Some info about music genres: Rap and Hip Hop

Urban

     Urban is in or having to do with cities, as distinct from rural areas.

Urban Radio

     Anything that is currently street, or hip is likely to find its way onto the urban charts. Rap, hip hop, and also club, rhythm 'n' blues as well as jazz, gospel/inspirational and ballads.

Rap music

Politics and rap

     Rapping can be seen as one of the four elements of hip hop: MCing (rapping), DJing (mixing, cutting and scratching), graffiti, and breakdancing. However, in the course of rap's history, new musical styles developed that use rapping - especially rapcore, also known as rap/rock or rap/metal, first introduced by crossover pioneer Run-DMC's collaboration with Aerosmith in 1986. Some alternative rap has musically very little to do with hip hop and rap music. Often consisting of bizarre soundscapes and vivid lyrics, abstract hip-hop has developed, largely in the underground.

     Music outside of the United States has taken the rap style and blended it with completely different elements. Japanese dance music, for example, often uses rapping to complement or break up the singing parts, with lyrics containing upbeat themes set to energetic rhythms and clean, warm synths. A new offshoot of garage techno, dubbed Grime, has emerged in Britain, featuring acts like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley.

     Undoubtedly, the most important element of rap lyrics is rhyme. In other forms of poetry, rhymes that span many syllables are often considered whimsical but in hip hop, the ability to construct raps with large sets of rhyming syllables is considered a sign of intelligence and achievement. To accomplish rhymes of this sophistication, rappers can use single rhyming words (intellectual/ineffectual) or they can use multiple words whose constituent syllables rhyme (octoroon/Doctor Dooom). Rap lyrics often contain long series of lines each of which rhyme with each other. Occasionally, entire songs are composed in this fashion where all lines rhyme with each other. Of course, the more intricate the rhymes are, the more abstract the song becomes. This is because the more focus given to impressive rhyming, the harder it becomes to write coherently.

     In many traditional cultures there exist lyrical forms that could loosely be described as rapping. Examples of these include:

• Chastushka in Russia
• Tsiattista in Cyprus
• Enka Slamta in Ethiopia
• Tassou in Senegal

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapping

     Rap originated in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx area of New York City. The rise of rap in many ways parallels the birth of rock'n roll in the 1950s. Both originated within the African American community and both were initially recorded by small, independent record labels and marketed almost exclusively to a black audience. In both cases, the new style gradually attracted white musicans, a few of whom began performing it. For rock'n roll it was a white American from Mississippi, Elvis Presley, who broke into the billboard magazine popular music charts.

Soon after 1986, the use of the samples and declaimed vocal styles became widespread in popular music of both black and white performers, significantly altering previous notions of what constitutes a legitimate song, composition or musical instrument.

Hip Hop (Cultural Movement)

     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. The term has since come to be a synonym for rap music tоo.

Hip Hop (Music)

     Dub had arisen in Jamaica in 1960s due to the influence of American sailors and radio stations playing R&B. Large sound systems were set up to accommodate poor Jamaicans, who couldn't afford to buy records, and dub developed at the sound systems (refers to both the system and the parties that evolved around them). In Jamaica, dub music has diversified into genres like ragga and dancehall.

Notable Hip Hop artists

Lil' Kim is called the Madonna of hip hop.

The Bristol Sound

     The Bristol sound was the name given to a number of bands from Bristol, England, in the 1990s.

     These artists can include the aforementioned original Bristolians Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky and others such as Way Out West, Smith and Mighty and The Wild Bunch.

Musicology

     Trip-hop is known for its moody, dark, yet lyrical sound. The trip-hop sound is deeply reliant upon jazz samples, usually taken from old vinyl jazz records. This kind of reliance on sampling has changed the way record labels deal with clearing samples for use in other people's tracks. Trip-hop tracks often sample Rhodes pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and flutes, and develops in parallel to hip hop, each inspiring the other.

     Trip-hop production is historically lo-fi, relying on analog recording equipment and instrumentation for an ambience. Portishead, for example, record their material to old tape from real instruments, and then sample their recordings rather than recording their instruments directly to a track. They also tend to put their drums through considerable compression.