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Austrian hip hop is not a genre of hip hop music, but covers all hip hop music from Austria. The majority of Austrian hip hop acts do Underground hip hop, as the big radio stations in Austria have no airtime for native hip hop. The only radio station that does so is FM4, which focuses on alternative music.
Falco is often seen as the first successful Austrian rapper, but in fact Falco didn't want to be seen as rapper, but as a pop/rock musician. Nevertheless, the first songs from Austria to be known of featuring rap verses were sung by Falco.
The first "official" Austrian hip hop album to be released was Sound Vibes by The Moreaus in 1990. Then again, The Moreaus were not very defining for hip hop in Austria. The most well-known acts in the 1990s were Schönheitsfehler, Fünfhaus Posse and Texta. From the beginning, the hip hop culture in Austria was being dominated by East Austrian acts. There have been only a few acts from the west of Austria who got wider attention.
In 2000, Schönheitsfehler had their first commercial success. Their album SexDrugsAndHipHop reached rank 20 of the Austrian Longplay Charts, with the single Fuck You charting in Germany.
With the rise of Gangsta rap in Germany in the middle of the 2000s, more and more Gangsta rappers in Austria appeared. Most notable are Chakuza, Nazar and RAF Camora who also had commercial success. Chakuza and Raf later moved on to changing their sound, leaving Gangsta rap behind.
In 2008, the Viennese rap group Die Vamummtn got famous over YouTube. Their amateur video Krocha Hymne in which they are referring to the youth culture "Krocha" currently has over 1 million views. The song was released by Universal Music Austria only a few months after the hype and was the first hip hop single to reach the Charts since over five years.
Only two years later, other YouTube hypes lead to a success – the song Kabinenparty by Skero, a member of Texta, reached rank 4 of the Austrian Single Charts after having become a viral video on the internet. The hip hop duo Trackshittaz succeeded in reaching rank 1 of the Single Charts with their song Oida Taunz, also shortly after having a video going viral. This was the first time that an Austrian hip hop act reached rank one of the Charts.
The probably most successful female hip hop artist is Mieze Medusa, who also organizes the monthly poetry slam textstrom.
A Carinthian crew called The Icon made waves in the Austrian Hip hop scene in 2021 by reaching 200.000 international streams [1] on the music streaming service Apple Music.
Many Austrian hip hop artists use their mother tongue Austro-Bavarian dialects when rapping – while some do so to stay "real", others deliberately distinguish themselves from the German rap scene by doing so. For example, Fünfhaus Posse's first album was recorded in Viennese German, while standard Austrian German was used for their later ones (due to commercial reasons).
Dialect is notably often used when being ironic, while most rappers use standard German for serious texts – in the mid-2000s this led to dialect having an image of non-seriousness. Gangsta Rap artists made fun of dialect acts and were orientated towards the big German hip hop scene. This has changed in the last few years with the success of Slangsta acts (a Portmanteau of slang and gangsta) who combine serious texts with dialect, the most notably artist being Ansa.
Dutch hip hop or Nederhop ("Netherhop"), is hip hop / rap music created by Dutch speaking musicians in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium). Although the first Dutch speaking rappers in Europe typically worked in English, this began to change after 1986, at first in an underground scene. The Osdorp Posse were the first to record and release Dutch language hip hop singles, from around 1990, but it took until 1995 for a Dutch language rap single to achieve a main chart top ten hit: Spraakwater by Extince.
Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, emerged in the mid- to late 1980s as a controversial hip hop subgenre whose lyrics assert the culture and values typical of American street gangs and street hustlers. Many gangsta rappers flaunt associations with real street gangs, like the Crips and the Bloods. Gangsta rap's pioneers were Schoolly D of Philadelphia in 1985, Ice-T of Los Angeles in 1986, and especially N.W.A in 1988. In 1993, via record producer Dr. Dre, rapper Snoop Dogg, and their G-funk sound, gangsta rap took the rap genre's lead and became mainstream, popular music.
German hip hop refers to hip hop music produced in Germany. Elements of American hip hop culture, such as graffiti art and breakdancing, diffused into Western Europe in the early 1980s.
Artis Leon Ivey Jr., known professionally as Coolio, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, and actor. Coolio achieved mainstream success in the mid-to-late 1990s with his albums It Takes a Thief (1994), Gangsta's Paradise (1995), and My Soul (1997). He is best known for his 1995 Grammy Award-winning hit single "Gangsta's Paradise", as well as other singles "Fantastic Voyage" (1994), "1, 2, 3, 4 " (1996) and "C U When U Get There" (1997).
The Geto Boys is an American hip hop group originally formed in Houston, Texas. The group was formed in 1987. The Geto Boys enjoyed success in the 1990s with the group's classic lineup consisting of Bushwick Bill, Scarface and Willie D, earning several certified albums and hit singles, including "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" which reached No. 1 on the Hot Rap Songs and #23 on the Billboard Hot 100.
G-funk, short for gangsta funk, is a sub-genre of gangsta rap that emerged from the West Coast scene in the late 1980s, the genre is heavily influenced by 1970s psychedelic funk sound of artists such as Parliament-Funkadelic.
Straight Outta Compton is the debut studio album by rap group N.W.A, which, led by Eazy-E, formed in Los Angeles County's City of Compton in early 1987. Released by his label, Ruthless Records, on August 8, 1988, the album was produced by N.W.A members Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with lyrics written by N.W.A members Ice Cube and MC Ren along with Ruthless rapper The D.O.C. Not merely depicting Compton's street violence, the lyrics repeatedly threaten to lead it by attacking peers and even police. The track "Fuck tha Police" drew an FBI agent's warning letter, which aided N.W.A's notoriety, N.W.A calling itself "the world's most dangerous group."
Johann "Hans" Hölzel, better known by his stage name Falco, was an Austrian musician, singer and composer.
Three 6 Mafia is an American hip hop group from Memphis, Tennessee, formed in 1991. Emerging as a horror-themed underground hip hop group, they would eventually go on to enjoy mainstream success. The group's 1995 debut album Mystic Stylez would go on to become an influential cult classic. They have released music on independent labels such as Prophet Entertainment and their own Hypnotize Minds label, as well as Relativity, Loud, and Columbia Records.
Die Fantastischen Vier, often shortened to Fanta 4, is a German hip hop band from Stuttgart, named after the German title of Marvel's Fantastic Four. The members are Michael Schmidt (Smudo), Andreas Rieke (And.Ypsilon), Thomas Dürr, and Michael "Michi" Beck. They were, together with Advanced Chemistry, among the first groups to rap in the German language.
British hip hop, also known as UK hip hop or UK rap, is a genre of music, and a culture that covers a variety of styles of hip hop music made in the United Kingdom. It is generally classified as one of a number of styles of urban music. British hip hop can also be referred to as Brit-hop, a term coined and popularised mainly by British Vogue magazine and the BBC. British hip hop was originally influenced by the dub/toasting introduced to the United Kingdom by Jamaican migrants in the 1950s–70s, who eventually developed uniquely influenced rapping in order to match the rhythm of the ever-increasing pace and aggression of Jamaican-influenced dub in the UK. Toasting and soundsystem cultures were also influential in genres outside of hip hop that still included rapping – such as grime, jungle, and UK garage.
"Gangsta's Paradise" is a song by American rapper Coolio, featuring American singer L.V. The song was released on Coolio's album of the same name, as well as the soundtrack for the 1995 film Dangerous Minds. It samples the chorus and instrumentation, and includes some of the lyric, with altered meaning, of Stevie Wonder's 1976 song "Pastime Paradise". Stevie Wonder apparently used 'past-time paradise' in an ironic reference to squandering of the present on nostalgically 'living in the past'. Coolio apparently deplores an ostensibly paradisiacal but factually dangerous and time-wasting 'gangsta' lifestyle.
The hip hop scene in Chicago, Illinois, has produced many artists of various styles. Rappers in Chicago include Polo G, Juice WRLD, Kanye West, Do or Die, Common, Da Brat, Lupe Fiasco, Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Rhymefest, SEVENSIXX, Bump J, Chief Keef, Lil Reece, Cupcakke, Lil Durk, King Louie, King Von, Shawnna, Noname, Fredo Santana, Calboy, G Herbo, Jay Lyn Gatz, Lil Bibby, Crucial Conflict, Open Mike Eagle, Jeremih, Juice, Mick Jenkins, Saba, Ramaj Eroc, Big Frogman, Lud Foe, Twista, Young Pappy, L’A Capone, and RondoNumbaNine.
Eve-Olution is the third studio album by American rapper Eve. It was released by Ruff Ryders Entertainment on August 27, 2002, distributed through Interscope Records. Production was handled by frequent collaborators Dr. Dre, Swizz Beatz and also Irv Gotti, among others. The album garnered the internationally successful single "Gangsta Lovin'", which reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B/Hip-Hop song charts as well as number four in Australia. The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales 133,000 copies. It reached the top twenty in Canada, France, and Switzerland. The album has sold over 600,000 copies in the US and was certified gold in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
European hip hop is hip hop music created by European musicians. Hip hop is a style of music developed by African American and Caribbean communities in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. Due to this success, it has gained worldwide popularity, especially in Europe where many diverse and unique styles of hip hop have been created. This diversity is especially apparent in the forms of hip hop music and culture emanating from settler communities from Europe's former colonies and peripheries.
Hip hop music or hip-hop music, also known as rap music, is a genre of popular music developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans, Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s. It consists 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 with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, and rhythmic beatboxing. While often used to refer solely to rapping, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip hop culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Alternative hip hop is a subgenre of hip hop music that encompasses the wide range of styles that are not typically identified as mainstream. AllMusic defines it as comprising "hip hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, bass, hardcore, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk."
Comedy hip hop or comedy rap, is a subgenre of lighter hip hop music designed to be amusing or funny, compared to artists who incorporate humor into their more serious, purist hip hop styles.
It Was Written is the second studio album by American rapper Nas, released on July 2, 1996, by Columbia Records. After the modest commercial success of his debut album Illmatic (1994), Nas pursued a more polished, mainstream sound for It Was Written. Produced largely by Trackmasters, it departed from the debut's raw, underground aesthetic and embraced mafioso and gangsta themes. The recording also marked the first appearance of Nas's short-lived supergroup The Firm, featuring the rappers Foxy Brown, AZ, and Cormega.
Julian Sellmeister, also known as Yung Hurn is an Austrian hip-hop-musician from the Viennese district Donaustadt. Since 2016 he has also appeared under the name of K. Ronaldo as a fictitious older brother of himself, with the K. standing either for Kristallo or for Kristus. He is part of the Berlin-based artist collective Live From Earth. He released his album "Y" on November 8, 2019.