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Hip Hop Music In The 1980's

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In the 1980s, hip hop spread to the rest of the world, not just urban cities in the United States. Recording studios became more widely available to artists. In 1979, “Rapper’s Delight” from The Sugarhill Gang was released, and is considered to be the first hip hop song to be recorded and released to the public. New York City’s radio station WKTU began playing hip hop songs in commercials in an attempt to promote artists. After WKTU’s promotion, hip hop songs were played on the radio in other cities like Philidelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles. Although every major city had begun playing hip hop songs on the radio, it was still New York City that was promoting artists the most. Hip hop music had not yet become mainstream, but a new wave of artists would break the scene in …show more content…

Music from these times were said to be about “diversity, quality, innovation and influence.” (Caramancia) Songs were heavily influenced by Afrocentrism and political militancy, and used samplings from jazz music. The Golden Age was seen as a time “when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre” (Coker) Popular artists from this age were A Tribe Called Quest, Big Daddy Kane, and Public Enemy. Artists set themselves apart from their predecessors by creating themselves as artists, and then having their music revolve around their image. Radio hosts were against rap music and its main messages. It took MC Hammer’s song “U Can’t Touch This” to push him into households across America. The song reached top 10 on the Billboard top 100. “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice became the first hip hop single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard top 100. After MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, Dr. Dre released his album The Chronic, which further pushed hip hop on the airways. The album style later dominated west-coast hip hop, and was adopted by popular artists like Snoop Dogg and Tupac

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