Mary J. Blige

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Mary J. Blige

Q: What are the four main elements of hip-hop?

While there is some debate over the number of elements of hip-hop, there are four elements that are considered to be its pillars: deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” (emceeing) or “rhyming”; graffiti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and break dancing, or “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural semantics.” Many also cite a fifth essential component: “knowledge of self/consciousness.” Other suggested elements include street fashion and language.

Q: How did hip-hop get its name?

There are various explanations for the source of the term hip-hop . However, the most popular one involves Keith (”Keef Cowboy”) Wiggins, a member of the rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five . The rapper used the words hip/hop/hip/hop , imitating the sound of soldiers marching, in reference to a friend who had joined the army. According to some accounts, Kevin (”Lovebug Starski”) Smith was with Wiggins and helped create the phrase. Hip-hop was subsequently popularized in songs, notably the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.”

Q: Who are the founders of hip-hop?

While a number of people were influential in the creation of hip-hop, much credit is given to Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican immigrant who was the first major hip-hop disc jockey. At a Bronx party on August 11, 1973, he introduced the technique of playing the same album on two turntables and extending the drum section (which became known as the breakbeat). Many recognize this night as the birth of hip-hop. Other pioneering hip-hop deejays include Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash . The three men are often called the “holy trinity” of early hip-hop.

Q: What was the first major hip-hop song?

Although not the first hip-hop song, the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) was considered the first significant single of the genre. Within weeks of its release, it became a chart-topping phenomenon and gave its name to a new genre of pop music. Part of its crossover appeal was attributed to its lighthearted lyrics, which were atypical of most rap songs at the time.

American singer-songwriter and actress

Also known as: Mary Jane Blige

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Jun 14, 2025 • Article History

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In full:: Mary Jane Blige

Born:: January 11, 1971, Bronx, New York, U.S. (age 54)

Awards And Honors:: Grammy Award (2008); Grammy Award (2007); Grammy Award (2007); Grammy Award (2006); Grammy Award (2003); Grammy Award (2002); Grammy Award (1995)

Notable Works:: “Growing Pains”; “My Life II…The Journey Continues (Act I)”; “No More Drama”; “Stronger with Each Tear”; “What’s the 411?”

On the Web:: BBC - Mary J Blige makes Oscars history (June 14, 2025)

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Mary J. Blige (born January 11, 1971, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an American singer-songwriter and actress who has been called the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. A major artist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who redefined music genres, Blige is especially known for soulful ballads and infectious dance hits.

Early life

Blige’s childhood was divided between Savannah, Georgia, and a public housing development in Yonkers, New York, where she lived with her mother and elder sister. Blige’s early musical influences included singing in a Pentecostal church and listening to her mother’s collection of soul records. When a recording of the 17-year-old Blige singing Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture” (made in a karaoke booth in a local shopping mall) came to the attention of Uptown Records in 1988, the rhythm-and-blues (R&B) label put Blige, who had dropped out of high school, under contract.

Music career

Blige sang backup for various artists until the 1992 release of her first solo album, What’s the 411?, produced primarily by rapper Sean (“Puffy”) Combs (Diddy). That album reveals the pain of Blige’s childhood while presenting a unique sound that mixed classic soul with hip-hop and urban contemporary R&B, redefining soul music and influencing a generation of artists. The album also produced the top 10 hit “Real Love.” Her success continued with the introspective My Life (1994); a documentary centering on the album appeared in 2021.

USA 2006 - 78th Annual Academy Awards. Closeup of giant Oscar statue at the entrance of the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Hompepage blog 2009, arts and entertainment, film movie hollywood

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Blige’s glamorous but street-tough image softened over time. However, her music remained personal, emotional, and spiritual. Among Blige’s host of hit singles are “Be Without You” (1994), “Not Gon’ Cry” (1996), and “Take Me as I Am” (2005). Her hit albums include Share My World (1997) and Growing Pains (2007), both of which reached number one on the Billboard charts. No More Drama (2001), Blige’s fifth studio album, presents an artist who is happy with the woman she has become. That album spawned the irresistible number one single, “Family Affair,” which spent six weeks at the top of the charts. Her 2006 release, Reflections (2006), provides a retrospective of her work.

Blige also joined rock band U2 on numerous occasions to perform their single “One,” most notably at a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She recorded a version of the song on her album The Breakthrough (2005), and another version was released as a single in mainland Europe and the United Kingdom in 2006. Of Blige’s passionate vocal delivery on “One,” U2 lead singer Bono said:

Mary J. Blige brought the song places I couldn’t possibly have been or understood. I don’t know exactly where she went, or the names she put on the places, or the problems she was trying to solve with her interpretation, but I felt them so strongly.

Blige’s 2008 tour with Jay-Z made her one of hip-hop’s top-grossing live acts, and the following year she won a Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album—her ninth total career Grammy—for Growing Pains. Stronger with Each Tear (2009) was criticized for its overreliance on guest vocalists and Auto-Tune technology, but Blige rebounded in convincing fashion with My Life II…The Journey Continues (Act I) (2011), which plays to her strengths, balancing soulful ballads with catchy dance tunes that recall her earliest hits. An album of Christmas standards, A Mary Christmas, appeared in 2013. The following year she released the soundtrack for the comedy film Think Like a Man Too and The London Sessions, the latter of which features collaborations with several British producers and musicians, including Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, and the duo Disclosure. The critically acclaimed Strength of a Woman (2017) was inspired by Blige’s acrimonious breakup with her husband and manager, Kendu Isaacs. Blige’s 14th studio album, Good Morning Gorgeous, appeared in 2022. Shortly thereafter she was among a group of hip-hop stars—which included Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Eminem—who performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.

In 2019 Blige received a lifetime achievement award from Black Entertainment Television (BET). In 2024 Blige was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The following year the U.S. Library of Congress added the album My Life to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Acting career

Blige forayed into acting, making guest appearances on several television shows and taking supporting roles in such films as Rock of Ages (2012), Betty and Coretta (2013), Black Nativity (2013), and Mudbound (2017). For her work in the latter movie, a drama about racism in 1940s Mississippi, Blige earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. In addition, “Mighty River,” which she cowrote and sang for the film’s soundtrack, received an Oscar nod.

She later lent her voice to the animated feature Sherlock Gnomes (2018) and Trolls World Tour (2020). Her other credits from 2020 include the horror thriller Body Cam, in which she played a police officer. During this time she also had recurring roles on such TV shows as Scream and The Umbrella Academy. In Power Book II: Ghost (2020–24), a spin-off of the popular crime drama Power, Blige played a drug “queenpin.” (In early 2024 it was announced that the series would end after its fourth season concludes in September.) She played jazz great Dinah Washington in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021), which starred Jennifer Hudson in the lead role. In 2024 Blige costarred in the film Rob Peace, playing the mother of a young man whose promising future is compromised by his economic situation and issues involving his family and past.

Other projects

Blige has also ventured into business projects, notably launching the jewelry collection Sister Love with designer Simone I. Smith and partnering with MAC Cosmetics on a line of lipsticks. In 2023 she published a children’s picture book, Mary Can!

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Mindy Johnston.

hip-hop

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hip-hop

music and cultural movement

Written by Greg Tate , Alan Light •All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Jun 12, 2025 • Article History

Key People:: Antwan André Patton; Eazy-E; Kanye West; Ice-T; Mac Miller

Related Topics:: social movement; break dancing; rap; grime music; trap music

On the Web:: CNN - Digging up rapÂ’s roots: How African rhythms birthed American hip-hop (June 12, 2025)

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What are the four main elements of hip-hop?

How did hip-hop get its name?

Who are the founders of hip-hop?

What was the first major hip-hop song?

hip-hop, cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s and also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential art form.

Origins and the old school

Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop refers to a complex culture comprising four elements: deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” or “rhyming”; graffiti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural semantics.” (A fifth element, “knowledge of self/consciousness,” is sometimes added to the list of hip-hop elements, particularly by socially conscious hip-hop artists and scholars.) Hip-hop originated in the predominantly African American economically depressed South Bronx section of New York City in the late 1970s. As the hip-hop movement began at society’s margins, its origins are shrouded in myth, enigma, and obfuscation.

Graffiti and break dancing, the aspects of the culture that first caught public attention, had the least lasting effect. Reputedly, the graffiti movement was started about 1972 by a Greek American teenager who signed, or “tagged,” Taki 183 (his name and street, 183rd Street) on walls throughout the New York City subway system. By 1975 youths in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn were stealing into train yards under cover of darkness to spray-paint colorful mural-size renderings of their names, imagery from underground comics and television, and even Andy Warhol-like Campbell’s soup cans onto the sides of subway cars. Soon, influential art dealers in the United States, Europe, and Japan were displaying graffiti in major galleries. New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority responded with dogs, barbed-wire fences, paint-removing acid baths, and undercover police squads.

DJ Kool HercJaimaican American deejay, 2019.

The beginnings of the dancing, rapping, and deejaying components of hip-hop were bound together by the shared environment in which these art forms evolved. The first major hip-hop deejay was DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), an 18-year-old immigrant who introduced the huge sound systems of his native Jamaica to inner-city parties. Using two turntables, he melded percussive fragments from older records with popular dance songs to create a continuous flow of music. Kool Herc and other pioneering hip-hop deejays such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash isolated and extended the break beat (the part of a dance record where all sounds but the drums drop out), stimulating improvisational dancing. Contests developed in which the best dancers created break dancing, a style with a repertoire of acrobatic and occasionally airborne moves, including gravity-defying headspins and backspins.

In the meantime, deejays developed new techniques for turntable manipulation. Needle dropping, created by Grandmaster Flash, prolonged short drum breaks by playing two copies of a record simultaneously and moving the needle on one turntable back to the start of the break while the other played. Sliding the record back and forth underneath the needle created the rhythmic effect called “scratching.”

American quartet Boyz II Men (left to right) Shawn Stockman, Wanya Morris, Nathan Morris and Michael McClary, 1992. (music, rhythm-and-blues). Photographed at the American Music Awards where they won Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist, Los Angeles, California, January 27, 1992.

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Kool Herc was widely credited as the father of modern rapping for his spoken interjections over records, but among the wide variety of oratorical precedents cited for MCing are the epic histories of West African griots, talking blues songs, jailhouse toasts (long rhyming poems recounting outlandish deeds and misdeeds), and the dozens (the ritualized word game based on exchanging insults, usually about members of the opponent’s family). Other influences cited include the hipster-jive announcing styles of 1950s rhythm-and-blues deejays such as Jocko Henderson; the Black power poetry of Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Last Poets; rapping sections in recordings by Isaac Hayes and George Clinton; and the Jamaican style of rhythmized speech known as toasting.

Rap first came to national prominence in the United States with the release of the Sugarhill Gang’s song “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) on the independent African American-owned label Sugar Hill. Within weeks of its release, it had become a chart-topping phenomenon and given its name to a new genre of pop music. The major pioneers of rapping were Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and the Cold Crush Brothers, whose Grandmaster Caz is controversially considered by some to be the true author of some of the strongest lyrics in “Rapper’s Delight.” These early MCs and deejays constituted rap’s old school.