History of Hip-Hop

History of Hip-Hop

Do you ever wonder where hip-hop culture originated from? Do you wonder how it started? Have you asked yourself who started graffiti? Have you ever wondered where the hip-hop style was really from? If you asked all of these questions or more then you have picked up the right paper.

In 1959, the city of New York began to construct the Cross Bronx Expressway. By causing the destruction of numerous Bronx businesses and apartments, the expressway project, with the decline of federal assistance programs, had begun catapulting the Bronx into poverty. Long time white residents fled to the suburbs and landlords bought the devalued apartments that bordered the dusty and noisy construction sites.

A power outage in New York in 1977, the looting, and other disorders that followed, turned public attention toward the Bronx, and the borough became a national symbol of the inner city crisis. Bronx residents, mostly African and Caribbean Americans, had gotten little external support as they tried to live in the middle of an economic wasteland. Hip-hop culture emerged as a new, creative, and flexible value system in a landscape stripped of value. Although neighborhoods were ugly and neglected, fashion and art could embody pride, beauty, and self-respect. (Blaster pg 1-2)
Hip-hop is an umbrella term for the youth culture that originated in South Bronx, New York in the ‘70’s. Hip-hop is a means of creative expression that gives a voice to young, ethnic, urban populations.

Black and Hispanic teenagers had to improvise. They had no dance halls and community spaces. They began dancing in the streets. Disk jockeys tapped into street lights to drive their booming sound systems. Young musicians, whose under funded schools could provide no instrument, used stereo technology to make new sounds. Young artists painted on walls and subway cars instead of canvases. Break dancing, rap, and graffiti art were all need-induced innovations, and each enriched the others....

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