British Hip Hop - Origins of British Hip Hop

Origins of British Hip Hop

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."