British hip hop
| British hip hop | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Early to mid-1980s, United Kingdom |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | Trip hop |
| Subgenres | |
| Oldschool jungle | |
| Other topics | |
British hip hop is a genre of music, and a culture that covers a variety of styles of hip hop music made in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland (The United Kingdom). It is generally classified as one of a number of styles of urban music. British hip hop was originally influenced by the dub/toasting introduced to the United Kingdom by Jamaican migrants in the 1960s–70s, who eventually developed uniquely influenced rapping (or speed-toasting) in order to match the rhythm of the ever-increasing pace and aggression of Jamaican-influenced dub in the UK and to describe street/gang violence, similar to that in the US. UK rap has also been heavily influenced by US hip-hop. British hip hop, particularly that originating from London, was commercially superseded by grime, however, after a post-millennium boom period, the genre remains a hotbed of talent.
In 2003, The Times described British hip hop's broad-ranging approach:
"...'UK rap' is a broad sonic church, encompassing anything made in Britain by musicians informed or inspired by hip-hop's possibilities, whose music is a response to the same stimuli that gave birth to rap in New York in the mid-Seventies."
Following an initial flurry of interest from major record labels in the 1980s, by the early 1990s the scene had moved underground after record companies pulled back. In the mid-1990s hip hop in the UK started to experiment and diversify — often mutating into different genres entirely, such as trip hop and began making inroads into the US market.Knowledge, was England's first documented rapper (Black Echoes Magazine January 1980). While many rappers such as Derek B could not help but begin by imitating the styles and accents of their U.S. heroes, there were many who realised that to merely transpose U.S. forms would rob U.K. hip-hop of the ability to speak for a disenfranchised British constituency in the way that U.S. hip-hop so successfully spoke to, and for, its audience. Attempts were made by U.K. rappers to develop styles more obviously rooted in British linguistic practices — Rodney P of the London Posse deliberately chose a London accent — although many succeeded only in adopting a slurred hybrid that located the rap "somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."
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