The Globalization of Hip Hop Music

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According to Wikipedia, Hip-hop music, also called rap music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching, breaking/dancing, and graffiti writing. Hip hop is also characterized by these other elements: sampling (or synthesis), and beatboxing.

Hip hop music developed from party DJ's mixing and remixing popular music that was already out. This music was usually from the funk, soul and disco genre. It began during the 1970's in the Bronx in New York City and very popular among African Americans. Spoken hip hop music is said to have been heavily influenced by West African culture, the call and response practices of African religious ceremonies and jazz poetry.

As such, soul singers like Blowfly, James Brown and Rudy Ray Moore are considered the "godfathers" of hip hop music. Spoken word poets such as Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets in New York City also played an important role in the cultural surroundings in which hip hop music was created. During the early days of hip hop music, it was often described as a creative outlet and a voice for the harsh realities of the inner city youth living in low-economic areas. During the 1980's hip hop music began to spread out of America into other countries.

Beginning in the streets of New York City, hip hop music has crossed cultural boundaries and has changed the face of music worldwide. Internationally, hip-hop is the world's most popular youth culture. From countries like England, Brazil, Tokyo, India and South Africa, the impact of hip hop music on the local cu...

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