Old school hip hop (also spelled "old skool") describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music (approximately from 1979–1984), and the music in the period preceding it from which it was directly descended (see Roots of hip hop). Old school hip hop is said to end around 1984.
The image, styles and sounds of the old school were exemplified by figures like Afrika Bambaataa, The Sugarhill Gang, Spoonie Gee, Slick Rick, Run-D.M.C., Treacherous Three, Funky Four Plus One, Kurtis Blow, Fab Five Freddy, Busy Bee Starski, Lovebug Starski, Doug E. Fresh, LL Cool J, The Fat Boys, The Cold Crush Brothers, Kool Kyle, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Ice-T. It is characterized by the simpler rapping techniques of the time and the general focus on party related subject matter.
Read more about Old School Hip Hop: Musical Characteristics and Themes
Famous quotes containing the words school, hip and/or hop:
“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal.... No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1907–1960)
“I stir my martinis with the screw,
four-inch and stainless steel,
and think of my hip where it lay
for four years like a darkness.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“I have tried being surreal, but my frogs hop right back into their realistic ponds.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)