- [Instructor] Hip-hop is now over 40 years old.
Hip-hop was born in the Bronx in the early 1970s.
DJ Kool Herc used two turntables and a mixer
to create extended beats at neighborhood parties.
Later, emcees would join the party
and begin to rap over the beats.
Hip-hop culture would ultimately also include
breakdancing, clothing, and graffiti art.
But for most of the 1970s,
hip-hop was regional,
completely a New York movement.
But in 1979, the song "Rapper's Delight" changed everything.
The Sugarhill Gang song would be the first rap song
to break into the U.S. top 40.
And outside the U.S.,
the song hit number three in the UK
and went all the way to number one in Canada.
Fast-forward 40 years to 2019,
and over 50% of the songs in the 2019 top 100
were classified as hip-hop songs.
In that same year, 30.7% of all streamed music was hip-hop.
Compare that to rock music's 14.7%
and pop music's 14.6%.
But the road to music industry domination was not swift.
Despite "Rapper's Delight" 1979 breakthrough,
progress was slow for most of the 1980s.
The early 80s have one or two hip-hop songs
enter the top 100 each year,
including 1982's groundbreaking song "The Message"
performed by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five,
But 1986 was the next major breakthrough.
Run-DMC's 1986 album,
which featured hits like "Walk this Way" and "It's Tricky,"
was the first hip-hop album to go platinum,
selling over 1 million albums in two months,
and over 3 million in the first 12 months.
Their song "Walk this Way,"
a hip-hop version of Aerosmith's 1975 rock song,
would peak at number four in the U.S. in 1986.
Run-DMC broke the door open for hip-hop.
And later that same year,
the Beastie Boys album "Licensed to Ill"
would be the first hip-hop album to hit number one.
Major accomplishments.
But consider that in 1986,
60% of the top 100 songs were classified as rock,
and 1% were hip-hop.
By 1990, 8% were hip-hop, 39% were rock.
And by 2004, 27% were hip-hop,
9% were rock.
Hip-hop had climbed to the top,
but it was still on the rise.
In 2020, seven of the top 10 streaming acts
were classified as hip-hop,
and the other three were either influenced by hip-hop
or they routinely collaborated with hip-hop acts.
Hip-hop had a humble New York city birth.
A long road to maturity,
but now the stats prove that hip-hop
has conquered the music scene,
both in the U.S. and around the world.