer and sample credits, a publicity photo or two, and some hastily composed shout-outs. That's a damn shame, because few outside the game know about the true creative forces behind influential masterpieces like PE's It Takes a Nation of Millions. . ., De La's 3 Feet High and Rising, and Wu-Tang's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). A longtime scribe for the hip-hop nation, Brian Coleman fills this void, and delivers a thrilling, knockout oral history of the albums that define this dynamic and iconoclastic art form.
The format- One chapter, one artist, one album, blow-by-blow and track-by-track, delivered straight from the original sources. Performers, producers, DJs, and b-boys-including Big Daddy Kane, Muggs and B-Real, Biz Markie, RZA, Ice-T, and Wyclef-step to the mic to talk about the influences, environment, equipment, samples, beats, beefs, and surprises that went into making each classic record. Studio craft and street smarts, sonic inspiration and skate ramps, triumph, tragedy, and take-out food-all played their part in creating these essential albums of the hip-hop canon.
Insightful, raucous, and addictive, Check the Technique transports you back to hip-hop's golden age with the greatest artists of the '80s and '90s. This is the book that belongs on the stacks next to your wax.
When rap music had a conscience : the artists, organizations, and historic events that inspired and influenced the "Golden Age" of hip-hop from 1987 to 1996 by McQuillar, Tayannah Lee
Call Number: ML 3531 .M37 2007
ISBN: 9781560259190
Publication Date: 2007
Rap music has many detractors. Today, it is often associated with a culture of crass materialism, sex, violence and irresponsibility. It wasn't always so. In her thorough and entertaining tour of the "golden age" of rap from 1987 to 1996, McQuillar takes us back to a time when the music voiced the social and political concerns of inner-city youth, reflected their hopes and dreams for the future, and strove to inspire positive social change. When Rap Music Had a Conscience gives us the A's- to - Z's of major groups and artists, from Arrested Development to YZ, of this creative and socially conscious age. Broadening its outlook on the culture, the book discusses the interactions of rap music with literature, film and fashion. Finally, it delves into the socio-political dimensions of Hip-Hop in the golden age, exploring the influence of events from the L.A. riots to the unearthing of the oldest human remains in Kenya, to paint a rich and fascinating picture of rap music and its diverse contexts and consequences.
To the break of dawn : a freestyle on the hip hop aesthetic by Cobb, William Jelani
Call Number: ML 3918 .R37 C63 2007
ISBN: 9780814716700
Publication Date: 2007
An inside look into the beats, lyrics, and flow of hip-hop's history
With roots that stretch from West Africa through the black pulpit, hip-hop emerged in the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s and has spread to the farthest corners of the earth. To the Break of Dawn uniquely examines this freestyle verbal artistry on its own terms. A kid from Queens who spent his youth at the epicenter of this new art form, music critic William Jelani Cobb takes readers inside the beats, the lyrics, and the flow of hip-hop, separating mere corporate rappers from the creative MCs that forged the art in the crucible of the street jam.
The four pillars of hip hop--break dancing, graffiti art, deejaying, and rapping--find their origins in traditions as diverse as the Afro-Brazilian martial art Capoeira and Caribbean immigrants' turnstile artistry. Tracing hip-hop's relationship to ancestral forms of expression, Cobb explores the cultural and literary elements that are at its core. From KRS-One and Notorious B.I.G. to Tupac Shakur and Lauryn Hill, he profiles MCs who were pivotal to the rise of the genre, verbal artists whose lineage runs back to the black preacher and the bluesman.
Unlike books that focus on hip-hop as a social movement or a commercial phenomenon, To the Break of Dawn tracks the music's aesthetic, stylistic, and thematic evolution from its inception to today's distinctly regional sub-divisions and styles. Written with an insider's ear, the book illuminates hip-hop's innovations in a freestyle form that speaks to both aficionados and newcomers to the art.
The autobiography of Gucci Mane by Mane, Gucci
Call Number: ML 420 .G9165 A3 2017
ISBN: 9781501165320
Publication Date: 2017
For the first time Gucci Mane tells his story in his own words. It is the captivating life of an artist who forged an unlikely path to stardom and personal rebirth. Gucci Mane began writing his memoir in a maximum-security federal prison. Released in 2016, he emerged radically transformed. He was sober, smiling, focused, and positive--a far cry from the Gucci Mane of years past.
Born in rural Bessemer, Alabama, Radric Delantic Davis became Gucci Mane in East Atlanta, where the rap scene is as vibrant as the dope game. His name was made as a drug dealer first, rapper second. His influential mixtapes and street anthems pioneered the sound of trap music. He inspired and mentored a new generation of artists and producers: Migos, Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Zaytoven, Mike Will Made-It, Metro Boomin.
Yet every success was followed by setback. Too often, his erratic behavior threatened to end it all. Incarceration, violence, rap beefs, drug addiction. But Gucci Mane has changed, and he's decided to tell his story.
In his extraordinary autobiography, the legend takes us to his roots in Alabama, the streets of East Atlanta, the trap house, and the studio where he found his voice as a peerless rapper. He reflects on his inimitable career and in the process confronts his dark past--years behind bars, the murder charge, drug addiction, career highs and lows--the making of a trap god. It is one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of music.
The Autobiography of Gucci Mane is a blunt and candid account--an instant classic
Hurricanes : a memoir by Ross, Rick
Call Number: ML 420 .R8793 A3 2019
ISBN: 9781335999283
Publication Date: 2019
The highly anticipated memoir from hip-hop icon Rick Ross chronicles his coming of age amid Miami's crack epidemic, his star-studded controversies and his unstoppable rise to fame.

Rick Ross is an indomitable presence in the music industry, but few people know his full story. Now, for the first time, Ross offers a vivid, dramatic and unexpectedly candid account of his early childhood, his tumultuous adolescence and his dramatic ascendancy in the world of hip-hop.
Born William Leonard Roberts II, Ross grew up "across the bridge," in a Miami at odds with the glitzy beaches, nightclubs and yachts of South Beach. In the aftermath of the 1980 race riots and the Mariel boatlift, Ross came of age at the height of the city's crack epidemic, when home invasions and execution-style killings were commonplace. Still, in the midst of the chaos and danger that surrounded him, Ross flourished, first as a standout high school football player and then as a dope boy in Carol City's notorious Matchbox housing projects. All the while he honed his musical talent, overcoming setback after setback until a song called "Hustlin'" changed his life forever.
From the making of "Hustlin'" to his first major label deal with Def Jam, to the controversy surrounding his past as a correctional officer and the numerous health scares, arrests and feuds he had to transcend along the way, Hurricanes is a revealing portrait of one of the biggest stars in the rap game, and an intimate look at the birth of an artist.
From staircase to stage : the story of Raekwon and the Wu-Tang Clan by Raekwon
Call Number: ML 420 .R235 A3 2021
ISBN: 9781982168728
Publication Date: 2021
Legendary wordsmith Raekwon the Chef opens up about his journey from the staircases of Park Hill in Staten Island to sold-out stadiums around the world with Wu-Tang Clan in this revealing memoir--perfect for fans of The Autobiography of Gucci Mane and Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter .

There are rappers who everyone loves and there are rappers who every rapper loves, and Corey Woods, a.k.a. Raekwon the Chef, is one of the few who is both. His versatile flow, natural storytelling, and evocative imagery have inspired legions of fans and a new generation of rappers. Raekwon is one of the founding members of Wu-Tang Clan, and his voice and cadence are synonymous with the sound that has made the group iconic since 1991.

Now, for the first time, Raekwon tells his whole story, from struggling through poverty in order to make ends meet to turning a hobby into a legacy. The Wu-Tang tale is dense, complex, and full of drama, and here nothing is off-limits: the group's origins, secrets behind songs like "C.R.E.A.M." and "Protect Ya Neck," and what it took to be one of the first hip-hop groups to go from the underground to the mainstream. Raekwon also delves deep into the making of his meticulous solo albums--particularly the classic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx --and talks about how spirituality and fatherhood continue to inspire his unstoppable creative process.

A celebration of perseverance and the power of music, From Staircase to Stage is a master storyteller's lifelong journey to stay true to himself and his roots.
Original Gangstas by Ben Westhoff
Call Number: ML 3531 .W475 2016
ISBN: 9780316383899
Publication Date: 2016
A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever -- Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records, which in turn transformed Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur into superstars. Ben Westhoff explores how this group of artists shifted the balance of hip-hop from New York to Los Angeles. He shows how N.W.A.'s shocking success lead to rivalries between members, record labels, and eventually a war between East Coast and West Coast factions. In the process, hip-hop burst into mainstream America at a time of immense social change, and became the most dominant musical movement of the last thirty years. At gangsta rap's peak, two of its biggest names -- Tupac and Biggie Smalls -- were murdered, leaving the surviving artists to forge peace before the genre annihilated itself. Featuring extensive investigative reporting, interviews with the principal players, and dozens of never-before-told stories, Original Gangstas is a groundbreaking addition to the history of popular music.
Raw by Lamont "U-God" Hawkins
Call Number: ML 420 .U08 A3 2018
ISBN: 9781250191168
Publication Date: 2018
The explosive, never-before-told story behind the historic rise of the Wu-Tang Clan, as told by one of its founding members, Lamont "U-God" Hawkins. "It's time to write down not only my legacy, but the story of nine dirt-bomb street thugs who took our everyday life--scrappin' and hustlin'and tryin' to survive in the urban jungle of New York City--and turned that into something bigger than we could possibly imagine, something that took us out of the projects for good, which was the only thing we all wanted in the first place." --Lamont "U-God" Hawkins The Wu-Tang Clan are considered hip-hop royalty. Remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story--until now. Here, for the first time, the quiet one speaks. Lamont "U-God" Hawkins was born in Brownsville, New York, in 1970. Raised by a single mother and forced to reckon with the hostile conditions of project life, U-God learned from an early age how to survive. And surviving in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was no easy task--especially as a young black boy living in some of the city's most ignored and destitute districts. But, along the way, he met and befriended those who would eventually form the Clan's core: RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, and Masta Killa. Brought up by the streets, and bonding over their love of hip-hop, they sought to pursue the impossible: music as their ticket out of the ghetto. U-God's unforgettable first-person account of his journey, from the streets of Brooklyn to some of the biggest stages around the world, is not only thoroughly affecting, unfiltered, and explosive but also captures, in vivid detail, the making of one of the greatest acts in American music history.
Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter by Jackson, Curtis
Call Number: ML 420 .A02 A3 2020
ISBN: 9780062953803
Publication Date: 2020-04-28
For the first time, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson opens up about his amazing comeback--from tragic personal loss to thriving businessman and cable's highest-paid executive--in this unique self-help guide, his first since his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The 50th Law. In his early twenties Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent rose to the heights of fame and power in the cutthroat music business. A decade ago the multi-platinum selling rap artist decided to pivot. His ability to adapt to change was demonstrated when he became the executive producer and star of Power, a high-octane, gripping crime drama centered around a drug kingpin's family. The series quickly became "appointment" television, leading to Jackson inking a four-year, $150 million contract with the Starz network--the most lucrative deal in premium cable history. Now, in his most personal book, Jackson shakes up the self-help category with his unique, cutting-edge lessons and hard-earned advice on embracing change. Where The 50th Law tells readers "fear nothing and you shall succeed," Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter builds on this message, combining it with Jackson's street smarts and hard-learned corporate savvy to help readers successfully achieve their own comeback--and to learn to flow with the changes that disrupt their own lives.

50 Years of Hip-Hop

Fundamental Elements of Hip-Hop

Films

Further Resources

The Birth of Hip-Hop

Old School Hip-Hop

New School Hip Hop

21st Century Hip-Hop

Books