What is hip hop music?
A: Hip hop music is a genre of popular music developed in the United States.
Hip hop music is also known as what?
A: Rap music.
Who developed it?
A: Inner-city African Americans, Caribbean Americans, and Latino Americans
in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s.
What does it consist of?
A: Stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and
rhyming speech that is chanted.
It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture
defined by what four key stylistic elements?
A: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and
graffiti writing.
Other elements include what?
A: Sampling beats or bass lines from records (or synthesized beats and
sounds), and rhythmic beatboxing.
While often used to refer solely to rapping, "hip hop"
more properly denotes what?
A: The practice of the entire subculture.
The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously
with what?
A: The term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop
music.
The genre may also incorporate other elements of hip
hop culture, including what?
A: DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Hip hop as both a musical genre and a culture was
formed during the 1970s when what became increasingly popular in New York
City, particularly among African American youth residing in the Bronx?
A: Block parties.
At block parties, DJs played percussive breaks of
popular songs using what?
A: Two turntables and a DJ mixer to be able to play breaks from two copies
of the same record, alternating from one to the other and extending the
"break".
Hip hop's early evolution occurred as sampling
technology and drum machines became what?
A: Widely available and affordable.
Rapping developed as a vocal style in which the artist
does what?
A: Speaks or chants along rhythmically with an instrumental or synthesized
beat.
Hip hop music was not officially recorded for play on
radio or television until when?
A: 1979.
This was largely due to what?
A: Poverty during the genre's birth and lack of acceptance outside ghetto
neighborhoods.
Old school hip hop was the first mainstream wave of the
genre, marked by its what?
A: Its disco influence and party-oriented lyrics.
The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the
genre developed what?
A: More complex styles and spread around the world.
New school hip hop was the genre's second wave, marked
by what?
A: Its electro sound, and led into golden age hip hop, an innovative period
between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s that also developed hip hop's own album
era.
The gangsta rap subgenre, focused on what?
A: The violent lifestyles and impoverished conditions of inner-city African
American youth.
West Coast hip hop was dominated by what in the
early-mid 1990s?
A: G-funk.
East Coast hip hop was dominated by what?
A: Jazz rap, alternative hip hop, and hardcore rap.
Hip hop continued to diversify at this time with other
regional styles emerging, such as what?
A: Southern rap and Atlanta hip hop.
Hip hop became a best-selling genre in the mid-1990s
and the top-selling music genre by when?
A: 1999.
