Dominating the globe, hip hop turns 50

A genre, a culture and a lifestyle all at once: Hip hop has traveled from the block party to the billionaire's club, sound tracked protest and celebration, and asserted seismic influence over the course of pop.

The reigning music style evolved in rapid, anarchic ways, rocking the industry establishment that long resisted its power, and fully embodying the culture of youth even as the genre grew up.

This year hip hop turns 50, an anniversary that's offered its elders, its fans and the city that birthed it a milepost to reflect on its cultural weight.

The exact birthday is difficult to isolate, but the general consensus of musicologists and insiders is that on August 11, 1973 hip hop's rumblings came to a head in New York.

It's the stuff of myth: DJ Kool Herc's younger sister Cindy threw a back-to-school party in the rec room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a high-rise apartment building in the Bronx near a major expressway.

The artist, born Clive Campbell in Jamaica, spun the same record on two turntables, legend has it, mixing the rhythms into the first documented breakbeat - an essential building block of the genre.

"It was just a birthday party, it was just a moment, you know," Ralph McDaniels, a hip hop historian and pioneering TV host, told AFP. "But that party is the beginning and the spark that set off all of this for all the other DJs."

The DJ offered fodder for the b-boys and b-girls -- the partiers who developed breakdancing. And then of course there's the emcee: The master of ceremonies who rapped spoken word to the beat.

These types of house parties took place in a Bronx suffering some of the worst effects of nationwide economic turmoil that was particularly acute in New York.

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