Run Dmc History

Hip Hop was born in the neighborhood, where young people gathered in parks, on playgrounds, and street corners, to speak poetry over mechanical sounds and borrowed melodies. Hip Hop was always bigger than just the music; it was also break dancing, the gymnastic dance style that valued improvised, angular athleticism over choreographed fluidity. Hip hop was also fashion such as: hats, jackets, gold chains, and brand sneakers. Hip Hop was graffiti, to a new way of expression that employed spray paint as the medium and subway walls as the canvas.

Run-DMC was a trio of rappers that fused hip hop and hard rock together and created a complex sound that appealed to the public. Run-DMC, created a whole new look for mainstream Hip Hop which greatly influenced the “New Skool” era. The “New Skool” era brought Hip Hop the publicity it needed to become the mainstream genre that has influenced the world. In the past, Hip Hop made a large impression on the Billboard R&B charts, but it failed to break into the mainstream, then came the big break through. In 1986, Run DMC turned an old Aerosmith tune into a 80s Hip Hop classic. Their collaboration with Aerosmith on the song “Walk this Way” was a hit that took Hip Hop all the way. The song was #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ushered in the commercialization

The hip-hop cultural movement has been divided into four categories: the 1970’s discovery of turntable sampling and the emergence of "Rapper’s Delight" from The Sugar Hill Gang; "The Old School" defined by Run-D.M.C.; The 1980’s Rapper’s of "Social Realism" dealing with the identification of racial issues within the urban lifestyle, expressed in lyrics by rappers such as Ice-T, Rakim, N.W.A. and LL Cool J; The present day commercial hip-hop centered around monopolized record labels sacrificing art for the benefit of commercial revenue, such as "No Limit Records." The hip-hop movement originated as an urban impulse using various elements of performance art to discover a cultural identity, which was usually deemed unacceptable by law enforcement officers. The culture adopted an "outlaw" image through graffiti art, breakdancing and DJ’s mixing samples at public party performances. The two most

Hip-hop culture began to develop in the south Bronx area of New York City during the 1970s. It had a significant influence in the music industry. Hip-hop music generally includes rapping, but other elements such as sampling and beatboxing also play important roles. Rapping, as a key part in the hip-hop music, takes different forms, which including signifying, dozen, toast and jazz poetry. Initially, hip-hop music was a voice of people living in low-income areas, reflecting social, economic and political phenomenon in their life [1]. As time moves on, hip-hop music reached its “golden age”, where it became a mainstream music, featuring diversity, quality, innovation and influence [2]. Gangsta rap, one of the most significant innovations in

The hip-hop culture began in the streets of New York City during the 1970’s and has gone through tremendous changes up until now. Hip-Hop consists of four elements: rap, graffiti, break-dancing, and the disc jockey. In this paper, I intend to fully explain the evolution of rap music, from its infancy to the giant industry it is today.

The genre created in very poor districts, like the Bronx, in New York by African-American and Latino teenagers. They learned how to use turntables by working as DJs at discos. DJs and MCs would play at free block parties. An MC is an abbreviation for Master of Ceremony his/her job is to focus on skills, lyrical ability, and subject. So, during block parties, the DJ would play music and the MC encouraged guest to have fun. Parties went on MCs slowly started to rhyme while they were performing. Hip-Hop was only played live at first until Sugar Hill Gang released Rappers Delight in 1979. Rappers Delight was a huge success for hip-hop. Personally, I consider the Sugar Hill Gang the founding fathers of Hip-Hop.

New York duo Run DMC also used hooks in their songs but added hard-rock guitar to create a popular style called rap rock, and their 1986 album Raising Hell became hip hop's first top-ten album. When punk rock group Beastie Boys began shouting raps instead of singing, their style also became very popular and their debut album Licensed To Ill became hip hop's first number-one

In the early 80s in South Bronx, hip hop culture was created as a way people expressed themselves to make a statement of some sort of art form that was diffused within the local community without outside influences orally and through localization. Commercialization changed and evolved these cultures making the producers not equal the consumers; globalization diffused these cultures with mass communication with the media. Spatially, hip hop used to be concentrated within a local community and it spread through relocation of the subway graffitti, while now it’s urbanized around the globe. In terms of social characteristics, rap has always been there as a way to express oneself through art forms such as b-boying, graffiti, and rapping; now it’s

Hip-Hop is a complex cultural movement formed during the early 1970s by African Americans in the slums of South Bronx, New York (Dyson 6), it propagated outside of the African American community in late 1980s, and by the opening of the 21th century it became the most spread culture in the world. Hip-Hop consists of four elements: Deejay, Break-Dancing, Rapping, and Graffiti. (Kenon 112)

In order to understand hip-hop dance, it is important to recognize hip-hop music and where it came from. Many scholars of rap music relate the founding of rap to African and African American oral and musical traditions, specifically African griots and storytellers. They link the rhythm of rap to the use of drums in Africa and to African American music in the United States, from slave songs and spirituals to jazz and R&B. Scholars have found very interesting connections between rap music and Black nationalist traditions (traditions historically practiced by black people that serve as part of their racial identity). Rap is similar to the “call and response of the black church, the joy and pain of the blues, the jive talk and slang of the hipsters and jazz musicians, the boasting of street talk, the sidesplitting humor of comedians, and the articulateness of black activists.” All of these African American oral traditions, including rap, can be traced back to West African oral traditions. In traditional African societies, the spoken word and oral culture included poetry, storytelling, and speaking to drumbeats. The links between rap music and African American oral and musical traditions demonstrate that hip-hop music represents more than just sound. It represents history. This aspect of it, in my opinion, makes this type of music very unique and makes it carry more value.

Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that emerged from the dilapidated South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s. The area’s mostly African American and Puerto Rican residents originated this uniquely American musical genre and culture that over the past four decades has developed into a global sensation impacting the formation of youth culture around the world. The South Bronx was a whirlpool of political, social, and economic upheaval in the years leading up to the inception of Hip-Hop. The early part of the 1970’s found many African American and Hispanic communities desperately seeking relief from the poverty, drug, and crime epidemics engulfing the gang dominated neighborhoods. Hip-Hop proved to be successful as both a creative outlet for

In the early 70's, a Jamaican, DJ known as Kool Herc attempted to combine his Jamaican style of disk jockey, that involved reciting improvised rhymes over the dub versions of his reggae records (Davey 1). He also invented turntables, which kept the music going, with the occasional voice on the top of records, which started the roots of rap music. Over time, the culture broke into mainstream, spread around the world, and young people who did not have much to do, created not only multi-million industry, but have also created a way we can speak to each other all around the world. Hip hop is linked to other music such as rap which is embraced by urban black population. It is raw self-expression, sometimes features expletive lyrics, and violence. “Hip hop artists spoke to despair and pain of urban youth and the poor who were often without a voice. The rappers themselves were, the product of that reality, and it was conveyed through their lyrics” (Muhammad 1).

Hip- hop has become a phenomenon throughout youth culture. Many believed hip-hop was only a phase of music like disco, but as the genre continued to expand and evolve, it became clear that hip-hop was here to stay. (History of hip- hop: past, present, future) Hip- hop is made up of 2 main elements, DJing and rapping. DJ is short for disc jockey, which is a person who usually uses turntables to make music, and rapping is talking and chanting in an easy and familiar manner. (Hip-Hop: A Short History) In writing this research paper, I will explain the most impactful years of hip-hop, and the events surrounding them, starting from 1979, when Sugarhill Gang released “Rappers Delight”.

By the early 1990s, Hip-Hop had become a major force in music. Hip-Hop began when Djs such as Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Africa Bambaataa would mix beats or “breaks of funk and disco records so that people could dance the beat continuously. In 1991 Mary J. Blige teamed up with producer Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and added the Hip-Hop attitude to R&B. Blige was one of the first artists to blend urban, contemporary R&B singing with hip hop beats, rhymes, and attitude. After a while people began to rhyme or “rap” over these beats. The first rap recording was “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang in 1979. Run DMC was largely responsible for the commercialization of rap; their collaboration with Aerosmith on the cover recording of the 1977 hit song Walk This Way introduced the style to white audiences.

In the article, Hip-hop; Music and Cultural Movement written by Alan Light, Greg Tate stated that “The term Hip-hop refers to a complex culture comprising four elements: deejaying, or turntabling; rapping, also known as “MCing” or “rhyming”; graffiti painting known as “graf” or “writing”; and “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural