Know The History: 10 Times Hip-Hop and House Music Merged – rock the bells

By Jay Quan
Published Fri, June 24, 2022 at 10:30 AM EDT

Hip-Hop has always studied, embraced and utilized other forms and genres of music, at its core that’s what Hip-Hop is. The earliest musical expressions of Hip-Hop, before rap records existed were hugely informed by funk, R&B, rock and disco. Many of the flyers that promoted early Hip Hop parties were riddled with the word “disco,” in fact the word “Hip-Hop” didn’t exist on these flyers until the early 1980s. Breakbeats like “Frisco Disco” and groups like The Magic Disco Band were staples in early Hip-Hop, and this music was spun by DJs with names like “Disco Bee” and “The Disco Twins.”
As music tends to do, elements of disco morphed into other forms of music. Over the years, music journalist Nelson George has referred to disco as simply uptempo R&B and a code word for Black music. Whether music Historian Bill Brewster was correct in his assertion that “Girl You Need To Change Your Mind” by Temptations member Eddie Kendricks is the first disco record, or Bobby Eli (founding member of MFSB) is correct that Philadelphia International was releasing disco records as early as 1973; for sure the hi hat and four on the floor drum patterns contained in disco records carried over into house music and directly influenced it.
Most music historians trace the roots of house music to Chicago and the early 1980’s. Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles; from Brooklyn and The Bronx respectively, are two pillars in the transformation of disco to house. Levan and Knuckles got their start at Nicky Siano’s Gallery night club. Levan would later open the Paradise Garage and become a producer, while Knuckles moved to Chicago and inserted drum machine rhythm tracks into his sets at his Warehouse parties. Knuckles style of music was so influential that it was dubbed “house” based on those Warehouse jams. Ron Hardy, Mr. Lee, Jesse Saunders, Jack Master Silk, Chip E, Larry Heard, Farley “Jackmaster” funk are all early DJs and producers who were pivotal in house. House music has spawned several genres such as acid house, electro house, deep house and several more and influenced Detroit techno and other forms of electronic dance music. Drake and Beyonce’s usage of elements of this decades old genre are not new, and are not in opposition to Hip-Hop or Black music. This is Black music and it never went anywhere. There was a period in the late 1980s where the merging of Hip-Hop and house was as expected on a rap album as a rap ballad or socially conscious song. Here are ten times that Hip-Hop and house merged.
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