History Lesson: The First Fifteen Years Of Hip Hop

Our Resident Music Guru Rory Lewarne Takes You On A Journey Back To The Roots Of The Most Significant Musical Revolution Of Recent History... Bwoy!

Hip hop can be traced back to 1947, when proto b-boy Jimmy Savile welded two turntables together and introduced non-stop music to the UK at a dancehall in Doncaster.... What? Oh, OK, he can’t take credit really. But he really did help develop disco, which, in the early 70s, bequeathed its musical tools to hip hop.

The new culture emerged directly from the gangs that swept post-Civil Rights Bronx. Against a backdrop of terrifying bleakness – it was 80 per cent youth unemployment in some areas –  the growth of block parties and the associated DIY artforms of DJing, MCing, breaking and graffitiing provided a real release for seething urban angst. These block parties were pioneered by people like DJ Kool Herc; it was at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue on August 11, 1973 that he introduced his new style of break-beat DJing, using twin turntables to loop the funkiest JB breaks. Meanwhile, his mate Coke La Rock demonstrated MCing, heavily indebted to the Jamaican practice of toasting. As at Sex Pistols gigs a few years later, others were there, taking notes.

The twin turntable schtick came from the non-stop discos of downtown Manhattan (not Savile’s dancehalls in Northern England), but in the Bronx it was used to loop heavy funk records. It came from disco, but was also a reaction against its lightness and feminity; Hendrix and Funkadelic-loving kids wanted to rock! By the mid-70s two strands of hip hop were developing: disco-sampling party rap, and the harder, more brutal rhythms of artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Kool Herc faded away, unable to keep up with Coke La Rock's trailblazing disciples’ new techniques.

"By the mid-70s two strands of hip hop were developing: disco-sampling party rap, and the harder, more brutal rhythms of artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Kool Herc faded away, unable to keep up with Coke La Rock's trailblazing disciples’ new techniques"

By the late 70s it was a huge local live scene, and devotees would pass round tapes of shows, but rappers were reluctant to put down on wax. That changed in 1979 with the monstrous success of the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”, a 15-minute-loop of a re-recorded riff from Chic’s “Good Times”. It featured three MCs put together by music industry veteran Sylvia Robinson, and many of its joyous lyrical motifs were nicked from other rappers and general hip hop culture; the hardcore didn’t like this at all. Nevertheless, it sold a gazillion copies and started a gold rush. Grandmaster Flash and his Furious Five quickly came out with the raw “Superrappin’”, while Kurtis Blow, the first rapper to sign to a major label, would sell half a million copies of his “The Breaks”. In 1981 new wave act Blondie hit with “Rapture”, a cool novelty in which Debbie Harry rapped with clumsy charm about hanging out with (hip hop scenester) Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash. It went to No.1 on the US top 100. This was big.