The history of hip-hop started at the poor black street corners in The Bronx, New York. The gatherings of rappers and MCs grew in size and spread rapidly through the population in the years to come. It was not long before simple witty raps on the street turned into million dollar record deals and top-notch studios.

Africa Bambaata, a highly influential person in hip-hop, was considered the founding father of this music genre. He split hip-hop into four different elements or parts: MC’ing, DJ’ing, graffiti and b-dance. Knowledge was added on the four becoming the fifth element of hip-hop. Another highly regarded person known as DJ Kool Hercs made the term breakbeat.

If you are interested in hip-hop, you’ve probably heard about KRS-One. He is has been an inspiration for many famous rappers through the years giving him credit for their success. He added three more parts to hip-hop (now a total of eight). These are slang, streetwear and beatboxing.

The golden age of hip-hop was considered conscious rap, where the lyrics and texts was about bringing poor urban living to the surface. This lasted for a couple of years, considered to start in the late 80′s and end in the early 90′s. From there on hip-hop changed for the worse to center around drugs, money and violence. While there still are many artists not participating in these forms of hip-hop, most of them can only be found underground.

Compare some quotes from recent artist such as kid cudi quotes or lil wayne quotes to popular hip-hop artists 20 years ago and you’ll see the differences.

Hip-hop is more than music. What we today call graffiti is actually a derivative from one of hip-hop’s elements, calling it hip-hop graffiti is equivalent. This is also true for other terms such as club-dance.