Won't stop, can't stop: the irrepressible rise of hip hop
From one funky eight-bar drum solo to the engine of the global music industry.
What does culture sound like while it's still inventing itself? More than 50 years after its birth, hip hop expanded into a universe of ideas so vast that you can barely see the edges of it from up close.
When DJ Kool Herc first used two turntables to isolate and extend the percussion breakbeats of funk and soul records in New York, few expected it to become the blueprint for a cultural phenomenon that's impacted art, business and language for more than 50 years.
In the beginning, there was hip hop
Hip hop started as a borrowed culture: funk, electro, jazz, spoken word poetry, reggae, punk and African drum rhythms all informed the music. Yet just as vital to the sound was the community aspect of the nascent scene. Breakdancing, graffiti and knowledge made up the five elements alongside deejaying and emceeing.
It's a term that seems somewhat twee now, but was formative to the development of the culture. And these elements combined to create a visceral artform, a live canvas for young people to express and enjoy themselves; and an escape from what was often a harsh socioeconomic reality.
In the beginning, the DJs were the undoubted stars, yet the hierarchy between DJ and MC has oscillated many times since. Alongside DJ Kool Herc, pioneering DJs from the first era of hip hop included Grand Wizard Theodore (credited with accidentally discovering the art of scratching when he stopped a record to listen to his mother) and Grandmaster Flash (a technical wizard who perfected quick-mixing, punch phrasing and clock theory to seamlessly blend records).
Kurtis Blow was one of the first solo rap stars to break into the commercial mainstream. The handsome Harlemite had a 1980 hit with "The Breaks", the first rap song to be certified gold, proving the genre's commercial viability. Other notable OG MCs include MC Sha Rock, a pioneering female MC in the late 1970s and a member of the Funky 4 Plus One.
Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay, emerged at the tail end of this initial 15-year window. Debuting with the single "It's Like That" (1983), the group ushered in hip hop's New School. They stripped away the disco-inflected funk of the early days, replacing it with hard rock samples, minimalist drum machines, staccato cadence and a rock-star aesthetic that permanently changed the culture.
Beyond the music, Run-D.M.C. were significant for being marketing savvy. Managed by Russell Simmons (who co-founded Def Jam Recordings alongside producer Rick Rubin), the group were the first non-athletes in history to secure an athletic brand endorsement thanks to the track "My Adidas" (1986), netting the group US$1.6 million.
Yet make no mistake, the group knew their music and had a knack for predicting what would come next in hip hop. When D.M.C. first heard Rakim rhyme on "Eric B. for President" (1986), he knew the game was up, telling reporters at that time "that's what hip hop sounds like now". Rakim's calm, intricate rhyme flow and jazz-inflected delivery completely shifted the landscape, signaling a transition away from the high-energy, shouting delivery of the early 1980s into the golden age of lyricism.
While the most unassuming member proved the most effective soothsayer: DJ Jam Master Jay struck lightning twice, first with the hardcore Queens group Onyx and, 10 years after Run-D.M.C.'s epiphany, 50 Cent. He signed both to his own label, JMJ Records.
The golden era of hip hop
No retrospective of this period would be complete without a special mention to James Brown's "Funky Drummer" (1970). The song served as the absolute heartbeat of the golden era of hip hop. When Brown told his drummer "give the drummer some" and Stubblefield launches into that crisp, rolling 20-second solo, he created the blueprint that the likes of Public Enemy, N.W.A, Run-D.M.C. and genre-benders the Beastie Boys would loop to build the foundational rhythms of hip hop.
Def Jam was the definitive hip hop label in the first half of the genre's existence. Releasing music by LL Cool J, Public Enemy, EPMD and Beastie Boys' first album, Licensed to Ill (1986), a rap-rock crossover record the group came to resent due to its frat boy associations.
After parting ways with the label, Beastie Boys began an experimental path starting with the sampledelic Paul's Boutique (1989). The album contained 105 officially cleared individual song samples but thanks to the density of individual sounds, drum breaks and vocal snippets, co-producer Mike Simpson estimates that it contains fragments as many as 300. Capitol Records spent $250,000 clearing the samples for Paul's Boutique and experts suggest it would cost 10 times as much if it was made today.
After selling millions of copies with their debut, Paul's Boutique was a commercial failure. Even so, Paul's Boutique went on to receive critical acclaim and opened up new possibilities for the genre, while the Beastie Boys continued down an increasingly expansive path, folding punk, funk, live instrumentation, Eastern spirituality and Tibetan Buddhist activism into their music and public identity.
Either side of the golden era, two styles of hip hop emerged that proved significant. The first was gangsta rap, starting with Schoolly D's "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?" (1985), then Ice-T and, most prolifically, N.W.A. The latter, from Los Angeles, included superstar producer Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella and Eazy-E.
N.W.A were controversial by design, chronicling the realities of inner-city life, police brutality and gang culture in Southern California, in a way that was both shocking to mainstream audiences and, at times, darkly comedic. The controversy surrounding the group, amplified by police condemnation and mainstream moral panic, also made N.W.A irresistible to a much broader, largely white suburban audience.
In the lineage of Run-D.M.C, Public Enemy and Beastie Boys, N.W.A proved hip hop had the capacity to become more than music, but a movement. Just two months before N.W.A put out their raucous debut, Straight Outta Compton (1989), the Jungle Brothers released Straight Out the Jungle (1988) — an album length realization of the second stylistic movement: the Native Tongues.
A loose affiliation of crews made up of founding members A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Monie Love, alongside Jungle Brothers. The debut albums by the founding groups (De La's 3 Feet High and Rising [1989] and Tribe's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm [1990]) shared a sense of play, warmth and musical curiosity.
Producers like Prince Paul and Q-Tip treated the sampler as both instrument and editing suite, chopping jazz, funk, soul, rock and children's records into bass phrases, horn stabs, stray voices and melodies their original creators might barely recognize.
The mood could be meditative, flirtatious, proudly Afrocentric or simply funny. Unlike the stern delivery associated with some of their contemporaries, Native Tongues MCs used conversational flows, overlapping voices, unusual rhyme placements and call-and-response hooks.
Gangsta rap was built from much of the same production toolkit: chopped samples, programmed breakbeats, drum machines and sequencers like the SP-1200 and MPC60. What changed was less the machinery than what producers put through it, from the dense funk loops of early N.W.A to the live bass, whining synthesizers and slow-rolling grooves that would define g-funk.
The difference was primarily one of perspective and atmosphere: where Native Tongues records often made room for humor, abstraction and communal possibility, gangsta rap placed greater emphasis on street reportage, threat, survival and regional identity, later developing sounds such as the slow, bass-heavy grooves and high synthesizer leads of West Coast g-funk.
That 90s hip hop sound
If 1986-1993 is the golden era, then 1993-1996 is the proverbial cherry on the cake. Genre-defining albums were all released by 2Pac, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep during a period that coincided with New York briefly being knocked off its perch as the home of hip hop.
Dr. Dre's The Chronic (1992) heralded a new era of West Coast supremacy thanks to the infectious g-funk sound: deep hypnotic basslines, slow-rolling synths and crisp kicks delivered with palm-breeze ease. And it wasn't all that was happening on the left coast: Cypress Hill, The Pharcyde and a post-N.W.A Ice Cube all dropped classic albums within 18 months.
This West Coast renaissance peaked commercially with Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg (1993). The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. The record shattered previous milestones for a debut, moving an unprecedented 802,858 copies in its first week and rewriting hip hop's commercial history.
Doggystyle wasn't even the most significant rap album released that month. From Staten Island came the Wu-Tang Clan: eight unique voices, including RZA, GZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon the Chef, Inspectah Deck and U-God (Cappadona and Masta Killa had yet to join the group).
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993) was released on 9 November, two weeks before Doggystyle (and the exact same day as Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest) in what many consider the greatest month in the history of hip hop. Led by producer and MC RZA, the record opened the gates to the Wu-Tang universe: a never-ending cartography of esoteric beliefs, kung fu film references, mafia slang and pop culture ephemera.
The album was a masterpiece in storytelling and the start of a glorious run of debut releases by Raekwon and Ghostface, along with GZA's Liquid Swords. All produced by RZA, he used the Tascam 244 Portastudio to bounce final mixes from DAT to high-speed cassette, contributing to the distinctive lo-fi aesthetic. While most producers were chasing cleaner, digital setups, the 244's EQ limitations and tape saturation gave RZA's early recordings that boxed-in, dust-choked texture.
Although even RZA couldn't claim to have made one of Prince's favorite albums, DJ Premier can. The Texan rose to fame in Gang Starr alongside MC Guru. He defined boom bap with a signature tension: sparse, hard-hitting drum beats crafted from chopped jazz, funk and soul samples, paired with terse melodic loops and scratched vocal choruses.
Alongside Premier, Q-Tip and Large Professor were enlisted to produce a sleepy-eyed teenager from Queensbridge. Nas' Illmatic (1994) is an album that ranks highly in all-time lists from Apple Music to Rolling Stone. In 2021, Illmatic was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry. New York was back (baby).
In 1996, Jay-Z released his debut, Reasonable Doubt. Nas reportedly failed to turn up to the studio for his appearance on the single "Bring It On". After years of subliminal shots, Jay-Z made the rivalry explicit on 2001's "Takeover," dismissing Nas as a faded prodigy. At its best, the feud raised the creative ceiling of the diss record: layered arguments, forensic use of biography, strategic samples and competing versions of New York rap history, delivered by two elite writers with reputations to lose. They reconciled publicly in 2005 and Nas later signed to Def Jam while Jay-Z was its president.
By the second half of the decade, hip hop was undoubtedly box office material, but it was music made from (and for) the streets and some artists couldn't escape the pull of violence. Aged just 25 and 24 respectively, 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. were murdered within six months of each other. Their tragic deaths remain two of the most significant and heavily scrutinized moments in modern music history.
Partly as a result of the violence and what many considered the commercial direction of the music, a healthy underground rap scene emerged. Rawkus Records released music by Big L, Black Star (Mos Def and Talib Kweli) and Company Flow (led by El-P, a sci-fi-obsessed producer/MC). Rawkus also released compilations, Soundbombing (1997) and Lyricist Lounge Volume One (1998), that became defining cultural artifacts and featured a young Eminem.
Rawkus Records imploded by the end of the decade due to financial mismanagement and corporate shifts (it was once part owned by James Murdoch). Many artists were left out of pocket and El-P responded by creating Def Jux, an ethical alternative for underground artists. Def Jux directly cannibalized Rawkus's fan base by delivering darker, more avant-garde hip hop from the likes of Aesop Rock and Cannibal Ox.
Welcome to the South
Southern hip hop's transition from a regional movement into a global powerhouse happened in the late 1990s through the mid-2000s. The Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew laid the groundwork in the late 1980s and early 1990s, yet the tipping point arrived when Southern production and club anthems began dominating Billboard charts and international airwaves.
Spearheaded by the massive crossover success of Outkast (specifically with Aquemini in 1998 and the diamond-selling Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2003), Missy Elliott (Supa Dupa Fly [1997] debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, making it the highest-charting debut for a female hip hop artist at the time). In Louisiana, there was the explosive rise of Cash Money Records (Lil Wayne, Juvenile) and No Limit Records (Master P) in the late '90s, followed by the mid-2000s crunk and snap explosion led by Lil Jon, T.I. and Ludacris.
Hip hop subgenres
Part of hip hop's appeal is its refusal to stand still. It's also why every new movement causes consternation among older listeners and MCs, who spent the genre's entire history declaring that the latest mutation is no longer hip hop. So far, hip hop has simply absorbed the criticism and mutated again.
Horrorcore took gangsta rap's violent imagery somewhere closer to cinema, filling records with slasher-film narratives, demonic voices and pitch-black humor. The Geto Boys helped establish the sound, while Gravediggaz turned it into grim conceptual theater and Three 6 Mafia buried it beneath distorted bass and eerie Memphis production. Crunk moved in the opposite direction: outward, communal and designed for maximum physical response. Lil Jon and Ying Yang Twins, built tracks around shouted hooks, hammering drums and call-and-response chants that could turn a club into a contact sport.
Trap
Trap emerged from Atlanta in the early 2000s, its name referring to places where drugs were sold rather than the festival sound it later became. T.I.'s Trap Muzik (2003), Young Jeezy's Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (2005) and Gucci Mane's early mixtapes established its bleak street narratives and skeletal electronic production.
During the following decade, rolling hi-hats, booming 808 bass, minor-key melodies and clipped snare patterns became the dominant grammar of mainstream rap. Future's DS2 (2015), Young Thug's Barter 6 (2015) and Migos' Culture (2017) stretched that grammar through auto-tuned melancholy, elastic vocal delivery and triplet flows.
Beat music
Elsewhere, beat music placed the producer back at center stage. Madlib and MF DOOM's Madvillainy (2004), J Dilla's Donuts (2006) and Flying Lotus' Los Angeles treated samples, drum programming and studio edits as complete forms of composition rather than backing tracks awaiting an MC. Phonk later created a photocopy of that photocopy, reviving the murky sound of 1990s Memphis rap before internet producers like SpaceGhostPurrp and DJ Smokey pushed it toward lo-fi ambience, trap and eventually the overdriven cowbells of drift phonk.
The century's biggest artists have rarely stayed inside one category. Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday (2010), Drake's Take Care (2011) and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) moved between pop, soul, electronic music, jazz and regional rap traditions. Subgenres give critics and streaming services somewhere to file the music. Artists generally treat them as something to escape.
The global spread of hip hop
Deejaying, breaking, graffiti and emceeing: hip hop was a creative revelation when it landed in France in the early 1980s. Thanks to DJ Sidney Diffusion's H.I.P H.O.P. television show, French was among the first non-English language adaptations of rap. Broadcast to millions, it was the world's first regular, national television show dedicated entirely to hip hop culture, helping to establish an identity for rap as a form of French music.
MC Solaar introduced a literary, jazz-influenced style, while IAM, Suprême NTM, Booba and later PNL developed distinct sounds shaped by immigration, the banlieues and France's relationship with North and West Africa.
Germany followed a similarly local path. Advanced Chemistry addressed racism and immigrant identity on "Fremd im eigenen Land," while Die Fantastischen Vier helped establish German-language rap commercially. The scene later moved through the gangsta rap of Bushido and Aggro Berlin to the multilingual street music of Haftbefehl and generations of artists with Turkish, Kurdish, Arab and Balkan heritage.
Grime and UK drill
Hip hop's influence on British music mixed itself with Jamaican sound-system culture and the country's own rave continuum. Grime emerged in East London around the turn of the millennium, combining 140bpm rhythms, sub-bass, cheap digital synthesizers and the rapid-fire MC culture of pirate radio. Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Kano, Skepta and Stormzy took it worldwide. Grime is better understood as hip hop's unruly British cousin than a direct subgenre, but its rap influence is unmistakable.
UK drill was a more direct adaptation of Chicago drill. Crews such as 67 replaced Chicago's production with sliding 808 basslines, sparse half-time drums and dense London slang. Headie One, Digga D and Central Cee carried versions of the sound into the international charts.
Afrobeats and highlife
Across Africa, hip hop also entered into conversation with existing local forms. Ghanaian hiplife combined rap with highlife, while Nigerian and Ghanaian Afrobeats artists including Wizkid, Burna Boy and Davido exchanged flows, production and audiences with rap. Afrobeats is not a hip hop subgenre, but their relationship shows what happened everywhere hip hop travelled: it was translated rather than merely imported.
Featured hip hop playlists on Soundtrack
90s Rap Hits
Timeless 90s hip hop featuring 2Pac, JAY-Z, Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Gangstarr, Busta Rhymes, Fugees and more. Revisit the songs that sent rap music from the streets to the stars.
The Beat Tape
Funky loops and soulful samples: instrumental hip hop from production greats like J Dilla, Madlib, Pete Rock, Damu the Fudgemunk, Kenny Beats, MF DOOM and Thes One.
Grime Reload
From East London to the world. Essential grime classics from Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, JME, Roll Deep, Chip, Jme, P Money and Skepta.
Leftfield Rap
Hip hop from the outer edges, featuring tracks by Amine, Madvillain, Yung Lean, Aminé, Cordae, Guapdad 4000, Kamaiyah, Nolan the Ninja and Samara Cyn.
Phonk
From the murky sound of 1990s Memphis rap to the digital dissonance drift phonk. Includes music by DVRST, INTERWORLD, MoonDeity, Nakani, NISMO.EXE and MC Orsen.
Soundtrack (we've got)
Hip hop contains multitudes and so do Soundtrack's hip hop playlists. From foundational breakbeats to the latest mutations in trap, drill and beyond, find the right hip hop sound for your business with Soundtrack.
