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 ...

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 ...

Hip-hop was created in 1973, and during that decade, it was a genre still in its early stages that was more DJ-centric with focuses on b-boy dances and live performances. However, by the time the ...

Back in the mid-1980s, when the world was just beginning to recognize rap music as an art form that might have some legs, one of the biggest draws on Boston’s underground scene was a DJ who had an ...

Hip-hop was birthed by DJ Kool Herc, in a South Bronx apartment complex in the 70s. A back-to-school fundraiser with an admission fee of .25 cents for ladies and .50 cents for gents turned into a ...

As it celebrates its 50th birthday, we are mapping hip-hop's story on a local level, with more than a dozen city-specific histories of the music and culture. Click here to see the entire list. If you ...

Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, Public Enemy and Salt n Pepa (Credit: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Michael Putland/Getty Images) In August 1973, the ...