The 1940s to 1960s
Without even knowing it, the foundation of Hip Hop has already
begun to lay the groundwork for its later success. It started with
Tom the Great a.k.a. Thomas Wong in Jamaica. Wong was half Chinese-American
and half Jamaican and owned a hardware store in
which he played music. He also started to bring sound equipment
to various parties and events. These Jamaican sound systems were
known as the first DJ equipment of its time which later sparked a
“soundclash” between fellow competitor Duke Vin. This battle between
competitors started the first “soundclash” competition between
Coxsone Dodd’s “Downbeat” and Duke Reid’s “Trojan” giving
birth to the concept of DJ battles in the 1950s.
While all that was happening in Jamaica, here in the US in 1959 an
important cultural shift to hip-hop began to take place. An expressway
had begun to be built in the Bronx which led to a mass migration
of New York’s middle-class German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish
neighborhoods. As they began to relocate, the Bronx transformed
into a low-class division of New York primarily made of African
American and Hispanic communities. These communities were
poverty-stricken and dealt with such things as addiction, crime, and
unemployment.
1965
While a lot of things came in the 1960s such as the first use of the
“break beat” and songs that later influenced the Hip Hop percussions,
in 1965 boxer Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston. Before
the match even started, Ali delivered what is known as the earliest
rap rhymes that go as follows: “Clay comes out to meet Liston, And
Liston starts to retreat, If Liston goes back any further, He'll end
up in a ringside seat., Clay swings with a left, Clay swings with a
right, Look at young Cassius, Carry the fight., Liston keeps backing,
But there's not enough room, It's a matter of time…”
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