1.6: Case Study- Origin and Diffusion of Hip Hop

CASE STUDY: The Origin & Diffusion of Hip Hop

Residents of the South Bronx, a neighborhood in New York City, invented hip hop music, dance, and graffiti in the mid-1970s. Therefore, the Bronx is the source region or cultural hearth of hip hop.

Figure Bronx, NY. This higher-rise up apartments buildings is probably the cultural hearth of hip hop since the first hip dances were hosted here

It took some years for people living outside the Bronx to discover hip hop, but it has spread or diffused around the globe since the 1970s. The diffusion of hip hop demonstrates several key spatial patterns and processes that characterize other cultural phenomena. First, hip hop music took nearly a decade for it to emerge from the Bronx. There were many barriers to diffusion preventing music fans, even those living just a few miles away in Manhattan, from hearing this newly created genre of music. Those barriers were largely social, economic and cultural, but those barriers kept the sound of Black and Latino youths living in the Bronx from reaching the ears of music fans (and music executives) in Manhattan for nearly a decade. It is worth noting that Motown Records, the most successful black-owned recording company of all time eschewed hip hop for many years, which in turn helped doom Motown Records. Ironically, Motown Records was eventually acquired by hip hop specialty company DefJam records.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, hip hop diffused slowly, spreading first to nearby locations, notably the other boroughs of New York City and to northern New Jersey. Only after about 10 years did hip hop artists from more distant cities, like Philadelphia and Boston on the radio or MTV. This pattern of near-first/far-later diffusion is a very common type of expansion diffusion known as contagious diffusion. It gets its name because the pattern is similar to the manner in which contagious disease spreads from person to person, infecting nearby people first and distant people later. Almost all early rap acts from outside the Bronx were from Greater New York City - Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, and Long Island. It wasn’t until a hip-hop duo known as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Jeffrey Townes and Will Smith) emerged from West Philadelphia around 1988, that an act from beyond greater New York City made it onto the record charts. In 1989, a bunch of hip-hop acts had hit records, and almost all of them were from Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city.

Once hip hop leap-frogged across the US, from big cities on the East Coast to big cities on the West Coast, hip hop then exhibited a diffusion pattern known as hierarchical diffusion. This is when innovations are adopted in the largest cities first, and smaller cities or rural areas much later. Like many inventions or innovations, hip hop began in a very large city, at the top of the urban hierarchy and from there it filtered down through other large cities, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Houston. After about 20 years, even small towns or rural areas had accepted hip hop and were producing home-grown hip hop artists. Hip hop has diffused internationally as well, rappers rap in hundreds of languages from rural areas of Asia, the Mideast, and Africa. Occasionally, an idea or practice comes from a small town and diffuses upward through the hierarchy. Geographers call this type of expansion diffusion reverse hierarchical diffusion.

- Sugar Hill Gang Rapper’s Delight Widely considered the first commercially successful rap song.

The original version of hip hop did not feature musicians playing traditional instruments. Instead, hip hop acts utilized a disc jockey or DJ who manipulated vinyl records on a turntable to create musical accompaniment for the vocalist, known as a rapper or MC (master of ceremonies). In the late 1970s, some young men from New Jersey, copying the rapping style they had learned while visiting friends in the Bronx made a record called “Rapper’s Delight”. They used trained musicians rather than a DJ for background music and beats. The alteration of an original style created in the Bronx, but modified after it was adopted in New Jersey is a great example of stimulus diffusion. This kind of diffusion occurs when the principal element of an idea or behavior spreads but other elements are significantly modified by those who adopt it elsewhere. Rappers and DJs from locations beyond the Bronx have made numerous modifications on the original style of hip hop. For example, many of the early lyrics from hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa were anti-gang; but when hip hop diffused to Los Angeles in the 1980s, LA-based rappers produced music that appeared to glorify gang membership and gang violence, earning some LA Rap the name “gansta rap”. As ideas or practices spread, they adapt and change to fit local conditions or local preferences, and this is the essence of stimulus diffusion.

Had an MC or DJ from the Bronx moved themselves from the Bronx to take up residence in New Jersey or Los Angeles, they may have spread hip hop themselves personally. This process of spreading hip hop by a person is called relocation diffusion. This kind of diffusion happens when an idea or practice moves with a person rather than through media, like records, radio or MTV. Relocation diffusion is not a type of expansion diffusion.

Figure Hollywood, CA- The Whiskey A Go Go is a landmark venue and serves as the cultural hearth for California-based hard rock and heavy metal music.

Though hip-hop is an international phenomenon today, there are a few places where you would have trouble buying a hip-hop CD, or hearing it on the radio because of effective impermeable barriers to the diffusion of hip hop. Some barriers might be technological (e.g., no electricity), cultural incompatibility, or some measure of bigotry or bias that prevents or slows adoption of new ways. Mostly though, places where hip hop is banned are largely where very serious religious or political costs are attached to the consumption of hip-hop music. For example, record stores have been bombed in Pakistan by conservative Muslims that support the Taliban. More often than not though, music (and other pop culture) “gets through” and becomes a source of resistance to authority.