Hip-Hop’s Most Iconic Regional Sounds Have Some Surprising Origins

There’s a lot to love about hip-hop, from its roots as a tool of expressive art for disenfranchised brown and Black people to the way it pushes language and inhibitions to their limits. Still, one of the most beautiful things about hip-hop is the way people around the world have made it their own. The story of how hip-hop emerged more than 50 years ago in the Bronx has already been well told. Since then, various cities and communities have embraced the essence of its fundamental format — spitting bars over a break or a loop — and molded it to fit their cultural histories and everyday lives. 

And on what is widely celebrated as hip-hop’s 53rd birthday, it’s worth looking at just how far that influence has traveled and how its sounds have evolved along the way.

Every region has taken hip-hop and made it their own, applying pieces of their history and culture to the art form that was birthed in the Bronx. To be clear, each region is worthy of its own series, not just the brief mentions you see here, and most musical etymology doesn’t follow a straight line. That said, here’s a refresher. 

Detroit’s relationship with electronic music has also shaped its approach to hip-hop. After the Belleville Three helped pioneer techno, inspired in part by the mix of electronic and funk music played by The Electrifying Mojo on WGPR, generations of hip-hop artists pulled from its skittery, slightly off-kilter vibe. You can hear it in J Dilla’s luminous off-center drum patterns and in the way newer rappers like Veeze and BabyTron land on different angles of their beats. The city was also home to R&B and soul powerhouse Motown Records through the 1960s and until the label moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972, providing connective tissue to the sampling practices of Dilla and protégés like Black Milk and Young RJ.

In California, funk became a key ingredient in the state’s hip-hop sound. The slinky basslines and synths of artists like Parliament-Funkadelic and the Gap Band can be heard throughout the state’s hip-hop history, with legendary DJ Quik directly integrating what he learned from his mentorship with Zapp frontman Roger Troutman. 

Chicago hip-hop takes the soul of its Midwestern brothers, evident in the sampling brilliance of Kanye West and No I.D. Meanwhile, the drill movement became something different entirely — both sonically and topically — transforming the rumbling 808s of trap music and adding their own macabre storytelling and beef-settling. Honestly, drill music is another example of the global influence of hip-hop: Chicago, Brooklyn, the U.K. and Jamaica all have different sects of drill that stem from the environments in which they were created.

It’s easy to look at all of Southern hip-hop as one subgenre, but there are just as many differences between cities and states as there are similarities. Sure, much of it has signatures like deep bass in its production, drawls in their voices, and call-and-response choruses. But there are specific distinctions throughout the region. 

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and home to Mardi Gras, and the bounce music that Mannie Fresh helped pioneer on songs like Gregory D’s “Buck Jump Time” and Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” is directly inspired by the second-line bands. 

DJ Screw’s low-pitched, slowed, choppy DJ techniques were so infectious that generations of Texas rappers and producers followed his lead. The sound felt tailor-made for Houston’s slab culture of heavily customized cars zigzagging — or “swanging” — down roads and the proliferation of promethazine cough syrup abuse. Historian and author Lance Scott Walker says that codeine was a staple of Houston culture as far back as the ’60s and that the first chopped-and-screwed record was an accident by Houston radio DJ Lester “Sir” Pace. 

Memphis’ own Three 6 Mafia drew from the electronic production of DJ Spanish Fly and the haunting chants and organs of scary movies, making their own rendition of the blues music that originated there by giving a take on the horrors of street life. Atlanta’s rap history is just as rich, with influences from the Black church, Miami bass’ 808s, strip clubs, blues and funk, and even punk rock (in the case of Lil Jon’s crunk movement) all contributing to various eras of street and club-ready hip-hop. 

Along with the art of MCing, other components of hip-hop culture with roots in New York City still live on around the world. Modern grillz emerged from New York's Black and Caribbean communities in the 1970s and '80s, using gold to fill cavities because it was comparatively cheaper than expensive dental work, and became popularized in the Boogie Down Bronx.

The same applies to double dutch, which has grown from a neighborhood pastime for young Black girls into competitive leagues, camps and clubs around the country. Rappers today obviously still have grillz, but don’t let double dutch’s hip-hop history get lost in the mix: the Fantastic Four double dutch team performed at The Roxy alongside MCs, DJs and B-boys, and even went on 1982’s The New York City Rap Tour with the likes of the Rock Steady Crew and Fab 5 Freddy. For his part, KRS-One acknowledges double dutch as foundational to hip-hop.

The iconic breakbeat on “Drag Rap (Triggerman)” by The Showboys, which became one of the foundational sounds of bounce music in New Orleans, was originally recorded in Hollis, Queens, at a studio owned by Brian “Power Perk” Perkins. DJ Screw’s cousin Big Bubb, who runs Screwed Up Records and Tapes following the icon’s passing, says that the first record he saw Screw apply that slowed-down effect to was “Fresh Is the Word,” a song by Mantronix, a hip-hop/electro-funk group whose members lived in Manhattan and Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Hip-hop’s reach and impact are pretty difficult to overstate. But while a culture born in the Bronx has traveled around the world, influencing music, fashion, language and entire industries over the last five decades, its birthplace hasn’t always experienced the same level of growth and investment.

In many ways, parts of the Bronx have largely been stuck in time, even compared to the rest of the five boroughs, much less other major cities. According to The City Reporter, foreclosures in the Bronx have nearly doubled within the last year, despite declining citywide. It’s the latest chapter in a history that includes redlining — discriminatory lending and housing policies that restircted access to mortgages and insurance in Black and Latino neighborhoods — urban renewal projects that demolished old homes and displaced Black and brown people, and nearly 80 percent of housing in the South Bronx being lost to fires in the 1970s. 

Still, certain parts of hip-hop have remained specific to the Bronx and New York City writ large. Few places have maintained such a visible connection to all four traditional elements of hip-hop as New York City, where the original four elements of hip-hop are still vibrant in a way that’s reminiscent of when hip-hop was founded.

Breaking, historically known as break dancing, may have been short-lived after only one appearance in the Olympic Games, but that tradition lives on with the acrobatic “showtime” dancers who flip and weave their way through the narrow, oftentimes crowded New York City subway train cars, seeking donations. DJing is still a vibrant facet of New York City summers, with block parties stretching throughout the boroughs. Graffiti isn’t unique to New York City, but that doesn’t invalidate the fact that tags are on trains, buildings, and everywhere else, while creators are given opportunities to craft sanctioned public art as well. 

Rappers around the world have adopted various styles and adjusted to shifting sounds over time, but there are still a considerable number of rappers in New York City clutching to the multisyllabic, boom-bap stylings of rap from three decades ago.

And why blame them? Despite hip-hop’s dynamic growth and expansion, certain things are still worth holding onto.

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