Today hip hop is a lifestyle that many people admire because it's very original and is an outlet of free expression. In fact the very humble beginning of what the world knows today as hip hop music dates back to late 60's. It all started by a Jamaican DJ named Clive Campbell aka “Kool Herc” at Bronx, New York. The influence of hip hop shows that it wasn't a passing fad but has become a complete culture on its own. Hip Hop artists have become idols and even young kids aspire to be like them. Names like Jay Z, Russel Simmons, 50 cent, P. Diddy, Foxy Brown, Snoop Dog, Eminem, and Flavor Flav now ring as familiar as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin once did.

The history of hip hop music reveals that it can be categorized into more than just music. It includes hip hop music, hip hop art, hip hop dancing and hip hop fashion. Furthermore the fans of hip hop would divide history of hip hop music into two eras, one being the “old school era (1970-1985)” and the other being “Golden age era (1985-1993)”.

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Old School Era

shows that the emergence of hip hop in 1970s was mainly dominated by the founding fathers of hip hop including names like The Treacherous Three, Fab 5 Freddy, Afrika Bambaataa, Fat Boys, Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc etc. In the early 1980s these founding fathers had truly hit the commercial success. Kurtis Blow signed the first record deal with his single “The Breaks”. Also in 1980 a rock and roll band Blondie released a song with rapping references which further enhanced the influence of hip hop in the mainstream music. Def Jam was started by Russell Summons and Rick Ruben in 1984 which eventually became a staple in the history of hip hop music industry.

History of hip hop music

Hitory of hip hop music also associates graffiti are to the hip hop culture. Graffiti are the drawings on walls followed by the artist's signature and have been originated from Philadelphia in 1960s.

1970s onwards the hip hop culture was more profound in people's life and was depicted by their clothings as well. These mainly included baggy clothes and accessories such as shades, multi fingered rings, necklaces, huge watches, diamond earrings, gold chains and customized sneakers. Today there are several brands established to serve the hip hop cliental.

The golden era in the history of hip hop music is marked with its focus on controversial lyrics mostly comprising of what's known as the Gangsta rap. Focus on street violence, sex and drugs etc allured the youth and quickly crossed over to other socioeconomic divisions of the society. Despite its controversial aspects the popularity of this genre continued to rise and today its one of the fastest growing and most popular form of music in the world.

One of the greatest moments of the golden age are marked with what we call needle drop or scratching, accidentally discovered by Grand Wizard Theodore. He was only trying to stop a running disc when his mom scolded him for being loud! Viola! Scratching was born, all the more reason for you to push your parents to scold you, you never know where your big moment is hiding.

The history of hip hop music started with some youths trying to express their anger and agony with the help of music; the anger about not getting their rightful share of quality life and agony about not being heard of their problems. In its early phase hip hop was not used to be called hip hop at all. In 70s some of such Latino and Black youths found a novel idea of expressing themselves. The idea was to perform a kind of poetry on some open microphones over a currently playing song in the back. They used to do this at their house parties, which later gave birth to rap music. Although a novice would see rapping as something easy to do, not everyone could express their feelings in that way. After the rap, another group of youths belonging to the same strata of society started expressing themselves with another related talent and that was to break dance.

Those youths used to perform such dances not only in house parties but also on street corners. For this, all they used to have were a cardboard piece to dance upon and a boom box. Some youths also used this talent to earn some money too. However, by and large the main use of that talent remained to be expressing one's emotions and feelings. Nonetheless, there was another group of youths who could neither rap nor dance and hence they had to find a form of expression to be a part of the movement. Fortunately they also found an outlet of their expression, which was the most controversial of the three, and that was their ability to draw. Formerly, this form of talent to express oneself was regarded as "graffiti", later which renamed as "tagging" by the hip hop community. In the tagging, a particular group of such artists would create a unique phrase or a symbol for their group and then spray that symbol of phrase on to the subway trains. They used subway trains instead of walls in order to advertise their group to other similar groups. Whether people were agree with their way of expressing themselves or not, no one could deny the fact that they were talented enough to find such outlets of expression. Neither of three of these talents could form the hip hop alone; instead they all combined together to give shape to the modern history of hip hop music, which is still one of the best ways to express oneself.