Hip Hop Hip Hop, or rap music began as a largely black, inner-city phenomenon of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Hip Hop was originally a strictly live idiom, performed at clubs and parties (often illegally thrown in NYC parks). The music grew out Jamaican DJ, or Toasting, music, disco and the burgeoning, (and intimately connected), electro-funk sound. Jamaican DJ music was the blueprint, with its reliance on a turntable and a DJ, or MC, who called out rhythmic phrases and chants over and...