Fred Brathwaite more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, rapper and hip hop pioneer. He emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a camera operator and a regular guest on Glenn O'Brien's public access cable show TV Party. There he met Chris Stein and Debbie Harry. He was immortalized in 1981 when Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Fab 5 Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking and first internationally telecast hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of the Bronx. As the name implies, the area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris. The South Bronx is known for its hip hop culture and graffiti.
Beat Street is a 1984 American drama dance film featuring New York City hip hop culture of the early 1980s, breakdancing, DJing, and graffiti.
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
Hip hop or hip-hop, is a culture and art movement that began in the Bronx in New York City during the early 1970s. The origin of the word is often disputed. It is also argued as to whether hip hop started in the South or West Bronx. While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively to hip hop music, hip hop is characterized by nine elements, of which only four elements are considered essential to understand hip hop musically. The main elements of hip hop consist of four main pillars. Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, coining the terms: "rapping", a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality); DJing, which is making music with record players and DJ mixers ; b-boying/b-girling/breakdancing (movement/dance); and graffiti. Other elements of hip hop subculture and arts movements beyond the main four are: hip hop culture and historical knowledge of the movement (intellectual/philosophical); beatboxing, a percussive vocal style; street entrepreneurship; hip hop language; and hip hop fashion and style, among others. The fifth element, although debated, is commonly considered either street knowledge, hip hop fashion, or beatboxing.
Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland. She worked as a staff photographer for the New York Post during the 1970s. She is best known for documenting the New York City graffiti scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
Patti Astor is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instrumental contemporary art gallery, Fun Gallery.
PHASE 2, born Lonny Wood is one of the most influential and well known New York City aerosol artists. Furthermore he is known as member of the Zulu Nation. Mostly active in the 1970s, Phase 2 is generally credited with originating the "bubble letter" style of aerosol writing, also known as "softies". He was also influential in the early hip hop scene.
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican–American DJ who is credited with helping originate hip hop music in The Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s through his "Back to School Jam", hosted on August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick avenue. After his younger sister, Cindy Campbell, became inspired to earn extra cash for back-to-school clothes, she decided to have her older brother, then 16 years old, play music for the neighborhood in their apartment building. Known as the "Founder of Hip-Hop" and "Father of Hip-Hop", Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown as an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s.
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop or rap music, is a music genre developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans in the late 1970s which 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.
Afrika Bambaataa is an American disc jockey, singer, songwriter and producer from the South Bronx, New York. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of hip hop culture. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the originators of breakbeat DJing and is respectfully known as "The Godfather" and "Amen Ra of Hip Hop Kulture", as well as the father of electro-funk. Through his co-opting of the street gang the Black Spades into the music and culture-oriented Universal Zulu Nation, he has helped spread hip hop culture throughout the world. On May 6, 2016, Bambaataa left his position as head of The Zulu Nation due to multiple child sexual abuse allegations dating as far back as the 1970's.
Janette Beckman is a British documentary photographer. She lives in New York City.
Claw Money is a New York-based graffiti writer turned fashion designer. In 2009 Tag au Grand Palais in Paris, France named Claudia Gold a/k/a Claw one of the most influential graffiti artists of all time.
Brim Fuentes, is the founding member of graffiti crew TATS CRU, and was born in the South Bronx, New York City. Brim was fortunate enough to start writing graffiti in one of the most important periods of graffiti history. He began bombing and hitting New York City Subway trains, in the late 1970s, all the way through to the mid-1980s. After the trains were cleaned in 1989 he and the rest of TATS CRU took to the streets and began bombing and creating street art all over the city.
The Get Down is an American musical drama television series created by Baz Luhrmann and Stephen Adly Guirgis. It originally aired on Netflix on August 12, 2016, and ran for one season.
Hip Hop Family Tree is a series of educational and historical comic books written and illustrated by Ed Piskor, which documents the early history of hip hop culture. Originating online with Boing Boing, the series was published in print form by Fantagraphics Books. The first collection was a 2014 New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller (#7) and was listed in The Washington Post Top 10 graphic novels of 2013.
Feminist activism in hip hop is a feminist movement based by hip hop artists. It grounds in graffiti, break dancing, hip hop music such as rap. Hip hop has a history of being a genre that sexually objectifies women, ranging from the usage of video vixens to explicit rap lyrics. Within subcultures, such as graffiti and breakdancing, sexism is more evident through the lack of representation of women participants. In a genre notorious for its sexualization of women, feminist groups and individual artists who identify as feminists have sought to change the perception and commodification of women in hip hop. This is also rooted in cultural implications of misogyny in rap music.
Beginning in the 1960s, hip hop music was centered around the ideas of cultural discourse in urban communities where Latinos and African Americans resided. Through this music, the lyrics quickly became misogynistic and violent in response to the way that these marginalized cultures viewed mainstream society. Much of hip hop's beginnings can be traced back to the Bronx, New York, where the population consisted of mainly African-Americans and Latinos. During the 1960s and 1970s, New York City was in an economic slump. The conditions in the Bronx and other low income areas were substandard; issues facing the community included: insufficient housing, gang violence, and drugs. Blacks and Latinos came together to speak on their struggles, experiences, and lifestyles through hip hop. After recognizing these trends in hip hop/rap lyrics, mainstream media accredited hip hop culture with being inherently misogynistic. Due to the historic marginalization of Latinos and African Americans, the blame can be easily placed on hip hop artists for perpetuating this violent and masochistic culture. This is not something that is/was taken lightly by these communities of color; more rebellion through hip hop emerged. However, this movement did not attempt to fix the misogynistic elements of the music, and in turn, more women were being viewed as sexual objects within artist's works.
Sharon Green, is hip hop's first female emcee, but is commonly referred to by her stage name, MC Sha-Rock. She was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, but grew up in the South Bronx, New York City, where hip hop culture was born. She is also referred to as the "Mother of the Mic", or the "Luminary Icon" in the hip-hop community.
