50 Years of Hip-Hop: How a generation fostered creativity from urban despair and racial barriers
Hip-hop, a subculture and an art movement, was born when urban youth in crime and poverty-ridden neighbourhoods in South Bronx in New York City sought street corners to hang out and found ways to express their despairing selves. In the late 1970s, South Bronx was rocked by a manufacturing decline and an expressway that ended the local businesses. The emerging hip-hop movement gave the youths a recreative space to voice their despair and hardship, which grew to become a global phenomenon. Here's a look at the pioneers
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
A subway car marked with extensive graffiti tags passes through a station, New York, May 1973. The fourth foundational element—other than DJing/turntabling, MCing/rapping, and B-boying/breaking—that characterised hip-hop culture was graffiti painting. Originating in the late 60s, graffiti was catalysed by the invention of the aerosol spray can. Early graffiti artists wrote simple "tags" or stylised signatures intending to tag as many locations as possible with letters, numbers or even symbols.
