Hip Hop Phrases

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Baker, John wrote:

>         Did the term "hip hop" itself come from its use in the 1979 song
> by the Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight," the first rap song to be a
> hit?

John has performed an important service by pointing out the early usage of
"hip hop" in "Rapper's Delight," a usage missed by the OED.  Here is an
interesting discussion of the term's prehistory by Andrew Octopus, taken
from an article on the Web:

"The potential synthesis of the term "hip-hop" is most interesting. "Hip",
it is widely acknowledged, was a slang term used by jazzbos and beatniks
to refer to someone that was cool or "alright". Its origin is unknown.
"Hop", it is believed, was a slang term for hashish, in much the same way
that Blow is a slang term for cocaine today. Both were used by the Beat
movement of the 1950s. In San Francisco, along Haight-Ashbury Street, the
Mecca of Hippiedom in the late1960s, many a hash dealer could be heard
using this rap to attract potential customers "Hip? Hop. Hippy, Hippy,
Hip. Hop. Don't Stop." The meaning of which is essentially "Are you cool?
Do you understand what's going on? I got hash. Come here if you want
some." The same rap was used by drug dealers of various substances in
Jamaica throughout the mid-to-late 60s, and an almost identical
combination of syllabes would kick off "Rapper's Delight" in the late 70s.
It's very likely that some drug dealer-cum-DJ (the term in Jamaican
parlance is equivalent to MC) used this rap, and it became commonplace
among the Jamaican sound system DJs. This is probably how the new cultural
styles of rapping/toasting, mixing, writing graffiti (tagging, originally
used by hobos to communicate to other hobos where generous people and
places to stay were, and signed to indicate the veracity of the
statement), and breakdancing (to looped segments from German bands like
Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, funk artists such as James Brown, and rock bands
like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin) came to be referred to as "hip-hop"." [END OF
OCTOPUS QUOTE]

Other references on the Web indicate that "Rapper's Delight" popularized
other hip-hop terms as well as "hip hop" itself.  And it probably
popularized the word "rapper," not yet included in the OED in its musical
sense.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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