Brief History of Hiphop
Hip hop started in the early 70's in New York, as an underground culture in The Bronx. It involved a DJ, an MC, a turntable set up and speakers. It was often held in the abandoned rooms in 'The Projects'. The DJ would cut and chop different 'break beats' or parts of songs that could be looped to create a rhythmic drum beat that people could dance to, known as 'break dancing'. Soon MC's were rapping basic poetry over these break beats, usually nursery rhymes strung together to keep the attention of the crowd. This has its roots in Jamaican music. Often breakbeats were taken from disco songs which had repetitive drum parts which the DJ could easily loop. In the present, hip hop has taken off hugely as a major subculture. The styles and influences that affect hip hop today range from rock, to jazz, folk and even to something called lofi in which the artists manipulates tape recordings to create a low fidelity sound giving the style an ambient and relaxing feel to it.(1, 2, 3)
My Project Within the Music Industry
For my project I will be mostly drawing from New York style hip hop. The biggest influences for me are a producer called 'J Dilla', a rapper called 'Joey Badass'. I feel like these 2 influences take a good look at my chosen style as J Dilla and Joey Badass are New York style hip hop. (4, 5). What interests me in this style of hip hop is the boom bap and repetitive pattern elements of the drums; heavy bass kicks, the snappy snares and off beat percussion. I feel like I have tried to replicate and experiment with these kind of drums enough to be able to add my own Jazz style to the project.