50 years of Hip Hop- How Come?


Having been a music fan for over 50 years, it’s been fun to see all the different musical genres that have come and gone in popular music.

In the the 50s it was Rock n Roll. Then in the 60s we had Psychedelia, in the 70s Punk, in the 80s New Wave, in the 90s Grunge. It was always interesting to see how music changed into the next new thing.

At the latest Grammy awards, which I did not see, there was a segment called 50 years of hip hop.

I’ve personally never been a big fan of the genre, there are some songs I have liked, but that’s ok. Everyone has their tastes. What I am surprised about is Hip Hops longevity. It just seems like for the last 25 years a lot of music hasn’t really changed much. There has been no " next new thing"as far as I can tell.

How Come? Anyone feel the same way or care to comment. Am I just getting old??

 

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@tylermunns 

 

Copy and paste the following into your browser:

How Jazz became Hip Hop

Or is that too much work for you?

And thank you for the oh so insightful information on how pop music is short form for popular music. 

@perki

Perhaps you have some ideas of your own you’d like to share.  
Or perhaps you’d like to merely copy and paste a few music writers who wanted to publish a vaguely plausible “story” to meet their deadlines.

A lot of stretching going on there.  
Rap is just as much “born out of jazz” as Katy Perry is “born out of classical.”

We can flex, balance (much love, Mr. Van Vliet) and stretch some more until the cows come home.  

The degree to which the vast majority of hip hop is based on extremely complex compositions (the majority of mainstream rap barely qualifies as being a ‘composition’ at all, as it is often a series of samples and loops of previously composed/recorded material) be it,
a) complexity of harmonic relationships,
b) complexity of rhythm/time signature, and,
c) compositional structure,
is infinitesimal compared to all of the above in jazz.   

The degree to which the music is defined by virtuosic improvisational instrumental acumen, whether in a recorded or live performance capacity, is equally infinitesimal compared to jazz.
 

Personally, I enjoy rap and hip-hop; I don't enjoy jazz. I don't care about instrumental virtuosity; I care about whether I enjoy listening to the final result. Some genres I just prefer to others. 

50 years?? Oh no it was a lot earlier!

You need to dig down to slavery times and that's when rap/hip-hop first appeared

@larsman I wasn’t making a value judgement either way.  I certainly don’t consider technical proficiency/musical complexity to be synonymous with quality.  I was just elucidating the stark differences between the music that comes out of someone’s speakers when they listen to jazz vs. when they listen to pop (let alone rap).