Hip-hop is a postmodern style of music borne of the fiercely impoverished neighborhoods of the South Bronx borough of New York City during the early 1970s. The rough economic situation and subsequent closure of many government-funded music programs led people to remake, rearrange, or remix existing recordings into completely different compositions with the use of turntables. DJs would extend the break or "get down" section of previously released songs by alternating between duplicate copies of a vinyl recording with the use of two turntables and a mixer. Soon MCs entered the equation to enhance the DJ's efforts and act as a crowd moderator. Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc is credited with creating this medium that soon blossomed into a subculture that encompassed five main components: DJing, MCing, beat-boxing, graffiti, and break dancing. In time, live instruments, drum machines, synthesizers, and computers became the tools by which artists created their music. The first hip-hop recordings, made in the late '70s and early '80s, exposed the genre to a national audience, and by the turn of the century it morphed into a worldwide phenomenon. As a result, numerous subgenres and fusions of hip-hop were developed based largely upon the geographic, musical, and environmental influences prevalent in each particular region of the world.

Notable Artists: Public Enemy, the Wu-Tang Clan, Grandmaster Flash, Snoop Dogg