Rapping is an artistic form of vocal delivery and emotive expression that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and [commonly] street vernacular". It is usually performed 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 off-time to musical accompaniment. It also differs from singing, which varies in pitch and does not always include words. Because they do not rely on pitch inflection, some rap artists may play with timbre or other vocal qualities. Rap is a primary ingredient of hip-hop music, and so commonly associated with the genre that it is sometimes called "rap music".
Percy Robert Miller, better known by his stage name Master P, is an American rapper, record producer, record executive, dancer, actor and entrepreneur. He founded the record label No Limit Records in 1991, which was relaunched into the spin-off labels New No Limit Records and No Limit Forever Records. Miller gained fame in the mid-1990s as the lead and founding of the label's hip hop group TRU, as well as his fifth solo album, Ice Cream Man (1996), and its namesake lead single. His 1997 single, "Make 'Em Say Uhh!" received platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Kimberly Denise Jones, better known by her stage name Lil' Kim, is an American rapper. She was born and raised in New York City and lived much of her adolescent life on the streets after being expelled from home. In her teens, she would freestyle rap, influenced by fellow female hip-hop artists like MC Lyte and the Lady of Rage. In 1994, she was discovered by fellow rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who invited her to join his group Junior M.A.F.I.A.; their debut album, Conspiracy, generated two top 20 singles in the United States and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Christian hip hop is a cross-genre of contemporary Christian music and hip hop music. It emerged from urban contemporary music and Christian media in the United States during the 1980s.
A ghostwriter is a person hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are putatively credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material.
Death Row Records is an American record label that was founded in 1991 by The D.O.C., Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, and Dick Griffey. The label became a sensation by releasing multi-platinum hip-hop albums by West Coast-based artists such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg (Doggystyle) and 2Pac during the 1990s. At its peak, Death Row was making over US $150 million a year.
Pinoy hip hop or Filipino hip-hop is a style of hip hop music performed by musicians of Filipino descent, especially Filipino-Americans.
Timothy Jerome Parker, better known by his stage name Gift of Gab, was an American rapper best known for performing in the Bay Area hip hop duo Blackalicious along with DJ Chief Xcel. He was also a member of Quannum Projects, a Bay Area hip hop crew and record label, and performed and recorded as a solo artist.
Tommy Boy Records is an American independent record label and multimedia brand founded in 1981 by Tom Silverman. The label is credited with helping and launching the music careers of Queen Latifah, Amber, Afrika Bambaataa, Stetsasonic, Digital Underground, Coolio, De La Soul, House of Pain, Naughty By Nature, and Force MDs.
Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans, starting in the Bronx, New York City. Pioneered from Black American street culture, that had been around for years prior to its more mainstream discovery, it later reached other groups such as Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans. Hip-hop culture has historically been shaped and dominated by African American men, though female hip hop artists have contributed to the art form and culture as well. Hip hop culture is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing; other elements include graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip hop language, and hip hop fashion. From hip hop culture emerged a new genre of popular music, hip hop music.
The East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry is a dispute between artists and fans of the East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop scenes in the United States, especially from the mid-1990s. A focal point of the rivalry was the feud between East Coast–based rapper the Notorious B.I.G. signed by Puff Daddy and their New York City–based label, Bad Boy Records, and West Coast–based rapper Tupac Shakur signed by Suge Knight and their Los Angeles–based label, Death Row Records. Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were murdered in drive-by shootings within six months of each other, after which the feud entered a truce with a "peace" summit in 1997 at the behest of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
SOHH was an American former hip hop news website. Felicia Palmer and Steven Samuel founded the website in 1996. In 2000, Rolling Stone magazine writer Mark Binelli called it the "best overall hip-hop site".
Hip-hop or hip hop, formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music, that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s primarily from African American, Afro-Latin, and Afro-Caribbean musical aesthetics practiced by youth in the South Bronx. Hip-hop music originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence social movement led by the Afrika Bambaataa and the Universal Zulu Nation. The genre is characterized by stylized rhythmic sounds—often built around disco grooves, electronic drum beats, and rapping, a percussive vocal delivery of rhymed poetic speech as consciousness-raising expression. The music developed as part of the broader hip-hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, breakdancing, and graffiti art or writing. Knowledge is sometimes described as a fifth element, underscoring its role in shaping the values and promoting empowerment and consciousness-raising through music. In 1999, emcee KRS-One, often referred to as "The Teacher," elaborated on this framework in a Harvard lecture, identifying additional elements that extend beyond the basic four. These include self-expression, street fashion, street language, street knowledge, and street entrepreneurialism, which remain integral to hip-hop's musical expression, entertainment business, and sound production. Girls’ double-dutch was also recognized as a key stylistic component of breakdancing, according to KRS. While often used to refer solely to rapping and rap music, "hip-hop" more properly denotes the practice(s) of the entire subculture. The term hip-hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping may not be the focus of hip-hop music. The genre also centers DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Chopper is a hip hop music subgenre 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 2000s, it had spread to other parts of the United States including California and New York City, and it has spread around the world since.
Willie Jae is an American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur from Newark, New Jersey. Jae is most known in the hip hop community for being the first artist of any genre to accumulate both one million song plays and 1 million downloads in 2001. Riding on the success of his Mixtape he began ghostwriting several rap and R&B records for major acts. Jae has been the go to "hook" writer for hip hop's biggest acts since the young age of 16, starting off writing for fun, and ending up ghostwriting for Def Jam writers. After a year of ghostwriting for a major label, Jae decided to branch out and become an indie artist, while still writing commercial records per Diem. In 2008 Jae retired from writing, and began a new career as an entrepreneur, he liked the idea of working for himself and financial independence. In 2011 Jae was presented with the opportunity to buy into a private social media management company, already becoming a social media powerhouse himself he took the opportunity and bought an estimated 64% of the company. Realizing that he could use the connections he had made in the music industry to expand the company Jae returned to the hip hop music scene, and after reconnecting with former clients he was convinced to come out of retirement, and since been in negotiations for a publishing deal with Jay-Z's StarRoc.
The influence and impact of hip hop was originally shaped from African American and Latino communities in the South Bronx. In the last several decades, the movement has become a worldwide phenomenon which transcends different cultural boundaries as it reaches several ethnic groups, including Asian Americans. Asian American hip-hop practitioners include: MC Jin, Lyrics Born, Dumbfoundead, Tokimonsta, and DJ Q-Bert.
Blackalicious was an American hip-hop duo from Sacramento, California, made up of rapper Gift of Gab and DJ/producer Chief Xcel. They are noted for Gift of Gab's often tongue-twisting, multisyllabic, complex rhymes and Chief Xcel's soulful production. The duo released four full-length albums: Nia in 1999, Blazing Arrow in 2002, The Craft in 2005, and Imani Vol. 1 in 2015. Gift of Gab died in June 2021.
2DopeBoyz, stylized in all caps, is an online hip hop music review, news and criticism website launched in 2007 by Meka Udoh and Joel "Shake" Zela, who were former editors at HipHopDX. The website played a central role in hip hop's blog era of the mid-2000s and early 2010s, a period of growth for non-mainstream outlets as music media transitioned from primarily print and radio-based to online outlets and social media. 2DOPEBOYZ and other blogs like it helped promote unsigned and unknown rappers to notoriety, launching the careers of many of the star artists of the period.
Genius is an American digital media company founded on August 27, 2009, by Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, and Mahbod Moghadam. Its website serves as an online music encyclopedia allowing users to provide annotations and interpretation to song lyrics, news stories, sources, poetry, and documents.
BeatStars is a global subscription-based music licensing platform where recording artists and producers collaborate, license and distribute their work to multiple parties through a variety of non-exclusive and exclusive license types. Founder Abe Batshon formed the BeatStars model to make his own music before launching it as a business in 2008.
