Slovenian hip hop

Slovenian hip hop refers to hip hop within Slovenia.

History

According to some accounts, the roots of Slovenian hip hop can be traced back to 1978, but all rappers from that time were forgotten or disappeared. What remains of this early history is preserved in little-circulated album releases. The mid-1980s were marked as the breakthrough of rap music in Slovenia. Hip hop dancing in Slovenia is sometimes called "Čefur" dance (derogatory term for southerner Slavic people; see kafir). Ali-En released the first rap album, that immediately became a classic, in 1994.

In 1997, rap duo Dandrough released Ko pride Bog ('when God comes'). The next few years there was a small hole in the hip hop scene, with only a couple of albums released up until 2000. Hip hop culture was heavily popularized by Slovenian Olympic champion skier Jure Košir, who also released an album Kartelova teorija (eng: Cartel Theory) with his crew Pasji Kartel (eng: Dog Cartel) in 1998. Klemen Klemen released one of the most influential mainstream Slovenian hip hop albumsTrnow Stajl (eng: Trnovo Style) on Menart Records. At about the same time, Radyoyo: Za narodov Blagor - 5'00" of fame, the first compilation of Slovenian hip hop music was released, including various new and unknown rappers on the scene.

Hip hop

Hip hop or hip-hop is a sub-cultural movement that formed during the early 1970s by African-American and Puerto Rican youths residing in the South Bronx in New York City. It became popular outside of the African-American community in the late 1980s and by the 2000s became the most listened-to musical genre in the world. It is characterized by four distinct elements, all of which represent the different manifestations of the culture: rap music (oral), turntablism or DJing (aural), b-boying (physical) and graffiti art (visual). Even while it continues to develop globally in myriad styles, these four foundational elements provide coherence to hip hop culture. The term is often used in a restrictive fashion as synonymous only with the oral practice of rap music.

The origin of the hip hop culture stems from the block parties of the Ghetto Brothers, when they plugged in the amplifiers for their instruments and speakers into the lampposts on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue and used music to break down racial barriers, and from DJ Kool Herc at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where Herc mixed samples of existing records with his own shouts to the crowd and dancers. Kool Herc is credited as the "father" of hip hop. DJ Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, to which he coined the terms: MCing or "Emceein", DJing or "Deejayin", B-boying and graffiti writing or "Aerosol Writin".