•As many claim, the birth of the Hip Hop culture is traced back to the Block Party of 1973, to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue where played the historic DJ Kool Herc. Since that Block Party, hip hop has come a long way. The founding fathers of Hip Hop have transmitted this culture with dedication to the new generations, becoming increasingly inclusive and practiced over time, accomplices also the media that were coming at that time. Hip Hop is today a contemporary transgenerational culture, which continues to transform and reinvent itself. Its worldwide success is unique in contemporary history and has influenced music, dance, sport, language, mentality, politics and fashion of our times.

•In the ’70s, the Bronx guys had only Hip Hop as an alternative to a criminal life and all they wanted to do was learn to break beats, to fit a perfect rhyme or power move or rather mark the territory with a tag. All this happened in certains social contexts, which are expressed in the moment of Jam, Chypher, Block Party and Battle. These moments were a way to escape from neighborhood life and today as then are sought by the Hip Hop community, allowing the practice and development of its four main elements.

•Today we can say that there is a Hip Hop community in many states and parts of the world. Such worldwide success is explained by the fact that, when this culture came out of the ghetto, its historical-social motivations were moldable in some way on those of other contexts in the world, where someone began to make his Hip Hop (a striking example of our country is the typical assonance between the Roman Rap and the tradition of the stornelli that is found in many exponents of the Roman Rap).

•Hip Hop was born as a multi-ethnic culture from the encounter of African-American communities with Latin ones and by its nature an example of cultural diversity and inclusiveness. In the course of its development, this culture has been influenced by everything it has encountered on its way: funk, rock, soul, jazz, gospel and even disco. In fact, Hip Hop has always been prone to a strong influence from other cultures, because it is thanks to this inclination that it was born. Although it was originally created for the New York minorities of the 1970s, its expansion has involved the world today. Its development in just 50 years of history has been very fast and sudden as it is a culture sensitive to technological innovation and generational change. For this reason today we have genres and sub-genres that are very different from each other, allowing those who approach one or more elements to express their personal creativity freely.

•Hip Hop was born in the context of the ghetto, in an America that came from the experience of racial segregation, but despite its violent heritage, this culture wanted to be a means of both escape and protest. It is good to remember in fact a fundamental episode for this culture, the so-called “peace among the gangs” strongly desired by Africa Bambaataa: the neighborhoods were now in disarray, there was a real guerrilla war going on and living in certain areas began to be dangerous. The leaders of all the gangs had to unite and cease fire to try to build something better. On November 12, 1973 Africa Bambaataa founded the Universal Zulu Nation; with this foundation Bambaataa had built a Hip Hop community on the technical foundations of Kool Herc, later perfected by the third of the “holy trinity”, Grandmaster Flash. Un altro grande passo avanti fu fatto con la “Hip Hop declaration of peace” presentata all’ONU dalla Universal Zulu Nation il 16 maggio del 2001, che dichiara che tale cultura rispetta ufficialmente i principi dell’ONU.