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During the 1970s, the street subculture within the South Bronx formed what we call, hip hop. The origin of the term "hip hop" came from Keith Cowboy, a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. He supposedly created the term while teasing one of his friends who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing "hip/hop/hip/hop" mimicking the sound of soldiers marching. He then worked "hip/hop" into his stage performances and many others followed after him. The Ghetto Brothers, a Puerto Rican musical group, began throwing block parties where people broke down racial barriers between Puerto Ricans, African Americans and Latino Americans, by playing funk and soul music together. Eventually mixing percussions beats by adding and breaking beats, also know as MCing or DJing. Many people who were unfamiliar with hip hop music thought of it as rap music. When in reality there are many different forms of hip hop music. For example, there is MCing (rapping with a rhythmic vocal style), DJing (mixing beats with turntables), breakdancing (dance movements), graffiti art (visual art), beatboxing (percussive vocals), and the style and fashion of hip hop. The stylistic origins of hip hop are from funk, disco, electronic, rhythm and blues, reggae, dancehall rock, jazz, toasting, performance poetry and scat singing. Typical instruments used in hip hop are rapping, a DJ mixer, drum machine, music sequencer and synthesizer. One DJ that is known for the founding of hip hop, is DJ Kool Hercs, a Jamaican immigrant, who began having house parties where hip hop music was the featured genre. He started by mixing DJ'ed percussion breaks and used his own Jamaican style-toasting, which is chanting and boastful talking into a microphone over a beat). His house parties gained popularity and became a means of expression and an outlet for South Bronx teenagers to release their pent up energy and anger instead of doing it on the streets. For the inner city youth, hip hop became a way of dealing with hardships of life as a minority and to deal with violence and the rise of gang culture. Many of the hip hop songs that were created during this time period were used as a way of coping with their feelings. The songs were mainly about their everyday life of dealing with racism and political injustice on minorities, particularly the police and in prisons. The New York City blackout of 1977 caused a widespread of looting and arson, especially in the Bronx. A number of looters stole DJ equipment from stores and as a result, hip hop, barely known outside of the Bronx at the time, grew at a remarkable rate. By 1979, hip hop had become a mainstream genre. Old school hip hop, also spelled Old Skool, describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music which was between 1979 and 1983. It is noted for its simple rapping technique. Much of the subject matter centers around partying and having a good time. Battle rapping, Sci-Fi/Afrofuturism (electronic percussion) and freestyle rap are all sub-genres of old school hip hop. It is said to have ended around 1984 due to the change of rapping technique and music and rhythms. In the 1990s it spread across the world as a controversial "gangsta" rap.
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