Evolution of Music

Models// Jordan Williams & Kennedy Orr

by Evan Funchess/EGO

From pain to joy, and from the ground floor to the deluxe apartment in the sky, black music has told the story of black people for many years. Black people arrived in the U.S due to slavery, and their gospel hymns described that story. The pain of their loss and the light that shined from their hope gave us the first actual songs of the American black experience.

Early Gospel hymns like “Deep River” and “Steal Away” were the first negro spirituals produced from the African American experience. These songs became the roots of black music, as these spirituals evolved into a new genre of music known as gospel music. Gospel music incorporated songs of praise and jubilee as it showed the emotional ties that black people had to their faith. The gospel music genre took black music to new heights as black singers began to make their way onto music charts across the country. Singers like Mahalia Jackson and The Clark Sisters became household names as they sang their way to the top of the charts and established a new wave of music. What followed gospel music became a kind of music that spoke to the sadness and despair of the black community, which was the Blues. The sound of Blues music encapsulated the darker parts of the lives of black people by incorporating real-life situations to tell stories through song.

Artists like Eddie “Son” House helped define the genre by introducing the intense sound of the blues and led to a new generation of blues artists like Howlin Wolf, who pushed the genre even further. The blues branch of black music spawned R&B, which stands for rhythm and blues. R&B expanded the blues from its sad roots and gave it a more loving subject. Little Richard introduced R&B that made people dance and music that graced the soul. This music was the base for much of the popular 90s R&B that grew in popularity down the line.

The next evolution of Black music was Hip Hop, which originated in New York City, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, to be exact. Hip Hop started with DJ Kool Herc at a back-to-school party and continued with the first hip-hop radio record aptly named “Rappers Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang. Early Hip-hop had a positive vibe about simply having a good time. The next phase of Hip-Hop was Gangster Rap which showed a different side of the black experience in urban neighborhoods.

This black experience was much more violent and involved darker subject matter than its predecessor. Gangster Rap started to form with the rapper Schoolly D’s self-titled project, released in 1985. That album influenced rapper Ice-T who then pushed the sub-genre to new heights. Ice-T then released “Rhyme Pays” in 1987, which featured the classic track “6 ‘n the mornin’,” which told the story of what it was like to be a young male in South Central, Los Angeles living a dangerous lifestyle. From that album on, the sound of Gangster Rap only grew more prominent with contributions from Ice Cube to 50 Cent.

Once gangster rap began to die down a short time after, Hip-hop evolved once more, this time with Trap Music. One could trace trap Music’s roots back to the early ’90s with rappers 8ball and MJG, and it goes all the way to current artists like Lil Baby and 2 Chainz. Black music has found ways to illuminate the world and tell the story of a group of people who had to make their way in this world. PHOTOGRAPHER // Tiren Causey