Half a Century of Hip-Hop

On August 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, Dj Kool Herc organized what has, by now, come to be firmly established as the first hip-hop party and the beginning of this genre's history. Obviously, one could spend hours racking one's brain trying to identify other possible starting points, but since Dj Kool Herc is (almost) unanimously regarded as a founding father, and since even if we were to change this date we would still end up choosing one shortly before or after it, we can take August 11, 1973 as the day hip-hop arrived in our world. Since then, that seed has grown first into a sapling, then a small garden, and finally a forest.

After the founders – among whom we can count at least Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, alongside the aforementioned Dj Kool Herc, forming the genre's sacred trinity – and their block parties, came the first singles, which would go on to become essential to the genre's history – we'll mention four: "The Breaks" (1980) by Kurtis Blow; "Rapper's Delight" (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang; "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash; "Planet Rock" (1982) by Afrika Bambaataa. The varied experiences of these early artists coalesced, within a few years, into a scene that already, by the early 1980s, boasted a remarkable wealth of voices, ideas and diverse content. What had been a performative music, created onstage by deejays and emcees, became a matter of real interest to the record industry precisely in this period, as increasingly distinct subgenres and styles began to explode. The golden age, which usually spans much of the late Eighties and early Nineties, features, among many others, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, EPMD and Beastie Boys.

From the West Coast, hip-hop then multiplied: first with the gangsta, or more broadly west-coast, sound – of acts like N.W.A. (also counting Dr. Dre and Ice Cube as solo artists), Ice-T, Mobb Deep and the genre's founder Schoolly D – and then with the southern contingent – among whom we can mention OutKast, Three 6 Mafia and Goodie Mob. And then there are the national scenes outside the United States, including the Italian one and its thirty years of history, though no comprehensive approach to the genre can avoid also tackling the French, English, German and Canadian scenes, as well as those of South America and, why not, the major Asian nations. The seed of hip-hop has spread across the world, taking root in national musical cultures with often unexpected and, at best, highly distinctive results.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg, because in rushing to summarize, names risk being left out that deserve extensive treatment, for the most varied of reasons: the maximalist genius Kanye West and the enfant prodige Nas; the "live-band" hip-hop of The Roots and the "instrumental" hip-hop of Dj Shadow; the saga of the Wu-Tang Clan and the stylish billionaire persona of Jay-Z; the white superstar Eminem, whose face is one of the most recognizable in pop culture of the last thirty years, and the masked, prematurely departed Mf Doom; the towering (in every sense) Notorious B.I.G., the magnetic Tupac and the wiry Snoop Dogg; the gothic sound of Cypress Hill, the futuristic one of Deltron 3030 and the deafening one of Dälek; the pop-rap of the Fugees and the "cold vein" of Cannibal Ox.

The Rate Your Music database contains over 200,000 albums tagged by users as hip-hop; in 2023, nearly 17% of the releases added to the site were hip-hop, far more than metal or punk. Among the most-streamed artists of all time on Spotify, that is, with the highest total stream count, are artists who play (at least in part) hip-hop in abundance: four of them in the Top 10. Nielsen has certified hip-hop as the most-listened-to music in the United States since 2017, and it's unlikely that this will change any time soon.

For those born and raised in a musical context where hip-hop was a secondary presence, as was the case here in Italy in the Eighties and, partly, the Nineties, this 50th anniversary could be the occasion to stop viewing the genre as something negligible, for anyone who wants to call themselves a fan of contemporary popular music.

Hip-hop is not, as some have long tried to suggest, some strange offshoot of rock, or a trend that pop will soon reabsorb, one trend replacing another, but a musical genre that deserves the attention and study of anyone wishing to understand the sound of recent decades. To put it in the words of Notorious B.I.G., "You never thought that hip hop would take it this far".

Ride the wave of great music

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