First hip-hop lesson: hip-hop is not just a genre of music, it is a culture and a way of life. Hip-hop is represented in fashion, art, music, and dance. Hip Hop evolved during the 1970s as a liberation movement in the form of a diverse culture; it was a next-generation civil (human) rights movement sparked by ostracized, marginalized, and oppressed inner-city youth.

Hip hop dance lessons are growing in popularity, both in studios and online. For most people, online video instruction is a good place to try out a dance style before paying for a studio lesson. People everywhere want to learn how to break, pop and lock... at least in the privacy of their own home. Let's take a look at where you can find hip hop lessons online...

Learn to Dance. This website has dance lessons for every style, and one of the most comprehensive listings for hip hop, including the three major styles: breaking (involves lots of ground work), popping (loose hip movements with tightly controlled arm movements) and locking (quick, jerking motions).

BustaMove. In addition to offering free videos, this site also provides a guide that explains simple dance steps such as step-tap, tap-step, ball change, etc. These are basic dance moves and can used in a variety of situations. If you are a beginner, this is a great place to start for dance lessons, as the most basic classes and demos are free. The Intermediate and Advanced sections are currently two dollars per lesson.

Hip Hop Dance. With a name like this, you can guess what they specialize in. In addition to offering free classes, they also include suggestions on the best music for each musical style. The instruction quality  of these videos is very high.

Mike's Moves. The best thing about Mike's Moves is that you can search by specific dance move. For example, if you're learning how to pop and want to incorporate a Glide, simply click the link on the left hand side to learn it. It will provide you with a text version of the lesson, followed by a video. The navigation on this site is very clear, and provides you with a large selection of hip hop dance lessons.

These four resources should provide you with enough online hip hop dance lessons to start with. Once you've built up your confidence, consider signing up for a dance class at your local gym or studio to learn the more advanced moves. A local studio also provides the opportunity to meet others interested in dancing, and to have an instructor help you out personally with any problems you may have. If you prefer to still practice in your own home, remember that BustaMove offers advanced classes.

Hip Hop History

Grounded in the traditions of U.S.-born Blacks and first- and second-generation Latinos and Latinas as well as people of Caribbean origin (primarily Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Bahamian), Hip Hop is a product of the African diaspora and combines music, dance, graphic art, oration, and fashion with a growing aesthetic leaning heavily on material objects and media. It is a means and method of expression thriving on social commentary, political critique, economic analysis, religious exegesis, and street awareness while combating long-standing issues of racial prejudice, cultural persecution, and social, economic, and political disparities.

In general, Hip Hop is most commonly defined as the combination of four main elements:

• DJ'ing
• Dance
• MC'ing
• Graffiti

In the past Hip Hop was connotative with criminal activity and "lesser" society. This stereotypical image was mainly perpetuated by an ignorant media. Its origins might came from the lowest margins of our society, influenced by injustice and inequality. Of course, this doesn't mean that Hip Hop is criminal in nature. It is the injustice and inequality that resulted in expressing rebellion and reform through Hip Hop’s expressive channels. From the gang-ridden, drug-infested streets of Bronx, New York, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there arose an urban culture that spread like an antidoteto a horrible plague. Hip Hop was the solution, the product of self-determination, self-realization, creativity, and pride. Former late sixties gangs evolved into early seventies “posses” and “crews.” Hip hop music originated in 1970s block parties in New York City, specifically The Bronx.

The origins of rap music and the hip-hop culture can be traced back to three DJs from the Bronx: Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. Clive Campbell, a.k.a. Kool DJ Herc, was a Jamaican-born teenager trying to make a name for himself as one of his neighborhood’s best DJs during late 1973. He was a master at finding the most danceable part of a reggae, funk, or soul record—known as the break—and playing it over and over to keep the crowd moving to the beat. Switching back and forth between two records, Herc routinely turned a “five second breakdown into a five-minute loop of fury”.

The DJ, or disc jockey, presents prerecorded music or sound to an audience. The first DJs were radio disc jockeys who presented music over the radio airwaves to audiences of dedicated listeners. DJ’ing ans one of the elements of Hip Hip, began in the Bronx in New York, at the root of Hip Hop’s conception. The job of DJ was to play popular records that kept people dancing and to keep the party alive. Keep everybody dancing led to the development of techniques that became the staples of turntablism. A Jamaican immigrant, DJ Kool Herc quickly created a name for himself in the early 70’s by fusing together chunks of songs that were popular with dancers into one long musical collage: beat mixing, the blueprint for Hip Hop DJ’s.

Now DJ'ing is more than simply playing popular songs and mixing them together. DJ's began to manipulate and even create music using their tools: two turntables and a mixer, sometimes called "the wheels of steel." Today, in the age of digital music, CD DJ's are increasing in popularity, however die-hard turntable enthusiasts still swear by their Technics 1200SL turntables, the industry standard over the past two decades. Digital DJ technology allows DJs to play digital music files stored on laptops or other sources through analog turntables or CD players. DJs use digital vinyl turntable CD players for scratching, mixing, and the like.

The term “turntablism” refers to an evolved state of DJ’ing: the use of the turntables, or “wheels of steel” to manipulate and creating music using multiple turntables and a mixer. The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who manipulates sound by touching and moving the records. The most common form of turntablism is “skratching.” Skratching, at the most basic level, playing a record back and forth by hand thus changing the direction and speed of the record, while cutting the sound in and out the crossfader of a mixer.

Dance is a form of expression. Dancing provides the body with not only a rounded physical workout, but also strengthens and relaxes the mind: dancing appeals to the minds natural sense of symmetry through rhythm. Hip Hop dance refers to social or choreographed dance styles primarily danced to hip hop music or that have evolved as part of hip hop culture. This includes a wide range of styles notably breaking, locking, and popping which were developed in the 1970s by Black and Latino Americans. What separates hip hop dance from other forms of dance is that it is often freestyle (improvizational) in nature and hip hop dancers frequently engage in battles—formal or informal one-on-one dance competitions. Informal freestyle sessions and battles are usually performed in a cipher, a circular dance space that forms naturally once the dancing begins. Two of these three elements—battles and ciphers—make hip hop unique from other dance styles.

There are two major categories of Hip Hop dance, breakdance and choreography. In the early to mid 1970's, "Hip Hop dance" was synonomous with breakdancing, a form of dance which is considered to be very impressive, but is generally not considered to be very expressive. As Hip Hop grew in age and size, more and more dancers became influenced by Hip Hop music and spirit, and choreographed dance routines set to Hip Hop music spread in popularity. Today, the phrase "Hip Hop dance" can is used to refer to one or both.

While no one is really sure about how breakdancing started, two things are certain: breakdancing in the 70's was almost nothing like it is today; and, breakdancing began in clubs as a way for gangs to "battle" each other in dance clubs without getting kicked out. Breakdancing, in the 1970's, had none of the impressive "power moves" which are a staple of breakdancing today, but was all style moves: creating the illusion that you were dancing on ice or in low gravity, for example the Moonwalk. Today, breakdancing employs an abundance of inappropriately named, "Power Moves," which are based on momentum and balance rather than strength and power. "Power moves" are centered on controlled momentum; breakdancing today is essentially applied physics.

Hip Hop choreography offers Hip Hop dancers a medium to express themselves through dance, while not being constrained or limited by other genres of dance, such as ballet or jazz. Stylistically, Hip Hop dance is very loose and open, which allows dancers to be influenced from many forms of movement, such as martial arts and every day activities. Contrary to popular belief that Hip Hop dancing is dirty, cheap and all about "booty-shaking," Hip Hop dance offers just as emotionally and physically as any other genre of dance, and while there certainly is a pop element of dance associated with Hip Hop that does embrace the "booty shaking," that pop element in no way represents the much larger whole. Hip Hop choreography can be seen in several dance groups as well as on stage and in videos with performers such as Run DMC and Michael and Janet Jackson.

Hip Hop Lessons

When learning hip hop and hip hop dance moves you need to remember that hip hop as an expression of music through the dancers own interpretation. If you are always taking hip hop lessons or classes and not having fun and venturing your hip hop dance skills outside the studio you really are just copying someones hip hop dance moves. Be willing to explore in the street in your bedroom and have fun dancing hip hop, defiantly incorporate your hip hop lessons into your routines and even mix up the techniques and moved you learned in your hip hop lessons and take them back next time to your studio or hip hop lesson and show your instructor see what they think and what you might need to improve on.

Short for master of ceremonies, the term “MC” predates Hip Hop. The role of the MC also predates its incorporation into the Hip Hop Culture. Like the DJ and graffiti artist, the MC played a practical role in the urban community, although the title itself was adapted from elite high society. In the beginning, MC's were limited by technology, budget and equipment. Producing beats and tracks to rhyme over was significantly more expensive than it is today, and when rap was less popular, finding investors often proved to be quite difficult. As a result, many of the beats were very simple with heavy drum patterns and very little ornamentation from other instruments, which forced MC's to focus on the quality of their lyrics.

MC'ing has always had a focus on lyrics. Rhyming rhythmically over a beat, while weaving intricate lyrics about significant subjects is how MC's earned respect. MC battles were popular events in the 1970's and 80's, which were events in which MC's were able to showcase their abilities and skills by competing with other MC's. As technology of instruments and equipment advanced, the prices began to come down, and many more options became available to beatmakers and MC's, with respect to their music. What was once a simple drum machine became a fully functional sampler, allowing MC's to use other instruments and songs in their own with greater ease. Today there is a greater emphasis on the beats, which results in an interesting mix of track quality and lyric quality.

MC'ing is probably the most vocal element of Hip Hop, both literally and metaphorically, and MC'ing is the element in which a spirit of rebellion or reform is most apparent. As a result, Hip Hop MC's and their lyrics often receive the most attention, especially in the early-to-mid 1980's, when "Gangsta rap" thrived. The rebellious attitude conveyed in "Gangsta rap" grew rapidly in fame because of it's very strong messages, which sometimes glorified violence. The media quickly latched into this image, and continues to perpetuate this image today, rather than focusing on the source of the lyrics: the social inequalities and injustices suffered in communities where Hip Hop thrived and continues to thrive. The rise of “gangsta rap” in the late 1980s and early 1990s again changed the sound, look, and feel of Hip Hop as the rising gang warfare on the West Coast revisited the early scene from which early Hip Hop was vehemently opposed.