What was the first hook in hip-hop?
Due to the nature of the genre in the beginning, the history of hip-hop is filled with contradicting versions of events. It was never something originally designed for the studio but, instead, something that was credited to moments. It was a live experience, something that people could dance and party to, one of the most fun and outgoing countercultures ever to take place, and in those beautiful moments, a lot of specifics were lost.
Though other cultural moments contributed to it, hip-hop is widely considered to have started in August 1973 at one of DJ Kool Herc’s legendary parties. Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was the first hip-hop song to succeed commercially in 1980. That means there was a seven-year gap between the development of the genre and its worldwide acceptance.
Throughout those seven years, the genre was growing. The way that people made beats and experimented with the turntable changed as artists like Grandmaster Flash grew on top of what DJ Kool Herc did. The MC evolved from being a commentator like Coke La Rock to a full-blown rapper. The way that songs were structured started to change, too.
People involved in the genre from the beginning tend to have different recollections of who did what first, who wrote what line and what idea belongs to what person. One of the topics up for debate is the hook, which has since become a fundamental part of hip-hop but wasn’t a thing at the genre’s inception.
Rick Rubin credits Def Jam with making the hook mainstream. When asked what he was proud of achieving at the label, he said, “The use of song structure in hip-hop hadn’t really existed before then. Before we started, hip-hop records were typically 12-inch that was between six and nine minutes long, and [they] rarely had a hook.”
While Def Jam might have made a hook more popular, they certainly weren’t the first to include one in a hip-hop track. Many different MCs did it long before the label was founded in 1984. Because of the convoluted nature of early hip-hop and songs that weren’t committed to wax, it’s hard to give a definitive answer; however, one of the earliest rap songs that didn’t feature a hook was ‘Funk You Up’ by the all-female group The Sequence.
Initially released in 1979, this song even predates the Sugarhill Gang’s hip-hop classic, as it gives insight into the kind of sound made in the earlier days of hip-hop. With a repetitive and, unsurprisingly, funky hook, along with fun flows delivered by all MCs, ‘Funk You Up’ set the foundation for what many other tracks would be built upon.
It’s hard to tell whether this was the first hook in hip-hop, but it acts as a window into the past, showing us what has now been one of the most important songs ever released.