Hip-hop is a musical genre that is a combination of rhythmic music with a rhythmic rhyme overlaying it, sometimes with a melodic verse. Hip-hop music is a combination of two musical elements of hip-hop subculture – DJing and emceeing.
Hip-hop music has a large number of trends, from fairly “light” genres such as pop rap, to aggressive genres such as hardcore rap and chorrorror. The content of the songs varies from light and relaxed, such as memories of the “good old days”, to the raising of social issues.
The origins of hip-hop music are in funk, which is the main “ancestor” of this trend. However, other genres – rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, rock music – also influenced the formation of hip-hop.
Very often the terms “hip-hop” and “rap” are used synonymously, which is not correct. Rap is “the recitative performance of poetry to rhythmic music,” which can be used not only by hip-hop artists, but also by representatives of other genres – modern rhythm and blues, pop music, rap-core, nu-metal, raggamuffin. Rapping, which emerged as a kind of spoken word style, has evolved into a true art form with many facets. Thus, the rappers Twista and Busta Rhymes perform super-fast recitative, and Ghostface Killah turns his rhymes into real riddles, uncomprehendable for an untrained listener.
The term “hip-hop” is defined as a combination of two words – “hip” (hurrah) and “hop” (jump).