Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music, or hip-hop music, is a music genre consisting 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, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling (or synthesis), and beat boxing.

By Ke Liu 134102207 Class4

While often used to refer 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 and scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

There are four periods in the history of Hip-hop: Roots of hip-hop, old school hip-hop, new school hip-hop and golden age hip-hop. And there are so many kinds of hip-hop music in US, such as Acid rap, Bounce music, Electro, Freestyle rap, Gangsta rap, Grime, Hip-hop soul and so on. There are mainly two schools of US hip-hop: West Coast Hip-hop and East Coast Hip-hop. The most famous one is West Coast Hip-hop.

After N.W.A broke up, Dr. Dre (a former member) released The Chronic in 1992, which peaked at #1 on the R&B/hip hop chart, #3 on the pop chart and spawned a #2 pop single with “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” The Chronic took West Coast rap in a new direction,influenced strongly by P funk artists, melding smooth and easy funk beats with slowly drawled lyrics. This came to be known as G-funk and dominated mainstream hip hop for several years through a roster of artists on Death Row Records, including Tupac Shakur, whose double disc album All Eyez on Me was a big hit with hit songs “Ambitionz az a Ridah” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted“, and Snoop Dogg, whose Doggystyle included the songs “What’s My Name?” and “Gin and Juice“, both top ten hits. As the Los Angeles-based label Death Row Records built an empire around Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and the rapper-actor Tupac Shakur. It also entered into a rivalry with New York City’s Bad Boy Records. (See the article on the East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry.)

In fact, WC Hip-hop has given a great influence all over the world. Jeanguy and Paxi, two hip-hop dancers working in China, they say:”West Coast is the best because East is bad in the art of singing and South is dirty .The best singer&rappers are almost from West such as 2Pac,Dr.dre,Snoopy Dogg.” In their opinions.Hip hop music is not just a type of music, but also represents a kind of attitude to life. Being asked about the situation of hip-hop nowadays and the future, they say:”As 2Pac said, Hip-hop never die.”