How Hip Hop Overthrew Rock
Hip Hop is the dominant genre of youth culture today. When exactly--and how exactly--did it replace Rock in that role? It's probably not when you think.
On August 11th, 1973, Cindy Campbell, a 16-year-old in the Bronx, hosted a back-to-school party in her building’s rec room. Her family could use the cash. Besides, New York clubs weren’t letting in teens anymore. Gang violence fears. They needed a hangout.
She hired her brother DJ Kool Herc to spin the tunes. He’d noticed that dancers went wild for the drum beat portion of the funk records he played. So at his sister’s party for the first time, he used his new two-turntable and mixer set up, along with two copies of each record, to extend those drum beats or breaks.
Those high school kids went nuts.
This story, recounted numerous times in 2023, marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of Hip Hop. By then, it was clearly the dominant genre of youth culture.
In a previous Graphs About Songs, I pinpointed June 20th, 2009 as the day Rock died. After that last hit in Sumner 2009, the contiguous run of Rock songs in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 that started in 1955 came to an uncerimonious end.
When did Hip Hop officially overthrow Rock, however?
This post will not explore Hip Hop’s most groundbreaking songs. Instead, I’ll spotlight the exact moment Hip Hop came to dominate hit music based on the percentage of Hip Hop songs that were typicaly in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10 year by year. Along the way, I’ll spotlight five top 10 hits that highlight how Hip Hop became hit music.
Refer back to this graph as we go along our journey…
#1: Blondie “Rapture” (1981)
The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” wasn’t the first recorded Rap song, but in 1979, it was the first widely heard beyond the Bronx because you could actually buy it. Before, Hip Hop was performance art, curated by its star DJs at street parties. It wasn’t on Black radio. It wasn’t in record stores.
But “Rapper’s Delight” only reached #36 on the Hot 100.
Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, meanwhile, were already Hip Hop fans in 1979. They went to street parties in the South Bronx to hear teenagers with boom boxes freestyle rap over beats and breakdance. Their Punk group, which had already defiantly incorporated Disco into Punk, decided to write their own Rap song. They even paid homage to Rap in the title.
Blondie’s “Rapture”, in early 1981, became the first #1 on the Hot 100 to prominently feature rapping as we know it.
Yes, “Rapture” name-dropped Hip-Hop pioneer Fab Five Freddy. Yes, it lauds Grandmaster Flash’s turntable acumen. Yes, it even uses Hip Hop as a verb. But calling “Rapture” a Hip Hop track is as ludicrous as its Martian with Pica.
“Rapture” did, however, turn on a mainstream audience to rapping. It’s a new wave disco song that fostered true allyship for the genre and its pioneers.
#2: Run–D.M.C. "Walk This Way" (1986)
Spooked by the sudden Disco backlash, America’s radio programmers and record promoters leaned heavily into Rock. By 1981, six out of the Top 10 songs in a typical week were Rock, higher than any other year in chart history.
Conversely, it was a low point for any genre associated with Black musicians, collateral damage in America’s violent retreat from Disco. Even as Michael Jackson and Price returned artists of color back to the charts, they incorporated more pure Rock in their material during this period than Black musicians typically did. (Well, excepting the ones who actually pioneered Rock ‘n’ Roll).
It’s unsurprising that the first Hip Hop group to achieve a Top 10 hit had to (w)rap it in a Rock song.
Run-D.M.C. had been rapping over a sample of a Rock beat, but they had no idea who performed it and had never even heard the whole song. Their producer Rick Rubin knew it and suggested they remake the whole thing as a Rap song. He even said let’s invite that Rock band to re-record their parts. Run-D.M.C. hated the idea. They thought the lyrics were, “hillbilly gibberish.”
In 1986, “Walk This Way” became the first Top 10 hit by a bona fide Hip Hop artist, reaching #4, even though it’s arguably a Rock song. It’s a formula The Beastie Boys and Tone Lōc employed in their late 80s Top 10 hits.
#3: Vanilla Ice "Ice Ice Baby" (1990)
Ugh.
Seemingly, the only way to reach the pinnacle as a rapper in 1990 was to sterilize your art, make a novelty of yourself, or—easiest of all—be white. From minstrel shows to Jazz to early Rock ‘n’ Roll, it’s how white America seemingly always starts its relationship with a Black music genre.
MC Hammer was a wholesome, praying Rapper middle America could stomach.
On the playground, Another Bad Creation and Kris Kross (who coincidentally went to my high school) made jumpin’ Rap cute.
Gerardo was white---or at least wasn’t Black.
The first Rap single to reach #1, however, somehow committed all three.
The sad thing about Robert Van Winkle is that he really was into Hip Hop. One night in 1985, a friend took him to a Dallas night club and dared him to do open mic. He did so well, the club hired him.
By the late 1980s, N.W.A, Public Enemy, and Ice-T were growing Hip Hop’s acclaim with gritty portraits of gang life. Their albums sold well. Vanilla Ice opened for them in Dallas.
Yet, it’s that white kid from suburban Dallas who accidentally lands America’s first straight up #1 Rap song when an Atlanta DJ flipped over “Play That Funky Music,” and instead played the B side, “Ice Ice Baby.”
He was too naïve to expect the backlash.
For America’s establishment—who found Rap annoying at best and feared its Blackness at worst—the song became Exhibit A that Hip Hop wasn’t real music.
For those artists for whom he once opened, Vanilla Ice was no longer a novelty who had to earn their respect. He was now Rap’s flashpoint of cultural appropriation. Fearing he’d do to Hip Hop what Elvis did to Rock ‘n’ Roll, the Hip Hop community went gunning for Ice—almost literally.
It didn’t help that his record label created a fake back story of Vanilla Ice the Miami gangster that Ice himself had to debunk. It didn’t help that Ice claimed he didn’t sample Queen. He sure didn’t help his cause on Arsenio Hall.
It even played a role in an Atlanta radio station switching formats from Top 40 to Alternative. Legendary programmer Sean Demery recounts:
In the early 90’s, Pop novelty offerings such as “Ice Ice Baby, You Can’t Touch This, Baby’s Got Back and I’m Too Sexy”, did not mix well with “Nirvana’s Never Mind CD, or Pearl Jam’s 10 CD. Mixing these opposing musical and cultural styles made it overtly apparent that Power 99 needed to pick a position: Pop drivel or the new emerging Rock culture.
Examine the graph below and take a close look at 1990: Hip Hop was finally regularly appearing among America’s Top 10 hits—but it was still exclusively Pop Hip Hop.
Perhaps the biggest gift “Ice, Ice Baby,” gave us through its ridiculousness was making America curious about the authentic version.
#4: Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" (1993)
It’s the first Top 10 hit by two Hip Hop icons.
It’s the first Top 10 hit for Death Row records.
It’s also the #2 hit that brought Gangsta Hip Hop to a mainstream audience, inaugurating the Golden Age of Hip Hop.
Most fans cite this era as when Hip Hop became the dominant genre of America’s youth culture.
Recheck that graph above:
From the early 1990s through the early 2000s, Hip Hop and Rock shared equal footing among America’s Top 10 singles. In album sales, Nirvana and Pearl Jam shared the top spot alongside Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube. Grunge and Alternative Rock took a similar turn towards gritty reality.
Whether it was “Nuthin' But A ‘G’ Thang,” or Jeremy speaking in class, the early 1990s artists were the 1970s children who saw crime and decay in The Bronx and Compton and skyrocketing divorce in the suburbs.
The golden age reflected Generation X.
But it would take a new generation’s tastes to finally take Hip Hop to dominance.
#5: Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins - "Get Low" (2003)
In 2003, five out of the Top 10 songs on the Hot 100 in any given week were Hip Hop songs. Rock—still on equal footing with Hip Hop as late as 2001—was lucky if it still got one top 10 song each week. Rock would never recover.
“Get Low”, which reached #2 on the Hot 100 that year, showcases three changes that helped Hip Hop unequivocally overtake Rock:
The epicenter moved south: In 1995, a very unmetaphorical battle brewed between New York and Los Angeles rappers. New York had invented Hip Hop. Los Angeles evolved gangster rap. So, when a group from Atlanta won best new artist at that year’s Source Awards, they were bicoastally booed. Then André 3000 spoke prophetic words: The South’s Got Something to Say.” When Hip Hop surged a decade later, it was Atlanta-based artists such as T.I., Ludacris, Lil Jon, Soulja Boy and—appropriately—Outkast who lead the surge.
Hip Hop got Crunk: Musically, the subgenre that drove Hip hop’s surge was Crunk. More up-tempo and danceable than 90s era Gangsta Rap, this evolution of Hip Hop’s sound not only had a wider audience, but also matched well with Hip Hop’s changing lyrical content (read on).
And moved from the streets to the club: The artists may still have street cred, but they weren’t rapping about it. By 2003, Hip hop’s biggest hits focused on partying at clubs, women, and material wealth. The grit was gone. As Outkast noted, ““Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.”
"Get Low" showcases all three of these shifts with a tale of—ehem—a successful visit to an adult entertainment locale.
But why did these changes take off in 2003?
Throughout the 1990s, Generation X were both the primary artists and primary audience for popular music. Starting in the early 2000’s, however, Millennials became the dominant consumers of contemporary music. They rejected the dark reality their predecessors pioneered and embraced songs with happier, albeit more superficial themes. After all, they were the Baby on Board babies, not the Latchkey Kids.
Their Hip Hop also began mixing with other genres, starting with Crunk&B.
The combination made Hip Hop appeal to a much broader audience. They may have ended Hip Hop’s golden age, but Hip Hop’s chart dominance started with Millennial tastes.
From “Thrift Shop” to “Trap Queen”
After dethroning Rock and before bankrupting Red Lobster, Millennials almost killed off Hip Hop—at least on the chart’s top 10.
In 2010, Millennials weren’t just the majority of current music consumers, they also become the majority of hit artists. With this change, a very different genre took over the Hot 100’s top 10. Electronic Dance Music (EDM), an underground youth genre throughout the 2000s with Skrillex and deadmau5 became a mainstream chart-topping genre in 2010. Overnight, David Guetta, Calvin Harris and Avicii became the new rockstars.
By 2013 two-thirds of the top 10 songs in a typical week were Pop or EDM. By 2014, only 10 percent of top 10 hits in a typical week were Hip Hop—almost all were Pop oriented.
Hip Hop wasn’t dead. With Kenrick Lamar partnering with Taylor Swift and Iggy Azalea with Charli XCX, Rap cross-pollinated with Pop more integrally than seemed possible in the 1990s.
But it’s telling that one of the biggest Hip Hop hits during this era was “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz, a song that mocked the materialism of the previous decade. Hip Hop needed to evolve again.
In the 2010’s second half, Trap emerged as a hit-making sub-genre that put pure Hip Hop back in the top 10. Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen,” “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd and Kendrick Lamar’s "Humble" brought back real Hip Hop.
Then there’s Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road, which deserves its own book.
Hip Hop’s late 2010’s resurgence assured that when the genre celebrated the 50th anniversary of its creation this decade, it was a story of interest far beyond that basement in the Bronx.
Sources for this post:
The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100
Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles
50 years of hip-hop: A genre born from a backyard party: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192374015/50-years-of-hip-hop-a-genre-born-from-a-backyard-party
1981: "Rapture" by Blondie, 50 Years of Hip-Hop, Hosted by Larry Mizell, Jr.: https://www.kexp.org/podcasts/50-years-of-hip-hop/2023/7/26/1981-rapture-by-blondie/
Slate’s Hit Parade Podcast, The Def Jams Edition. Hosted by Chris Molanphy: https://chris.molanphy.com/today-rap-is-ubiquitous-on-pop-radio-but-the-genres-first-crossover-hit-required-a-little-help-from-some-out-of-favor-rock-stars-jeffrey-mayer-wireimage/
Stereogum The Number Ones, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”, by Tom Breihan: https://www.stereogum.com/2164461/the-number-ones-vanilla-ices-ice-ice-baby/columns/the-number-ones/
Very interesting Matt. Thanks!