What is Hip-Hop?

[MrMan]

I just called my mom. I call my mom and my dad about once a week or so, most weeks. Sometimes more. Sometimes I delay the call for half a week or whatever. So my mom and I were both talking about how we didn't know what hip-hop was exactly. Hip-hop and rap are the largest 'music' category now, the most popular, at least.

I can hear music and label it as rock music, maybe even rock'n'roll, or rock-a-billy, and identify country and blue grass. I've heard that certain songs that are Hip-Hop, but I cannot really define Hip-Hop or tell you what it is. Most of what I heard called hip-hop wasn't appealing enough for me to listen to the end of it. I remembered some of the more popular Black-eyed-Peas songs like "Let's Get It Started" were Hip-Hop. Those were alright. But some of their other songs don't have the same sound.

I also listened to some clips of hip-hop and some of it was jazz or electronic music.

Is the defining characteristic of hip-hop that it has rap with music in the background? Does that make it hip-hop?

[Lucas88]

Is the defining characteristic of hip-hop that it has rap with music in the background? Does that make it hip-hop?

Hip-hop is a genre that is typically defined by the following characteristics:

• A strong rhythmic beat which serves as a backdrop for the vocals

• Rapping as the main vocal style

• "Breaks" or percussive periods between the vocal periods (in the earlier hip-hop breakdancing was often incorporated into these percussive periods)

Hip-hop wasn't always mostly bad or unpleasant, MrMan. The earlier stuff from the 80s was actually quite pleasant to listen to and didn't contain any of the garbage about gangsta life or capping people or the materialistic narcissistic self-aggrandizement that you commonly see in rap music today. I think that started with gangsta rap in the early 90s when gang violence in the US was on the rise.