International book international book of favorite sports2 | Page 39

improvisational dancing. Contests developed in which the best dancers created
break dancing, a style with a repertoire of acrobatic and occasionally airborne
moves, including gravity-defying headspins and backspins.
Hip-hop has 3 category : old school, middle school and new school.
As the century turned, the music industry entered into a crisis, brought on
by the advent of digital downloading. Hip-hop suffered at least as severely as or
worse than other genres, with sales tumbling throughout the decade.
Simultaneously, though, it solidified its standing as the dominant influence on
global youth culture. Even the massively popular “boy bands,” such as
the
Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, drew heavily on hip-hop sounds and
styles, and thytm and blues and even gospel had adapted so fully to the newer
approach that stars such as Mary J. Blige, R. Kelly, and Kirk Franklin straddled
both worlds.
In the early 2000s, hip-hop’s creative centre moved to the American South.
Following the success of the increasingly experimental OutKast and the stable of
New Orleans-based artists that emerged from two record companies—Cash
Money and No Limit Records (which was both founded and anchored by Master
P)—the chant-based party anthems of such rappers as Juvenile, 8Ball & MJG, and
Three 6 Mafia brought the sounds of the “Dirty South” to the mainstream.
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