DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RAP AND HIP HOP

By Rishma • On Education ,

Every­one at least once used the words “hip-hop” and “rap” in their speech, but not every­one is tech-savvy and believe that this is the same. In this art­icle, we will spill the beans about the dif­fer­ence between rap and hip hop.

Well, either just remem­ber that some hip-hop sound pro­du­cers, for instance, release their minuses without words and reply can­cel, send­ing them to email address, where there is no rap, but their music is a defin­i­tion of the hip-hop genre. Make no dif­fer­ence about it.

Thus, com­par­ing them is not ration­al; these are two com­pletely dif­fer­ent things that are quite closely related. Hip-hop is a huge lay­er of music, which simply includes tons of vari­ous sub­genres, includ­ing branches related to rap. Hip hop artist doesn’t neces­sar­ily use a read­ing or any vocals at all, for example, music circles in trip hop.

Rap is not a genre as such, it is a style of vocal per­form­ance. There are tons of rap groups that are on point. There are dif­fer­ences in styles. It can option­ally be used in a hip-hop track, rap can be heard in the fol­low­ing genres of pop­u­lar music: Drum’n’­bass, New Met­al, altern­at­ive rock, RnB, etc. Enu­mer­a­tion of genres can take quite a long time.

Hip-hop is a street cul­ture that includes rap, as a music­al dir­ec­tion, break-dance (B‑boying cul­ture), as a dance, graf­fiti, as a visu­al, Street­Ball, and Bas­ket­ball, as well as some extreme sports, as a sports dir­ec­tion. The basis of rap is MC-ing (required fields of read­ing, spe­cial recit­at­ive). Ini­tially, MC-ing was neces­sar­ily com­bined with DJ-ing — this was rap, now DJ-ing is not always found in rap songs. It can be a brainchild of a hop artist.

When and how did hip-hop originate?

Hip hop cul­ture ori­gin­ated in the sev­en­ties in New York. At first, all this was like the usu­al hobby of a small group of people, but gradu­ally hip-hop covered all the mani­fest­a­tions of street life. The term “hip hop” was first used for its inten­ded pur­pose on July 1, 1973.

Rap and Hip-hop cul­ture have influ­enced many areas of art, dance, visu­al arts, and fash­ion. Hip hop music fash­ion saw a reviv­al in the 2000s with sleek styles accom­pa­ny­ing key parts of hip-hop cul­ture like sneak­ers, ball caps, and gold jew­elry. There are loads of dif­fer­ences between rap and hip-hop.

Invent­ors of hip-hop were black people, tired of the obses­sion and mono­tony of disco pro­duc­tion. Built based on Afric­an Amer­ic­an hop music, disco sig­ni­fic­antly impov­er­ished an import­ant rhythmic com­pon­ent. Motiv­ated by the desire to play music rhyth­mic­ally more inter­est­ing than the mono­ton­ous disco-maxi-singles, DJs began to exper­i­ment with these records, play­ing them in their way. One of the first was Cool DJ Herc, who often didn’t play the whole record, but only the frag­ment he liked, repeat­ing it sev­er­al times.

This was done using two play­ers and a pair of identic­al hip hop records. He was from Jamaica but lived in New York. And in Jamaica back in the 1960s, a spe­cial way of play­ing music arose: many inde­pend­ent DJs with their equip­ment played music on the streets of cit­ies and vil­lages. They cer­tainly influ­enced hip-hop and mod­ern elec­tron­ic music. Their tech­nic­al inven­tions and per­form­ing tech­niques in the 1980s were included in the arsen­al of Amer­ic­an hip hop artists.

Anoth­er New York hip-hop pion­eer, Grand­mas­ter Flash, went fur­ther by con­nect­ing both play­ers (turntables) so that the sound from one disc could over­lap with the sound of the oth­er. Now, this twin set is the basis of the equip­ment for any DJ. Grand­mas­ter Flash’s inven­tion made it pos­sible to com­bine and mix music­al frag­ments from two dif­fer­ent records. So, on top of the looped rhythmic base, taken from one disc, the DJ played some kind of melod­ic move he liked from anoth­er disc. This is the tech­nic­al found­a­tion of hip hop.

As source mater­i­al for hip hop, both disco com­pos­i­tions and funk records are used, to which hip hop is closest. The expres­sion “hip hop” itself reflects a cer­tain “jump­ing” of its rhythm, the pecu­li­ar dance “vibra­tions” that this music gen­er­ates and which are so dif­fer­ent from the mech­an­ic­al rhythm of the disco.

Dur­ing the 1980s, DJ tech­niques var­ied, the fam­ous tech­nique of “scratch­ing” arose, which con­sists in the abil­ity to move the record while play­ing back and forth with your hand so that the rhythmic pat­tern is not dis­turbed. The mod­ern hip hop for­mula arose when DJ exper­i­ments com­bined with the tra­di­tion of street poetry.  This recit­at­ive, which could con­sist of a whole poem or just one cue, is indic­ated by the word “rap­ping”.

Hip-hop is a concept that denotes a gigant­ic music­al area (com­bined with gen­er­al rhythmic prin­ciples and tech­niques of rap recit­a­tion. If you want to keep your hand on the pulse of hip hop industry, feel free to look for hip hop essay on Study­Driver .

Genesis of rap

Rap has a long his­tory. Among the genres that pre­de­ter­mined its appear­ance, we can dis­tin­guish the style of calypso, com­mon on the islands of the Carib­bean. This is impro­vised and some­times quite sharp poetry, rap music. Rap quickly became the primary mean of expres­sion for black Amer­ic­ans. Already from the begin­ning of the 1980s, rising rap stars began to talk about ser­i­ous prob­lems: social, polit­ic­al, racial.

As a rule of thumb, these two words are almost inex­tric­able, because the hip-hop genre has grown due to rap read­ing, easy beat and the sound “DJ indulges with records”. But still, if you lead a dis­cus­sion about genres or rap, you will no longer be mis­taken and there’s an ulti­mate dif­fer­ence between them.

Most aces told people that hip-hop is a cul­tur­al phe­nomen­on, while rap is a style of music. It’s an obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between rap and hip-hop. Hip hop includes fash­ion and trends, while rap is lim­ited to con­ver­sa­tion­al rhythmic music. In short, rap music can be hip hop, but hip hop can­not be rap.

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

About Rishma

Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless.