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How the Bronx brought breaking to the world

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Why was there so much drugs involved for hip hop

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Why was there so much drugs involved for hip hop

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When we think of the relationship between drugs and music, many of us recall images of Jimi Hendrix on stage at Woodstock or the wild antics of The Rolling Stones. While for decades many have associated drug culture with rock and roll music, the modern generation of music has played a significant role in shifting this perception. Most notably, hip hop and rap music have become what many associate drug culture with today, and it's not without cause. For better or worse, rap music and drugs are inextricably linked, and how this genre approaches substance abuse is indicative of not only the lives of those in poverty in America, but also how drugs shape the image of wealth and luxury for the most successful of rap musicians.

Rap music, like jazz, is a uniquely American invention, and saw its birth on the streets of The Bronx in New York City during the 1970s, but its story begins far earlier in the days of Prohibition. From 1920 to the early 30s, gangs in the southern Bronx made livings of off smuggling in illegal shipments of alcohol. This, in turn, caused the area to become impoverished virtually overnight due to gang violence and rampant alcohol abuse. This lead to many of the middle to upper class citizens of The Bronx to leave for the other boroughs of New York City. The flight of these individuals during the 1930s to the 1960s left only lower income African Americans and Hispanics in The Bronx, and property value began to decline due to a mixture of now-vacant housing and many viewing the area as crime-ridden. In the 1970s, to help combat poverty and homelessness, construction on project housing began. However, this only played a role in increasing poverty and crime in the area. Substance abuse and drug trafficking were extremely common, and for many were a way of life or an avenue to provide for themselves or their families. While substance abuse was rampant, the sense of community offered by the housing projects was unparalleled, and resulted in block parties and get-togethers becoming a staple of inner-city culture. During this time, DJs playing music for these parties needed a way to extend their music, and decided to extend the percussive breaks in songs to make their sets seem longer. Eventually, the introduction of poetry spoken over the beats helped create hip hop as we know it today. However, while some of this rhyming was simple wordplay and fun, it evolved into a voice for a disenfranchised community, and allowed them to speak about the culture and hardships they were familiar with.

Most notable amongst early rap music was speaking about the hardships of life in the American ghetto. Influential artists like Grandmaster Flash introduced middle class Americans to the struggles of the impoverished black community by rapping about how substance abuse, drug trafficking, and the current culture in America were holding their communities back. This evolved into harder, more gritty rap music known as gangster rap, which originated in the poorest communities in south-central Los Angeles. Here, drug trafficking, gang violence, and substance abuse were destroying communities, and many of those involved saw rap music as a way to not only have a voice and be able to speak about their struggles, but also as a lucrative opportunity to escape the cycle of gang violence and drug trafficking.

Drug use and trafficking are grim realities of impoverished communities across America, and rap music gave many who had never had a voice in American culture an opportunity to speak on these issues that many of us never see. While musically it may not be everyone's taste, rap and hip hop offer a glimpse into a world dominated by the selling and misuse of drugs. We can see through this genre how poverty and drug use are intrinsically linked, and more importantly, those who in the past have been denied a voice in America are given one through rap and hip hop.

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Drugs and Hip Hop: A Match Made in America - Chapters Capistrano

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When we think of the relationship between drugs and music, many of us recall images of Jimi Hendrix on stage at Woodstock or the wild antics of The Rolling Stones. While for decades many have associated drug culture with rock and roll music, the modern generation of music has played ...

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Where was hip hop Originated and who were its founders.

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Where was hip hop Originated and who were its founders.

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Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there's a case to be made that it came to life precisely on August 11, 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New York City. The location of that birthplace was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, and the man who presided over that historic party was the birthday girl's brother, Clive Campbell-better known to history as DJ Kool Herc, founding father of hip hop.

Born and raised to the age of 10 in Kingston, Jamaica, DJ Kool Herc began spinning records at parties and between sets his father's band played while he was a teenager in the Bronx in the early 1970s. Herc often emulated the style of Jamaican "selectors" (DJs) by "toasting" (i.e., talking) over the records he spun, but his historical significance has nothing to do with rapping. Kool Herc's contribution to hip-hop was even more fundamental.

DJ Kool Herc's signature innovation came from observing how the crowds would react to different parts of whatever record he happened to be playing: "I was noticing people used to wait for particular parts of the record to dance, maybe [to] do their specialty move." Those moments tended to occur at the drum breaks-the moments in a record when the vocals and other instruments would drop out completely for a measure or two of pure rhythm. What Kool Herc decided to do was to use the two turntables in a typical DJ setup not as a way to make a smooth transition between two records, but as a way to switch back and forth repeatedly between two copies of the same record, extending the short drum break that the crowd most wanted to hear. He called his trick the Merry-Go-Round. Today, it is known as the "break beat."

By the summer of 1973, DJ Kool Herc had been using and refining his break-beat style for the better part of a year. His sister's party on August 11, however, put him before his biggest crowd ever and with the most powerful sound system he'd ever worked. It was the success of that party that would begin a grassroots musical revolution, fully six years before the term "hip hop" even entered the popular vocabulary.

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Hip hop is born at a birthday party in the Bronx | August 11, 1973 | HISTORY

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Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there's a case to be made that it came to life precisely on August 11, 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New [...]