With so much talk of royalty in the air, it’s fitting that this week we salute another monarch: Afrika Bambaataa, the king of electro funk and godfather of hip-hop. In Looking at Music: 3.0 we feature “Planet Rock,” the influential 80’s disco hit he made with the Soulsonic Force. Although Kool DJ Herc is credited with creating hip-hop’s signature sound, specifically the “break,” or extended instrumental beat, it was Afrika Bambaataa who pushed hip-hop into new territory as both a musical style and a cultural movement.

Posts tagged ‘hip hop’
Cey Adams: An Insider’s Look at Hip-hop Culture
We caught up with Cey Adams, founding creative director of Def Jam Recordings, in MoMA’s Looking at Music 3.0 exhibition gallery, and he talked to us about his work, the emergence of hip-hop, and his unwavering allegiance to the possibilities of culture.
Looking at Hip-Hop 1.0
As a grizzled hip-hop vet, I can’t tell you how thrilling it is that curator Barbara London’s Looking at Music series has burned past the 1960s and ’70s to arrive, in its third iteration, in the 1980s and ’90s. Finally, it’s time for my peoples to shine!
Riding the Trans-Europe Express
Listening to Art

The Residents. Freak Show. 1995. Interactive CD-ROM. The Museum of Modern Art Library. Image courtesy the artists
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