hip hop has grown into one of the world's most prominent musical genres and cultural influences thanks to Jamaicans.

From the street corner to the world stage, hip hop has grown into one of the world's most prominent musical genres and cultural influences.
Throughout the late 1970s and early ’80s, artists and DJs solidified hip-hop’s major elements — rapping, beatboxing, scratching, and sampling — and refined their techniques as advances in recording technology made sampling easier.

The old-school hip-hop era represented a lot of firsts for the genre. Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” is recognized as the first hip-hop record and was the first hip-hop recording to gain widespread popularity. The song, which samples Chic’s “Good Times,” became a Top 40 hit in the US and saw even more success internationally, charting in the UK and Canada. The embodiment of old-school hip-hop, the track served as a sort of prototype for future rap releases.