Hip-hop was an expression of the anger felt by black Americans. It called for social relevance, originality, and an effort to challenge the artistic culture of mainstream American society. According to scholar Cornell West, it was an effort to cope with the frustrations and conditions of urban life in the ghetto, and a celebration of the black poor working class and underclass. It openly acknowledged and confronted the coldheartedness, criminal cruelty, and hopelessness of the ghetto. Rap developed as an expression of this impoverished experience that black people had.

The "founding father" of hip-hop was DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) who introduced into America a style of DJing that had evolved in Jamaica. He built a sound system that emphasized the bass elements of dance music, he practiced "dubbing" or extending the sections of a song that his audience preferred dancing to, and he spoke with/over the music on a microphone "toasting" (encouraging) members of the audience to dance. These "toasts" were long narrative poems composed in rhymed couplets, and often made use of exaggerated language, metaphors, expletives, and boasting, which are elements that we often see in rap today. Kool Herc's style created a strong sense of shared identity between the performer and the audience.