Rap pioneers the Sugar Hill Gang (L-R Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master G) receive their gold record for the song "Rapper"s Delight" circa 1980. Rap first came to national prominence in the US with the release of the song on the independent African-American-owned label Sugar Hill. It became a chart-topping phenomenon within weeks of its release and was named a new genre.Image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
American rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor LL Cool J, performs on stage in Boston, Massachusetts, in December 1985. Def Jam, an Independent record label, signed LL Cool J, rap"s first romantic superstar. Record labels like Def Jam recognised the genre as an emerging trend and invested a lot of money into the movement.Image by John Nordell/Getty Images
American hip-hop band Run-DMC, circa 1985. A hip hop trio who fused rap with hard rock, Run-DMC were part of a wave of new school rappers whose single "Walk This Way"—and their hip style of dressing—conquered radio and MTV, catapulting rap into the mainstream.Image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Queen Latifah Circa 1980. Queen Latifah made her mark by bringing rap closer home by offering an alternative to rap"s predominantly male, often misogynistic viewpoint. Her songs spoke of issues faced by a black woman every day—domestic violence, harassment on the streets. Her seminal 1994 anthem, "UNITY", earned her the first rap Grammy awarded to a woman. Her success in music in the late 1980s launched a wave of female rappers who deify her to date.Image by David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Salt n Pepa in concert, circa 1988. In 1987, the hip-hop duo Cheryl James and Sandra Denton recruited Deidre Roper to join them as DJ Spinderella and sprung a new name Salt n Pepa and a new single "Push It" that wrote the group into history as the first female hip-hop act to hit platinum status. Salt n Pepa took on rap machismo, slut-shamers and smooth-talkers with their sensuality-saturated albums that had become the most successful by a female act.Image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The rap group NWA—Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren. DJ Yella (front), and Dr Dre, Laylaw and The DOC (rear)—pose for photos during their "Straight Outta Compton" tour in Kansas City, Missouri, in June 1989. The group emerged from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1980s and revolutionised hip-hop culture with their brutal musical tales about life in the hood. Each of these rappers had started in the streets, where everyone around them was either selling or buying some sort of drug and being involved with gangs.Image by Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
Rapper Ice T at the 57th Street subway station on February 15, 1993, in New York City. Los Angeles rappers like Ice T and NWA, reacting to the New York brand of hip hop, led to the rise of the genre known as Gangsta rap. Ice T"s 1992 single "Cop Killer" from the album Body Count, about a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops, ignited a national controversy, leading to a protest by police advocacy groups in the US.Image by David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Police, neighbours, and fans follow the funeral caravan for rap artist Notorious BIG as it passes the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Clinton Hill, where he grew up, dropped out of school, sold drugs, and first started rapping. Among the most influential artists of 1990s gangsta rap, Biggie"s rapid success was credited with single-handedly reviving the N Y-based "East Coast" hip-hop recording labels, which had until then been overtaken in prominence by the "West Coast" hip-hop labels based in Los Angeles. He was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997.Image by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Rap group The Wu-Tang Clan ( L to R: Ol" Dirty Bastard GZA U-God Method Man Raekwon Masta Killa Inspectah Deck) in New York City on April 1, 1994. The Staten Island-based clan"s combination of street credibility, neo-Islamic mysticism, and kung-fu lore made them one of the most complex groups in the history of rap. A defining aspect of hip-hop was the heavy use of sampled music from various genres ranging from jazz to rock, since no copyright laws protected music from being sampled then. The clan went a step further, sampling sound clips from their collection of 1970s Kung Fu films!Image by Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
The Fugees (L-R Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel) backstage at the Manhattan Center in 1993 New York City. This hip-hop act rose to prominence as an alternate act in the mid-1990s, widening the scope of hip-hop with its fusion of soul, reggae, and funk, eschewing gangsta rap. The Score, released on February 13, 1996, turned the trio into global superstars.Image by Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
