Written by Caroline 

Music-loving, guest entertainment and technology blogger Caroline takes us on the riveting journey of how hip-hop music (and culture) “took over the world.”

Hip-hop is everywhere: TV commercials, film scores, even chart music. It influences the clothes we wear, the things we say and the way we act every day. In 2016, it’s undeniable that we have seen a complete global domination of what was once an incredibly niche genre.

Through the ages, hip-hop has changed, transformed and developed. It’s broached politics and canvased social change. The controversy of its lyrics, messaging, and sound has troubled many, but nearly 55 years after its initial conception, the genre is going stronger than ever. Here is its story:

Making Ripples

Beats, rhymes, graffiti and breakdancing: these are the four elements that created a culture that is evident in almost every facet of life today. Long christened the father of hip-hop, DJ Kool Herc was credited with the creation of the genre in 1973, when he noticed that juggling the breaks in disco records on his turntables encouraged a new wave of dancers to take center stage.

This was the era of street parties and sound clashes, of “Party People” and “The Message”; where stories, such as Grandmaster Caz inventing scratching on his mom’s record player and emcees finding their voice via advertorial chants over beats, talk of an accidental and organic beginning to this now-global phenomenon.

These ripples were causing big waves within the NY Projects of America, but to the rest of the world, the rhythms and sounds coming from the city’s urban areas were still little more than noise pollution.