Hip-Hop is a streetwise musical flavor by extracting rhythms and melodies from existing records and mixing them up with poetry chronicling life in the neighborhoods. It started in the early 1970s in the neighborhoods of the South Bronx located in New York. Gifted teenagers with plenty of imagination began to forge this style from poetry and everyday life. Through television shows like BET's Rap City and Yo! MTV Raps and a succession of Hollywood movies, hip-hop gained millions of new fans across America, in places far removed from the genre's Bronx roots. It spread to nearly every continent gaining more cultural significance as the years rolled by. Today it is one of the most potent and successful musical forms of the 20th Century.
Hip-Hop is the voice of a generation that refused to be silenced by urban poverty, a local phenomenon fueled with so much passion and truth it could not help but reach the entire word. Like every musical genre that came before, hip-hop has its pioneers, artists who were essential in defining and popularizing the art form. Rap is a talking in rhyme to the rhythm of a beat. Hip-hop is a culture, a way of life for a society of people who identify, love and cherish rap, break dancing, DJ'ing and graffiti. Hip-Hop spilled out of the ghetto and became a popular form of music. From the housing projects, hip-hop spread onto the streets and subways, taking root in Bronx clubs like the Savoy Manor Ballroom, Ecstasy Garage, Club 371, The Disco Fever, and the T- Connection. From there, it spread across western states of the country like Los Angeles. Finally, It migrated to New Orleans, where a whole South Coast hip-hop scene developed, sporting its own musical style. Down-South rappers expressed themselves more different from East Coast and West Coast rappers. Southern rap is mostly made up of hardcore rap because of gangster-like roles. For instance, in southern New Orleans, we would have rappers like Lil Wayne or Master P and in western, Los Angeles there is rappers like Mac 10 and Ice Cube.