Hip-hop
rhythmic music accompanied by rhyming speech
Hip-hop (also known as rap music or simply rap) is a genre of popular music that emerged in the early 1970s alongside an associated subculture created by African-American and Afro-Caribbean communities in New York City. The musical style is a synthesis of a wide range of techniques, but rapping is frequent enough that it has become a defining characteristic. Other key markers of the genre are the disc jockey (DJ), turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks. Cultural interchange has always been central to the hip-hop genre: It simultaneously borrows from its social environment while commenting on it.
The hip-hop genre and culture emerged from block parties in the Bronx. DJs began expanding the instrumental breaks of popular records when they noticed how excited it would make the crowds. The extended breaks provided a platform for break dancers and rappers. These breakbeats enabled the subsequent evolution of the hip-hop style. Many of the records used were disco due to its popularity at the time. This disco-inflected music was originally known as disco rap and later described as "old-school hip-hop".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11401. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hip-hop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.