There was a massive shift in musical influence in the 1990's when New York City experienced a heavy Jamaican hip hop influence, this change of music style and influence was brought on by a new trend of cultural shifts, particularly because of the heightened immigration of Jamaicans to New York City and the American-born Jamaican youth who were coming of age during the 1990s. This change also occurred in Europe, Africa, and Asia, hip hop began to move from between youths, on the streets and the underground scene to mainstream audiences. In Europe, hip hop was the domain of both ethnic nationals and immigrants, nowadays we have British artists who have made it equally as BIG on the urban music scene as American artists, the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Tinie Tempah, Wiley ect.
Rap and hip hop has spread from continent and country far and wide, with Portugal on the map for hip hop having its own kind of rap, focusing on a more political and underground aspect to urban culture, they are known for Valete Dealema and Halloween. Germany produced well known Hip hop group; Die Fantastischen Vier as well as several Turkish performers. France has also produced some native born Hip hop talent, such as IAM and Suprême NTM
After reviewing the The Guardian's history of modern music, Hip-hop and RnB list, Starting from 1979-2010, put together by Guardian and Observer writers http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jun/13/hip-hop-music-playlist-download#data
1979, even in the early days of hip hop music American artists such as Sugarhill Gang make our UK chart with Rapper Delight, and Fatback band release there first song King Tim III.
1980's - In the 1980's its all about Bobby Brown, Public Enemy, Boogie down productions, Salt'n'Pepa and a whole heap more who became popular in the thick of Hip hop and urban music.
1990's - The 90's bought smooth R'n'B music, with Geto Boys, A tribe called quest, Boys to men, Pete Rock and CL Smooth ect, Urban Music was increasing in ratings and was fast taking over most popular music genre of the decade.
I recently attended the Virgin Media festival at Weston Park and was quite surprised at how urban and new and diverse the music played over the weekend was, we had artists from Artic Monkey's headlining on one stage to Dizzee Rascal on another. Less reknown artists such as The Pierces and Bellowhead up against Eminiem and Rihanna, the vast multi-cultural mix was fantastic and no wander the festival was such a massive success with myself being ticket holder 30,6351 of over 120,000 spectators throughout the entire weekend! I think what has been most appealing about Urban Music from day one, is the fact that the artists created there own talent, without trying to fit into the mainstream world first. The majority of Hip hop and R'n'B artists started off underground and on the streets with friends as an audience, spitting lyrics and rapping bars, recording tracks onto tape recorders for fun, 50 cent in the film Get Rich or Die Trying started off in this similar vain, and Biggie Smalls in the film Notorious B.I.G starts rapping on the streets and soon gets discovered as real talent and ends up on stage in front of a crowd who love his lyrics and feel where he is coming from, the point is:Urban music has come so far.
This year Glastonbury, famous British predominant rock music festival, saw this year a sight that is very rare for two reasons. Firstly headlining for her first time, R'n'B artist Beyoncé hit the main Pyramid stage making her one of only a handful of women who have ever headlined on the main stage over the past forty years. Beyoncé (whom j'adore!) being one of the key icons of the Urban Scene to date, she started her music career in girl band Destiny's child, in late 90's America and now to be headlining as 29 year old R'n'B artist at a British rock festival, just demonstrates how much has changed over the past four-five decades and how mainstream, popular and renown urban music is and has become.
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