Tomorrow, Aug. 11, the hip-hop world will celebrate 50 years of rap music, five decades removed from DJ Kool Herc’s 1973 “Back To School Jam” in the South Bronx that helped to christen the genre.

It’s impossible to overlook hip-hop’s profound impact on the global music landscape as it celebrates its 50th year. Beyond its birthplace in the Bronx, New York, this genre has transcended borders, ...

Hip-Hop/R&B accounted for 30.7% of all streams across platforms, making it by far the most dominant genre in 2024. This isn’t ...

Hip-hop recently celebrated its 50th birthday, providing a perfect opportunity to decide if we currently recognize the global genre as a friend or a foe. As I engaged in various commemorative ...

Welcome to The State of R&B, ESSENCE’s look at the past, present and future of rhythm and blues. In this piece, ESSENCE editor Rivéa Ruff reports on the blending of hip-hop and R&B. Since the ...

Fans called the shots in 2025. Discover the top genres and what their choices mean for the future of music in 2026.

A Movement Begins Hip-hop history traces back to the early 1970s disco and house party scene in New York City. Block parties in the Bronx became spaces where DJs experimented with music by isolating ...

Aug. 11, 1973, is considered the birth of hip-hop. On this day, DJ Kool Herc threw a “Back-to-School Jam” at his apartment building, located at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx. Herc set the atmosphere ...

Hip-hop has a rich history filled with pioneers that, time and time again, take their turn recreating the definition of the genre in their own image, including Public Enemy, Biggie Smalls and Kendrick ...

Before Jason Rawls collaborated with some of the most well-known names in hip-hop — Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), Talib Kweli, Pro Era and the Beastie Boys, just to name a few — he was like ...

Patrick Varine Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 7:01 a.m. | Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 7:01 a.m. Paradise Gray was a young boy growing up in the Bronx when what would become known as hip-hop began taking shape. “We ...