The 50 Moments That Defined Hip-Hop, in Photos
By
Seth Berkman, Stacker
On 1/3/21 at 12:00 PM EST
It was 1979 when The Sugar Hill Gang released "Rapper's Delight," a song widely considered to be the first hip-hop track. But hip-hop's history stretches back much further than Wonder Mike uttering those famous first lyrics: "Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat/And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet."
Early influencers of hip-hop included jazz musicians who employed vocal improvisation, or scat singing, in their songs. The first famous scat solo on a record came from Louis Armstrong ad-libbing on his 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" when he dropped his trumpet melody sheet music during the recording. Earlier recordings of scat singing, from artists like Don Redman and Cliff Edwards, have also been found. Ella Fitzgerald was a master of scat singing, and rappers today still employ the practice on album tracks and use it as a mechanism for coming up with rhythms.