The Story of Hip-hop Music
Imagine an urban area that is fast becoming a slum after an economic ____.
Businesses close their ____ and building owners have left.
The area is full of abandoned ____.
There is no heating even in ____.
____ those who can’t afford to move out remain.
Unemployment is high, many gangs emerge, and gang violence between ____ people becomes an everyday thing.
Despair is on every street ____.
One day, however, a gang ____ the Ghetto Brothers, which is respected because of its free meal and medical care programs, decides to stop fighting and instead persuade young people to unite and create a better community.
They suggest a peace ____.
“This is for peace, ____.
The ____ took away our brothers.
We’re ____ gangsters anymore.
We’ve got to make this town a better ____ to live.”
Thanks to these new voices, gang leaders ____ all over the area sign the treaty.
Never again will they use ____ to solve their disputes.
This is the Bronx in the New York of the early 1970s, where hip-hop music was born as a ____ part of a new culture of peace created by African Americans and immigrants.
The story of hip-hop, now one of the ____ most dominant music genres, is a fascinating one.
____ explore it.
DJing, Breakdancing, and MCing
After the ____ treaty, the gangs that had fought one another started partying together.
Abandoned buildings and ____ lots were used for events called block parties.
What ____ emerged from these parties?
A ____ youth movement called hip-hop culture, based on DJing, breakdancing, MCing, and graffiti.
It replaced gang violence with music, dance, ____, and style.
The most popular block parties were those hosted by DJ Kool Herc, ____ is regarded as the founding father of hip-hop.
Herc’s party for his sister’s birthday in August 1973 is ____ known as the birthplace of hip-hop music because of his new DJ technique.
At this party, using two turntables at the same time, Herc played two copies of the same record and then ____ between them to extend the drum section known as the break.
No longer did people have to stop dancing at the end of the record ____ the DJ changed the LP disc.
Kool Herc’s style of DJing ____ became influential in the rise of hip-hop music and breakdancing.
The break section became the ____ anticipated part of a song.
People would form dancer circles and use the break to show off their individual ____ skills.
Kool Herc named the people dancing to his ____ B-Boys and B-Girls, short for Break-Boys and Break-Girls.
These people began to dance in ____ in the streets and build a street dance battle culture.
DJs like Kool Herc would speak in rhythm and rhyme ____ instrumental parts of songs to excite the crowd.
They would shout ____ like “To the beat” and “You don’t stop!”
This was the beginning of rapping or ____.
When DJs couldn’t do both DJing and rhythmic shouting at the same ____, they asked a friend to take the role of addressing the audience, that is, of the Master of Ceremonies or MC, at their parties.
This separate role ____ MCing.
The Origin of the Word Hip-Hop
Then where did the ____ hip-hop originate from?
Nobody knows the exact ____, but it is said that the word hip-hop was first used at a block party.
A ____ man at the party was about to join the army.
His good ____, the MC of the party, reminded him in a jokey way that his days of freedom were over by moving across the stage like a military instructor to the beat, chanting, “Hip-hop-hip-hop-hip-hop.”
The ____ loved it.
After that, MCs tried out new lines at parties like “Hip, hop, hippy to the hippy ____,”
“I said a hip-hop, a ____, hibby-dibby, hip-hip-hop and you don’t stop.”
Such lines became a standard part of rap and were included in the lyrics of the first recorded ____ album, Rapper’s Delight (1979), which was an immediate success.
The new music and dancing spread ____ fast.
There was a sharp unexplained decline in ____ during the 1980s in New York.
One police officer asked a boy on the street if he knew ____.
The boy said, “It’s ____ they’re dancing.”
The Messages of Hip-Hop
Rap lyrics, which started as the party chants of early hip-hop, typically focused on having a good time together and ____ about the ability of the DJ or the rapper.
However, a significant shift occurred during the rise of ____ music in the 1980s.
Most importantly, the appearance of The Message by the group Grandmaster Flash and ____ Five in 1982 was groundbreaking.
This song’s powerful lyrics detailed the harsh realities of life in the ghetto, including the sad ____ of a boy who was born there and had to live and die as a second-class citizen.
With this song, hip-hop, whose original aim was creating peace through partying, started a ____ tradition of social criticism against injustice.
The Message became one of the most influential rap singles of all time, and was ____ by many hip-hop songs that confronted racial discrimination in the 1980s and 1990s.
At the same time, their music with its rhythmic beat and rapping made people ____ or dance.
People ____ the social message while moving to the beat.
____, a new attitude gradually emerged in hip-hop lyrics, which can be summarized as “respect.”
Hip-hop music began to be a way to ____ respect for one another, and particularly for hip-hop pioneers.
For rappers, the pioneers are heroes who overcame ____ and injustice and went on to create new music and culture.
Therefore, many hip-hoppers agree that they cannot have too much respect for these ____.
The phrase “something from nothing,” often used to summarize the genre’s history, is also an expression of admiration for early hip-hoppers, ____ developed a new culture in the ghetto despite very limited resources.
Rappers also proudly ____ their feeling that they, too, and perhaps the audience, had suffered and survived in a similar way to the pioneers.
This is why the message of ____ is about both self-worth and respect for others.
The importance of the idea of respect in hip-hop cannot be emphasized ____ enough.
Hip-Hop in the 21st Century
“The HipHop Declaration of Peace,” presented to the UN on May 16th, ____, officially recognized hip-hop as an international culture of peace.
This document reminds us of hip-hop’s original mission to bring peace to the ____, implying global respect for hip-hop history.
When hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music in ____, it was another important event.
It meant that hip-hop, which started as underground music, had become a major art ____ like classical music.
If hip-hop music was born as part of a cultural movement for peace in the 1970s, today ____ and more people regard it as a powerful means to express oneself, fight against injustice, bring about change through social messages, and still be engaged with music and connected to others.
With its unique and growing appeal, hip-hop continues to be a global ____.