Afrika Bambaataa’s Definition Of Hip Hop?
Hip Hop means the whole culture of the movement.. when you talk about rap..Rap is part of the hip hop culture..The emceeing..The djaying is part of the hip hop culture. The dressing the languages are all part of the hip hop culture.The break dancing the b-boys, b-girls ..how you act, walk, look, talk are all part of hip hop culture.. and the music is colorless.. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red, white.. whatever music that gives you the grunt.. that funk.. that groove or that beat.. It’s all part of hip hop….
Are artist from the West Coast and Miami
considered Hip Hop?
Too Short, E-40 all the brothers and sisters that are making that hip hop and coming from the funk part of it are all hip hoppers.. The Electro Funk which is that Planet Rock sound which is now considered the Miami Bass sound is also hip hop.. The GoGo sound that you hear from Washington DC is also hip hop.. New Jack Swing that Teddy Riley is R&B and hip hop mixed together…So hip hop has progressed into different sounds and different avenues.. People also have to recognize from hip hop music..inparticular the electro funk came House music and Freestyle music with a lot of our Pueto Rican hip hoppers…
The freestyle music really comes from Planet Rock..If you look at all the freestyle records its based upon Planet Rock.. If you look at all the Miami Bass records it’s based upon Planet Rock.. It’s all based upon electro funk… which came from hip hop music…
Hip Hop has experimented with a lot of different styles of music and there’s a lot of people who have brought different changes over time with hip hop.. which have brought out all these funky records which everybody just started jumpin’ on like a catch phrase.. For example when ‘Planet Rock’ came out you had all of the electro funk records.. When you had Doug E Fresh with the show and ‘La Di Da Di’.. a lot of rappers went that way…When Eric B came out with ‘I Know U Got Soul’… all the way up to Run DMC and Wu-Tang. All these people brought changes within hip hop music… Unfortunately today a lot of the people who created hip hop..meaning the Black and Latinos do not control it no more…
Afrika Bambaataa
Sept 23 1996