Lessons 31, 32, 35: Hip-Hop

Toast

Jamaican tradition where DJs speak over the recorded music, often engaging in call and response chants with the dancers or encouraging audience participation

Drum machine

an electronic instrument that has pads or keys that the performer presses in order to play a prerecorded percussive sound, such as a snare drum, a hi-hat, a bass drum kick, or, in some cases, sound effects such as gunshots or glass breaking

Gangsta rap

a style of hip hop that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s that celebrated violence, drug use, gang activity, and, often, the disrespect of women; an important early gangsta rap group was N.W.A

G-funk

a style of hip-hop production started by Dr. Dre that is named in homage of George Clinton's P-funk style and is characterized by slower tempos, the inclusion of sounds from recordings of Parliament and Funkadelic (both in samples and re-performances), thundering bass lines, and high-register synthesizer lines

Looping

process of extracting and repeating a drum break sample end-to-end

MC

the MC, or master of ceremonies, would speak for a DJ while he would play records

Rapping

the rhythmic style of speech delivered by the MC

Flow

the style of lyric delivery by the rapper that features balanced phrases, couplet rhymes, and an articulation that is almost sing-song in nature

Sampling

when artists borrow sounds from existing recorded music and cut, paste, and rearrange those recorded sounds to create new music