Intro para: A cultural movement that started in the AA community and moved mainstream. Constituents of hip hop: graffiti art, break dancing, DJing (cutting and scratching), and rapping or emceeing. It was a subculture within the African American culture. But in the past 3 decades it has evolved beyond both its original creative forms and its target audience.
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Roots of hip hop - Roots lie in the African American community. Always had some form of verbal jousting to accompany rhymes. Early 70's. KOOL HERE. Jamaican DJ moved to South Bronx. Talking over reggae, his old style, NY didn't like, so he tried it with popular music. Emceeing served to involve the crowd by acknowledging them. This would later become rap. Lovebug Starski (or DJ Hollywood) came up with the term "hip hop". .
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Evolution: early-mid 80s. Afrika Bambaataa. Chief Rocker Busy Bee. Grandmaster Flash. Emceeing started as ways to draw the crowd's attention, to involve them in the process of DJing. It became more and more popular. Rap does not require expensive equipment, but only practice, anywhere, anytime. Its only requirement is that it rhymes with a good beat. It became a popular form of self-expression.
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Mainstream artists who popularized the breakdancing aspect of hip-hop: MJ, sister Janet J. Paula Abdul. One of the first popular white rappers, Vanilla Ice. The evolution continued as the style went mainstream. The music distribution channels were more conducive to rap than to other aspects of the hip hop culture, so rap became dominant. Artists like Notorious BIG and Puff Daddy made a lot of money, and were followed by a diverse cross-section of music fans not limited to African Americans. Eminem is the latest talked-about phenomenon; it is the first time ever that a white rapper is able to break into the upper ranks of hip hop. His Hollywood adventure, "8 Mile", not only is a further evolutionary step but also introduced a large number of people to the hip hop/rap battle scenes, the current form of the original emceeing garage contests.