Alternative Hip Hop
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Alternative Hip Hop
Alternative hip-hop (also known as alternative rap and experimental hip-hop) is a subgenre of hip-hop music that encompasses a wide range of styles that are not typically identified as mainstream. AllMusic defines it as comprising "hip-hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, bass, hardcore, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk." Alternative hip-hop developed in the late 1980s and experienced a degree of mainstream recognition during the early to mid-1990s. While some groups such as Arrested Development and the Fugees achieved commercial success, many alternative rap acts tend to be embraced by alternative rock listeners rather than hip-hop or pop audiences. The commercial and cultural momentum was impeded by the simultaneous emergence of significantly harder-edged West Coast gangsta rap. A resurgence came about in the late 1990s ...
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Hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip-hop includes rapping often enough that the terms can be used synonymously. However, "hip-hop" more properly denotes an entire subculture. Other key markers of the genre are the disc jockey, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks. Cultural interchange has always been central to the hip-hop genre. It simultaneously borrows from its social environment while commenting on it. The hip-hop genre and culture emerged from block parties in ethnic minority neighborhoods of New York City, particularly Bronx. DJs began expanding the instrumental breaks of popular records when they noticed how excited it would make the crowds. The extended instrumental breaks provided a platform for break dancers and rappers. These br ...
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Jazz Rap
Jazz rap (also jazz hop or jazz hip hop) is a fusion of jazz and hip hop music, as well as an alternative hip-hop subgenre, that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter." The rhythm was rooted in hip hop over which repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation, such as the trumpet, double bass, etc., were placed. The groups involved in the formation of jazz rap included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Gang Starr, and Jungle Brothers. Overview During the 1970s, the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron placed spoken word and rhymed poetry over jazzy backing tracks. There are also parallels between jazz and the improvised phrasings of freestyle rap. While it drew from these disparate threads, jazz rap did not coalesce as a genre until the late 19 ...
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Folk Music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by Convention (norm), custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with popular music, commercial and art music, classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith ...
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Pop Rock
Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is a fusion genre and form of rock music characterized by a strong commercial appeal, with more emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than standard rock music. Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, early pop rock was influenced by the Beat (music), beat, arrangements, and original style of rock and roll (and sometimes doo-wop). It may be viewed as a distinct genre field rather than music that overlaps with Pop music, pop and rock. The detractors of pop rock often deride it as a slick, commercial product and less Authenticity in art#Authenticity of performance, authentic than rock music. Characteristics and etymology Much pop and rock music has been very similar in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content. The terms "pop rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe more commercially successful music that uses elements from, or the form of, roc ...
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Hardcore Hip-hop
Hardcore hip-hop (also known as hardcore rap) is a subgenre of hip hop music that developed through the East Coast hip hop scene in the 1980s. Pioneered by such artists as Run-DMC, Schoolly D, Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy, it is generally characterized by anger, aggression and confrontation. History Music experts have credited Run-DMC as the first hardcore hip hop group. Other early artists to adopt an aggressive style were Schoolly D in Philadelphia and Too $hort in Oakland. Before a formula for gangsta rap had developed, artists such as Boogie Down Productions and Ice-T wrote lyrics based on detailed observations of "street life", while the confrontational and aggressive lyrics and chaotic, rough production style of Public Enemy's records set new standards for hardcore hip hop and hip hop production.. AllMusic. Accessed May 12, 2025. Though initially a largely East Coast phenomenon, by the late 1980s, hardcore rap increasingly became largely synonymous with West ...
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Miami Bass
Miami bass (also known as booty music or booty bass) is a subgenre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit lyrical content differentiate it from other hip hop subgenres. Music author Richie Unterberger has characterized Miami bass as using rhythms with a "stop-start flavor" and "hissy" cymbals with lyrics that "reflected the language of the streets, particularly Miami's historically black neighborhoods such as Liberty City, Goulds, and Overtown". Despite Miami bass never having consistent mainstream acceptance, early national media attention in the 1980s resulted in a profound impact on the development of hip hop, dance music, and pop. History 1980s origins During the 1980s, the focus of Miami bass tended to be on DJs and record producers, rather than individual performers. Record labels such as Pandisc, HOT Records, 4-Si ...
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Gangsta Rap
Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, is a subgenre of rap music that conveys the culture, values, and experiences of urban gangs and street hustlers, frequently discussing unpleasant realities of the world in general through an urban lens. Emerging in the late 1980s, gangsta rap's pioneers include Schoolly D and Ice-T, later expanding with artists such as N.W.A. In 1992, via record producer and rapper Dr. Dre, rapper Snoop Dogg, and their G-funk sound, gangster rap broadened to mainstream popularity. Gangsta rap has been recurrently accused of promoting disorderly conduct and broad criminality, especially assault, homicide, and drug dealing, as well as misogyny, promiscuity, and materialism. Gangsta rap's defenders have variously characterized it as artistic depictions but not literal endorsements of real life in American ghettos, or suggested that some lyrics voice rage against social oppression or police brutality, and have often accused crit ...
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AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All-Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar, and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as compact discs (CDs) replaced LP record, LPs and cassette (format), cassettes as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he res ...
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Hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip-hop includes rapping often enough that the terms can be used synonymously. However, "hip-hop" more properly denotes an entire subculture. Other key markers of the genre are the disc jockey, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks. Cultural interchange has always been central to the hip-hop genre. It simultaneously borrows from its social environment while commenting on it. The hip-hop genre and culture emerged from block parties in ethnic minority neighborhoods of New York City, particularly Bronx. DJs began expanding the instrumental breaks of popular records when they noticed how excited it would make the crowds. The extended instrumental breaks provided a platform for break dancers and rappers. These br ...
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Underground Hip-hop
Underground hip hop (also known as underground rap or simply underground) traditionally refers to hip hop music that is outside the general mainstream canon or counter-cultural in nature, usually with a heavy emphasis on emotion, lyricism, and/or social consciousness. Being outside of the mainstream, it is common for artists or songs that are considered "underground" to have little commercial success, though this is not a requirement, as many have gained massive followings, especially in the streaming era. In recent years, the term has also been used to refer to hip hop subgenres that incorporate themes of trap, plugg, milwaukee lowend, drill or rage which often feature melodic vocals with heavy use of Auto-Tune (or similar pitch correction tools) with virtually no focus on lyricism or connection to counterculture. Despite little overlap between the traditional and modern definitions, both are still commonly used. "The Underground" also refers to the community of musicians ...
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Rap Rock
Rap rock is a music genre that developed from the early to mid-1980s, when hip hop DJs incorporated rock records into their routines and rappers began incorporating original and sampled rock instrumentation into hip hop music. Rap rock is considered to be rock music in which lyrics are rapped, rather than sung. The genre achieved its greatest success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Characteristics ''AllMusic'' characterized rap rock songs as rock songs in which the vocals were rapped rather than sung. ''AllMusic'' also states that the rhythms of rap rock are rooted in those of hip hop, with more funk influences than normal hard rock. Session player Eddie Martinez, who created the guitar parts for hip hop group Run-DMC's rap rock song " Rock Box", recognized that "a rap-rock song needn't feature a new change in the chorus; rather, it's a spot where the guitarist can just solo over the same riff that drives the verses." Rap rock is often conflated with rap metal. While ...
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Progressive Rap
Progressive rap (or progressive hip hop) is a broad subgenre of Hip-hop, hip hop music that aims to progress the genre thematically with Social transformation, socially transformative ideas and musically with stylistic experimentation. Developing through the works of innovative US hip hop acts during the 1980s and 1990s, it has also been known at various points as Political hip-hop, conscious, Underground hip-hop, underground, and Alternative hip-hop, alternative hip hop. Progressive rap music critical thinking, critically examines social issues, political responsibility, and existential concerns, particularly in the context of African American, African-American life and youth culture. Common themes include social injustice, social inequality, inequality, social status, status, identity, and religion, with discourses around ideologies such as Afrocentricity and Religion of black Americans, Black religiosity. Unlike the genre's more commercially-dominant counterpart gangsta rap, pr ...
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