Hip-hop started off in the 1970s in Bronx, NYC. It wasa development which happened primarily among the Latin and African Americans.

A Jamaican nicknamed DJ Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell is the who is given the credit to have started hip-hop. It was built on the Jamaican tradition of toasting or dee-jaying as most of us called it.

Hip-hop was performed at basketball courts and a building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, NYC with huge stacks of speakers, turntables and the all important microphone.

Mr. Herc was also the creator of break-beat dee-jaying.

Breakbeat dee-jaying, Latin percussion, rock music (surprise!) and hard funk formed the basis of hip-hop while rapping derived from folk poets or griots from West Africa and Jamaican style toasting.
 
Other DJs refined this and included the practice ofcutting and scratching – that’s when the DJ moves a vinyl back and forth on a turntable while manipulating the cross fader on a DJ mixer. In short, it’s when he or she does that ‘weeki weeki’ sound.

MCs often talked over the music to promote their DJs, other dance parties, share opinions on problems and take jabs at other lyricists. Light-hearted ones of course.

 The first rap lyricist to be called anMC is Melle Mel.

The drum machine and synthesizer technology improved rapidly and soon films on hip-hop began popping up between 1983 and 1985.

By 1985, the youth round the world started laying down scrap linoleum and cardboard, setting up portable boom box stereos and spinned on their backs while wearing pretty Adidas tracksuits and sneakers.

During this time Hip-Hop started to embrace the creation of rhythm using the human body, through the vocal percussion technique of beat boxing. These “human beat boxers” also sang and imitated turntable scratching and other sounds.