What Are The Four Elements Of Hip Hop Culture

Hip hop culture can be traced all the way back to the 1930’s when African American men would retell stories, sometimes of World War I, using rhythm, rhyme and poetry for entertainment. This process was often referred to as “signifying” or “playing the dozens.” These soon were passed on and became what we today know as rapping. Telling a story was still a prevalent part of rapping but improvisation was introduced around the 1970’s. During this time, there were block parties around New York and largely the Bronx going on where DJs would introduce their innovation of popular funk and soul tunes. DJ Kool Herc is one of those who is thought to be a founding father of hip hop for his manipulation of these genres in his work and the isolation of percussive breaks in the songs. …show more content…
This as well as DJing and rap were spreading all across New York when Afrika Bambaataa creates Universal Zulu Nation. He describes it as having the four elements of hip hop culture, which he believes, are DJing, break dancing, graffiti, and MCing. Meanwhile, DJ Grand Wizard Theodore unknowingly invents “scratching” which is when the DJ puts pressure on the record under the needle during a break. This new innovation starts becoming more popular in the works of DJs around New York. By this point, hip hop has spread to all the boroughs of New York while disco is the mainstream genre in clubs. In 1979, the group Sugar Hill Gang is formed and they release “Rapper’s Delight” which exposes hip hop to a much larger group of