Hip Hop Evolution

Hip hop music is a music genre formed in the United States in the 1970s that consists of a rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted.It developed as part of hip hop culture. Hip hop as both a musical genre and a culture was formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York especially among African American youth residing in the Bronx. At block parties DJs played percussive breaks of popular songs using two turntables to extend the breaks. Hip hop's early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum-machines became widely available and affordable. Turntablist techniques developed along with the breaks and the Jamaican toasting vocal style was used.

At the same time, hip hop continued to be assimilated into other genres of popular music, an example being Neo soul.. Hip hop became a best-selling music genre in the mid-1990s and the top selling music genre by 1999. The most successful styles of the 90s were the hardcore rap of New York and the gangsta rap and G-Funk of Los Angeles. New York's Wu-Tang Clan created one of the first hardcore styles when they rapped about gangster life over swinging hip hop beats with samples from martial-arts movies. In 1994 a young rapper named Nas released his first album Illmatic. Its loose mid-tempo beats, jazzy samples and Nas' poetic rapping made Illmatic one of hip hop's greatest albums. Other popular hardcore rappers include Puff Daddy, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Los Angeles' gangsta rap developed from the rap music of artists like Ice-T and NWA. Ice-T began by sampling funk rhythms and rapping about the dangers of drugs, crime and dropping out of school in tracks like 1990s You Played Yourself. The members of NWA were from Compton, one of LA's poorest and most violent districts, and they rapped about the injustice and police violence in their neighbourhood. Their angry raps included a lot of explicit language, and the media attention this created helped their albums reach the top of the charts. Former NWA member Ice Cube released

In 2004 he released The College Dropout, the first of a series of chart-topping alternative hip hop albums that helped change the direction of hip hop music. Kanye and Eminem proved that rappers didn't have to make gangsta rap records to succeed, and alternative hip hop soon replaced gangsta rap as the genre's most popular style. While most hip hop artists are either producers or rappers, Kanye is regarded as a master of both. His sample-heavy tracks have used elements of classical music, gospel, jazz and soul as well as rock and R&B, and he uses many rapping styles, from slow and relaxed to fast and aggressive. He's often called the most influential hip hop artist of the 21st century because of his role in changing hip hop's direction and because of the number of styles he's helped to create like the electronic rap of Black Skinhead and the gospel-influenced hip hop of Jesus