Hip-Hop/Rap Music Genres

Information about the Hip-Hop and Rap Music genre

The Music Genres List site covers many of the most popular styles of Hip-Hop & Rap music, we hope this becomes the definitive list of Hip-Hop music / Rap music genres on the Internet, send an email to add @ musicgenreslist dot com if you feel any Hip-Hop or Rap music genres are missing and we’ll add to complete the music list.

• Alternative Rap
• Avant-Garde
• Bounce
• Chap Hop
• Christian Hip Hop
• Conscious Hip Hop
• Country-Rap
• Crunkcore
• Cumbia Rap
• Dirty South
• East Coast
• Freestyle Rap
• G-Funk
• Gangsta Rap
• Golden Age
• Hardcore Rap
• Hip-Hop
• Hip Pop
• Hyphy
• Industrial Hip Hop
• Instrumental Hip Hop
• Jazz Rap
• Latin Rap
• Low Bap
• Lyrical Hip Hop
• Merenrap
• Midwest Hip Hop
• Motswako
• Nerdcore
• New Jack Swing
• New School Hip Hop
• Old School Rap
• Rap
• Turntablism (thank you Luke Allfree)
• Underground Rap
• West Coast Rap

Hip-Hop / R&B / Rap Genre Information

Hip hop, or hip-hop, is the term used to refer to a cultural movement created by African Americans, Caribbean Americans, and Latino Americans in the 1970s. It refers to hip hop music, including rap.

Hip hop has four primary elements and five secondary elements. The four primary elements are essential for understanding hip hop musically, while the remaining five are not necessary for musicality but are still prominent.

The four main elements include rapping, DJ’ing, breakdancing, and graffiti. The other features are hip hop culture and historical knowledge, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip hop fashion, and the language of hip hop.

History of Hip-Hop / Rap / R&B Genre

Hip hop began in the 1970s as an urban underground movement in the Bronx. The movement initially focused on MC’ing neighborhood block parties or private house parties. It has always been a powerful medium that people have used to protest the legal institutions’ impact on minorities, specifically prisons and police.

Urban black and Latino youth in the South Bronx used hip hop as a form of expression. It arose from the ruins of a ravaged neighborhood that the public has long since written off as a marginalized community.

Jamaican DJ Kool Herc was the first to use percussion breaks in hip hop by using two record players to extend the beat of one record and using a mixer to switch back and forth between the two tracks.

MC’ing, or rapping, came from the African American tradition of capping, where men compete with one another in their originality of language to entice listeners. This spoken style was later laid over a beat.

While the idea of hip hop was still new, the basic elements already existed in African American music. The lyrics of more modern hip hop bounced back and forth between sexual innuendo and social or political commentary.

Originally, the MC would introduce the DJ and get the audience excited. In between the DJ’s songs, the MC would talk, tell jokes, and encourage people to dance. Soon, the line between the roles of MC and DJ blurred, as the MC spoke for longer sessions.

What was once spoken word became rhythmic wordplay, which gave way to rhyming and rapping in its present form.

The Eighties Hip-Hop / Rap

By the end of the 1970s, hip hop was mainstream. The 1980s ushered in the first certified gold rap song by Kurtis Blow. It also saw artists like Afrika Bambaataa rap over electronic sound rather than just disco beats.

In 1986, the Beastie Boys, one of the first all-white hip hop groups, released Licensed to Ill, which became the first rap LP to make it to the top of the Billboard album chart. Other records to break ground in that decade included releases from artists like Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash, and Biz Markie.

Many artists in the 1980s made social statements using hip hop as their platform, and the genre began to embrace the use of the human body to reflect the rhythm of the music. Beatboxing grew quickly in popularity, as both an accompaniment and a solo act.

Music videos began to shape the music industry, too, and in the hip hop genre, these compilations tended to glorify urban neighborhoods, graffiti artists, and hip hop as a subculture. Film in the 1980s expanded the appeal of hip hop outside of New York, and the culture began to take root elsewhere in the United States and Europe.

The Nineties Hip-Hop / Rap

By the 1990s, gangsta rap became a commercial success, and the subject matter of the lyrics shifted to violence, misogyny, and drugs. Hip hop became a mainstream commodity, and black teens were no longer the only paying audiences.

Hip hop was the platform of social and political messaging for people unfamiliar with the condition of life in the ghetto. Still today, hip hop appeals to a broader demographic thanks to crossover artists of all races.

Many hip hop artists are also successful entrepreneurs with their own clothing lines, record labels, alcoholic products, and more.

Artists who made it famous 
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre

Best known proponents today 
Eminem, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Akon, T-Pain, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas

High points/Memorable Moments 
Hip hop has not just been a musical genre but it has been a movement. It has been a platform through which artists have been cautioning people about the ills of the society. The reason why hip hop music is so popular among African Americans is because that is the only way they can reach out to the people and share their problems with them. Through music, they are able to show the world that they are incorrectly interpreted and wished they don’t be treated as a minority. Hip hop has been a rising force to one and many.

Famous Hip Hop / Rap Songs
Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back (1988); Run DMC – Raising Hell (1986); Beastie Boys – Paul]s Boutique (1989); 2Pac – All Eyez On Me (1996); Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die (1994); Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Hip Hop Artist / Rapper Quotes:

“I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash.”
– Afrika Bambaataa

“That’s what I love from metal, and that’s what I love from hip-hop. That’s what I love from any music that’s hard, that’s got an edge to it-The attitude in it.”
– Kid Rock

“Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.”
– Eminem