Latin hip hop or Latin rap is hip hop music recorded by Latin American artists in the United States and Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
Rapping is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular", which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The components of rap include "content", "flow", and "delivery". Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed in time to musical accompaniment. Rap being a primary ingredient of hip hop music, it is commonly associated with that genre in particular; however, the origins of rap precede hip-hop culture. The earliest precursor to modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which "oral historians", or "praise-singers", would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their rhetorical techniques for gossip or to "praise or critique individuals." Griot traditions connect to rap along a lineage of black verbal reverence, through James Brown interacting with the crowd and the band between songs, to Muhammad Ali's verbal taunts and the poems of The Last Poets. Therefore, rap lyrics and music are part of the "Black rhetorical continuum", and aim to reuse elements of past traditions while expanding upon them through "creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies". The person credited with originating the style of "delivering rhymes over extensive music", that would become known as rap, was Anthony "DJ Hollywood" Holloway from Harlem, New York.
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.
Japanese hip hop is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, taking from the era's catchy beats, dance culture and overall fun and carefree nature and incorporating it into their music. As a result, hip hop stands as one of the most commercially viable mainstream music genres in Japan and the line between it and pop music is frequently blurred.
East Coast hip hop is a regional subgenre of hip hop music that originated in New York City during the 1970s. Hip hop is recognized to have originated and evolved first in the Bronx, New York; East Coast hip hop only became a distinct subgenre after artists from other regions of the United States emerged with different styles.
Southern hip hop, also known as Southern rap, South Coast hip hop, or dirty south, is a blanket term for a regional genre of American hip hop music that emerged in the Southern United States and the Southeastern United States, especially in Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Memphis, and Miami—five cities which constitute the "Southern Network" in rap music.
Korean hip hop, also known as K-hip hop, is a subgenre of hip hop music from South Korea. Korean hip hop is distinguished from American hip hop by not only sound and language, but also by the culture from which the music is made.
Emerging in the first half of the 1980s, Swedish hip hop was first heard from the cities of Stockholm and Malmö. In the early days, most rappers in Sweden rapped in English. Funkalics and The Latin Kings, two very different acts united by their innovative use of the Swedish language, debuted a decade later and paved the way for a second, and bigger, breakthrough for Swedish hip hop. Today, some of the most popular rappers use Swedish, often in different accents.
British hip hop, also known as 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 culture was also influential in genres outside of hip hop that still included rapping – such as grime, jungle, and UK garage.
New Zealand Hip Hop derives from the wider hip hop cultural movement originating amongst African Americans in the United States. Like the parent movement, New Zealand hip hop consists of four parts: rapping, DJing, graffiti art and breakdancing. The first element of hip hop to reach New Zealand was breakdancing, which gained notoriety after the release of the 1979 movie The Warriors. The first hip hop hit single, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang, became a hit in New Zealand when it was released there in 1980, a year after it was released in the United States. By the middle of the 1980s, breakdancing and graffiti art were established in urban areas like Wellington and Christchurch. By the early 1990s hip hop became a part of mainstream New Zealand culture.
The Canadian hip hop scene was first established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much more slowly than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s.
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.
Asian hip hop is a heterogeneous musical genre that covers all hip hop music as recorded and produced by artists of Asian origin.
Pakistani hip hop is a music genre in Pakistan influenced heavily from merging American hip hop style beats with Pakistani poetry. The genre was initially dominated in English and Punjabi, but in recent years has expanded to Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, and Balochi.
Hip hop music, also known as rap music, is a genre of popular music developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans and Latino 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, graffiti writing and customized cars. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, and rhythmic beatboxing.
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 follows: "Alternative rap refers to hip hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, bass, hardcore, pop, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk."
Chopper is a hip hop music style that originated in the Midwestern United States and features fast-paced rhyming or rapping. Those that rap in the style are known as choppers, and rapping in the style is sometimes referred to as chopping. The style is one of the major forms of Midwest hip hop, though by the early 1990s it had spread to other parts of the United States including California and New York City, and it has spread across the world since.
Run-DMC was an American hip hop group from Hollis, Queens, New York, founded in 1983 by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and Jason Mizell. Run-DMC is regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop culture and one of the most famous hip hop acts of the 1980s. Along with LL Cool J and Public Enemy, the group pioneered new school hip hop music. The group was among the first to highlight the importance of the MC and DJ relationship.
Carl-Henning William "Wille" Crafoord is a Swedish composer, songwriter, singer and rap artist. He became known in the late 1980s for introducing hip hop music in Sweden to a wider audience through his rap group Just D. He was a member of the group between 1989 and 1995. He has released several solo albums, and in 1997 he was awarded the Karamelodiktstipendiet. Just D was awarded the music award Rockbjörnen in 1995. He has twice participated in Melodifestivalen both as a performer and songwriter.
