Time 1983:
This subculture, nicknamed hip hop, is about assertiveness, display, pride, status and competition, particularly among males. Clothes are not only a part of this offhand cultural statement; they are a kind of uniform for cultural challenge.

People Weekly 1983:
Born in the Bronx and Harlem in the mid-'70s as a reaction against disco, rap lays a hip-hopping patter of chanted, rhymed lyrics over a funk beat.

Hip Hop 1984:
Hip hop funky music suitable for rapping; a collective term used to describe rap/graffiti/breaking/scratchin'. The term was invented by Starski, who used to chant: ‘To the hip hop, hip hop, don't stop that body rock.’

Buzz 1985:
If your youth club is full of skinhead and hip-hop fans they're not going to be interested in a heavy metal band!

New Statesman 1987:
John Ellis' The Social History of the Machine Gun..traces this accessory of gangsters, terrorists and hip-hop poseurs from its 18th-century birth.

Q 1989:
Since the demise of disco and the early '80s fad for ‘blue-eyed Soul’, there has been no mainstream dance music style hip hop always retained too strong a racial identity to make serious inroads.

Observer 1989:
The look is squeaky clean. In its simplest form, the hip-hopper's kit consists of a hooded baggy top, tracksuit pants and training shoes.

Oxford English Dictionary:
a. A youth subculture, originating amongst the Black and Hispanic populations of New York City, which comprises elements such as rap music, graffiti art, and break-dancing, as well as distinctive codes of dress. b. The music associated with this subculture, characterized by freq. politically inspired or motivated raps, delivered above spare, electronic backing, and harsh rhythm tracks. Also attrib. or as adj

Collins Dictionary:
A U.S. pop culture movement of the 1980s comprising rap music, graffiti, and break dancing

Cambridge International Dictionary of English:
A type of popular music in which the subject of the songs is often politics or society and the words are spoken rather than sung

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, 10th Edition:
A subculture especially of inner-city youths whose amusements include rap music, graffiti, and break dancing; also : an element or art form prevalent within this subculture

Encarta World English Dictionary:
popular music, art, and dance: a form of popular culture that started in the United States in the 1980s in African American inner-city areas. Its elements include rap music, graffiti art, and breakdancing.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
A popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents. 2. Rap music

Columbia Dictionary, 6th edition, 2001 (actually the entry is found under “Rap Music&rdquo:
Rap Music or hip-hop, genre originating in the mid-1970s among black and Hispanic performers in New York City, at first associated with an athletic style of dancing, known as breakdancing. The word rap, derived from a 1960s slang word for conversation, generally consists of chanted, often improvised, street poetry accompanied by a montage of well-known recordings, usually disco or funk. Detractors have criticized most rap music as a boastful promotion of violence and misogyny; others have admired it as an inventive manipulation of cultural idioms and credit many rappers with an acute social and political awareness. Early rap groups included Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and the Beastie Boys. Rap has influenced many forms of popular culture, particularly film, and has been increasingly incorporated into pop music. Some influential rap performers include Public Enemy, NWA, Run-DMC, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, and Queen Latifah.

The new Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (3rd Edition, 2002):
Another name for rap music. Rap is a form of pop music characterized by spoken or chanted rhymed lyrics, with a syncopated, repetitive accompaniment. Rap music originated in the second half of the twentieth century in black urban communities.
The term hip-hop also refers to the speech, fashions, and personal style adopted by many youths, particularly in urban areas.

Infoplease Dictionary:
The popular subculture of big-city teenagers, which includes rap music, break dancing, and graffiti art.

Dictionary.com Online:
A popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents.

Britannica Encyclopedia:
Cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and '90s; also, the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement's most lasting and influential art form.

Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia:
Hip hop is a cultural movement that began amongst urban (primarily, but not entirely, African American) youth in New York and has since spread around the world. The four main elements of hip-hop are MCing, DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing.

Encarta® Online Encyclopedia, North American Edition:
Hip-Hop, popular music that originated in New York in the early 1980s. Hip-hop is created with scratching (a percussive effect obtained by manually rotating a vinyl record) and heavily accented electronic drums behind a rap vocal. By the 1990s, the use of digital samples (electronic snippets of prerecorded music) had largely superseded scratching. The term hip-hop also includes break dancing and graffiti

Afrika Bambaataa:
The music (beats) that makes up hip-hop, comes from different nationalities and races, especially from black people, and if you think I am a brother who don`t know what he is talking about, just check out many of the music, beats, grooves and sounds that many of your rappers use to make their records or rap over. Hip-hop music in general is colorless and not racist.
It comes from many categories in music, for example: Hip-hop music is made up from other forms of music like funk, soul, rhythm & blues, jazz, rock heavy metal, salsa, soca (calypso), TV shows, kiddie shows, horror movies, techno, pop, disco, african, arabic, reggae -etc. and if you use any records from these categories, you will see that the music is made by people from different races or nationalities from all over the planet, but it’s roots start with black people.

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Music, History