In August 1973, the Jamaican-born Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell held his first block party in the Bronx, bringing the Jamaican sound system culture to America and inadvertently providing the first ...

From MPCs to FL Studio sessions, one thing remains consistent across generations of Hip Hop and R&B: The power of the sample. With that said, few eras have been mined more heavily than the 1980s. With ...

When Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit “Rapper’s Delight” became the first hip-hop song to land on the Billboard Hot 100, it opened the door for the 1980s to be a massive decade for the new genre. Beginning ...

This article has been handpicked from the Okayplayer editorial archives and included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative. The article has ...

“Rapper’s Delight” will always be considered the song that introduced hip-hop to the masses. The Sugarhill Gang classic with its tongue-twisting opening – “I said a-hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie to ...

“The Message” is often credited with stretching what hip-hop could be — not just party music but also social commentary. Big Daddy Kane, Daddy-O of Stetsasonic and longtime hip-hop promoter Charlie ...

Hip-hop is 50 years old. An official anniversary is coming next month, so we asked cultural critic Kiana Fitzgerald to identify some of the game-changing moments in hip-hop history. She starts with ...

For rapper Killer Mike, the ’80s was the most impactful decade of sound. Sitting down with SPIN and Bose as part of our Decades of Sound collaboration, Killer Mike shares his thoughts on the eclectic ...