Pharrell Williams

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Pharrell Williams

Q: What are the four main elements of hip-hop?

While there is some debate over the number of elements of hip-hop, there are four elements that are considered to be its pillars: deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” (emceeing) or “rhyming”; graffiti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and break dancing, or “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural semantics.” Many also cite a fifth essential component: “knowledge of self/consciousness.” Other suggested elements include street fashion and language.

Q: How did hip-hop get its name?

There are various explanations for the source of the term hip-hop . However, the most popular one involves Keith (”Keef Cowboy”) Wiggins, a member of the rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five . The rapper used the words hip/hop/hip/hop , imitating the sound of soldiers marching, in reference to a friend who had joined the army. According to some accounts, Kevin (”Lovebug Starski”) Smith was with Wiggins and helped create the phrase. Hip-hop was subsequently popularized in songs, notably the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.”

Q: Who are the founders of hip-hop?

While a number of people were influential in the creation of hip-hop, much credit is given to Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican immigrant who was the first major hip-hop disc jockey. At a Bronx party on August 11, 1973, he introduced the technique of playing the same album on two turntables and extending the drum section (which became known as the breakbeat). Many recognize this night as the birth of hip-hop. Other pioneering hip-hop deejays include Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash . The three men are often called the “holy trinity” of early hip-hop.

Q: What was the first major hip-hop song?

Although not the first hip-hop song, the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) was considered the first significant single of the genre. Within weeks of its release, it became a chart-topping phenomenon and gave its name to a new genre of pop music. Part of its crossover appeal was attributed to its lighthearted lyrics, which were atypical of most rap songs at the time.

American musician and producer

Written by Pat Bauer

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Apr 13, 2025 • Article History

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Born:: April 5, 1973, Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S. (age 52)

Awards And Honors:: Grammy Award (2014)

Notable Works:: “Happy”

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Drake Hints at Buying Another Pharrell Chain Once Owned by Kid Cudi • Apr. 12, 2025, 6:25 AM ET (Billboard)

Pharrell Williams (born April 5, 1973, Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S.) is an American musician who was involved in a number of pop hits as part of the producing team the Neptunes, as a songwriter, as a member of the band N.E.R.D., and as a solo performer. He also is known for his musical contributions to films, especially his hit song “Happy” for the animated movie Despicable Me 2 (2013).

Early life and career with the Neptunes

Williams was a percussionist in his school band when he was a child, and he found a kindred spirit in saxophonist Chad Hugo. Williams and Hugo devoted themselves to music and beat production and in high school began calling themselves the Neptunes. A scout for music producer Teddy Riley, who had recently opened a recording studio near the high school that Williams attended, heard the Neptunes perform at a school talent show and brought them to Riley’s attention. In 1992 Williams wrote a verse for hip-hop group Wreckx-n-Effect’s most-popular single, “Rump Shaker,” and the Neptunes produced the track “Tonight’s the Night” on the eponymous debut album (1994) of Riley’s vocal group Blackstreet.

The Neptunes were soon in demand as hip-hop producers and writers, with a signature style that mixed influences from soul, rock, and other musical genres. Neptunes-produced hits include Noreaga’s “Superthug” (1998), Mary J. Blige’s “Steal Away” (2001), Britney Spears’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” (2001), Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” (2002), Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” (2003), Kelis’s “Milkshake” (2003), and Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (2004). Williams, often assisted by Hugo, penned the lyrics for many of those songs as well.

USA 2006 - 78th Annual Academy Awards. Closeup of giant Oscar statue at the entrance of the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Hompepage blog 2009, arts and entertainment, film movie hollywood

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In 2004 Timberlake’s Neptunes-produced album Justified won the Grammy Award for best pop vocal album, and the Neptunes were named producer of the year (nonclassical). The Neptunes were also among the producers contributing to Mariah Carey’s 2005 album The Emancipation of MiMi, which won a Grammy for best contemporary R&B album.

N.E.R.D., early solo work, and Despicable Me

In 2001 Williams and Hugo joined with rap artist Shay to form the band N.E.R.D. The collaboration resulted in four eclectic albums of rhythm and blues, rap, pop, and rock music: In Search of… (2002), Fly or Die (2004), Seeing Sounds (2008), and Nothing (2010). Williams also struck out on his own with the 2003 single “Frontin’ ” and the 2006 album In My Mind. He branched out into soundtrack composition as well, scoring the animated film Despicable Me (2010). Noted composer Hans Zimmer produced the score, and the two collaborated again on the music that was played at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony.

“Blurred Lines” and “Get Lucky”

In 2013 Williams cowrote and produced “Blurred Lines,” which was sung by Robin Thicke and featured T.I. and Williams. The song was a huge hit, but in 2015 a federal jury held that Thicke and Williams had committed copyright infringement by using parts of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” Williams also cowrote and was featured on “Get Lucky” (2013) by Daft Punk, which won Grammys for best pop duo/group performance and record of the year in 2014. At that year’s Grammy ceremony Williams was named producer of the year (nonclassical).

“Happy,” G I R L, and other music projects

He had further success with “Happy,” an effervescent and infectious song that he had written for the animated film Despicable Me 2 (2013). It received an Academy Award nomination for best original song, and Williams performed it at the Oscar ceremony in 2014. His second solo album, G I R L, was released the following day. Later in 2014 Williams again teamed with Zimmer, among others, on the soundtrack for the film The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and he became a coach on the popular TV show The Voice; he left the program in 2016.

Williams collaborated with Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch on the score for the movie Hidden Figures (2016), which garnered them Grammy and Golden Globe nominations. He was also a producer on the film. In 2017 he wrote and performed the songs in Despicable Me 3 (2017). In addition, he reunited with his band N.E.R.D. for the explicitly political album No_One Ever Really Dies (2017).

Williams scored another hit single in 2018 with “Sangria Wine,” a collaboration with singer Camila Cabello. That same year he produced Ariana Grande’s Grammy-winning album Sweetener. In 2019 he performed and cowrote (with Hugo) the song “Letter to My Godfather” for the documentary film The Black Godfather. The track was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding song and lyrics. Other hit songs that he produced include “Cash In Cash Out” (2022; performed by Tyler, the Creator and 21 Savage) and “Doctor (Work It Out)” (2024; performed by Miley Cyrus). In 2024 Williams worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nicholas Britell to compose the score for the film Mufasa: The Lion King, directed by Barry Jenkins.

Acting

Williams also made brief appearances in movies, often playing himself or characters similar to him, as he did in Entourage and Pitch Perfect 2 (both 2015), respectively. He took on a larger role when he lent his voice as narrator to the animated feature The Grinch (2018), an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s children’s classic (1957).

Fashion projects

Williams’s other projects have included the premium street-wear clothing lines Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream (with Japanese music producer Nigo). He also collaborated on a unisex fragrance with the perfume division of the fashion house Comme des Garçons. In 2023 Louis Vuitton named Williams as creative director of its menswear collection, filling the position left vacant after Virgil Abloh died in 2021.

Patricia Bauer The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

hip-hop

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hip-hop

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Key People:: Common; SZA; Chance the Rapper; Lizzo; Ice-T

Related Topics:: social movement; break dancing; rap; trap music; grime music

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What are the four main elements of hip-hop?

How did hip-hop get its name?

Who are the founders of hip-hop?

What was the first major hip-hop song?

hip-hop, cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s and also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential art form.

Origins and the old school

Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop refers to a complex culture comprising four elements: deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” or “rhyming”; graffiti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural semantics.” (A fifth element, “knowledge of self/consciousness,” is sometimes added to the list of hip-hop elements, particularly by socially conscious hip-hop artists and scholars.) Hip-hop originated in the predominantly African American economically depressed South Bronx section of New York City in the late 1970s. As the hip-hop movement began at society’s margins, its origins are shrouded in myth, enigma, and obfuscation.

Graffiti and break dancing, the aspects of the culture that first caught public attention, had the least lasting effect. Reputedly, the graffiti movement was started about 1972 by a Greek American teenager who signed, or “tagged,” Taki 183 (his name and street, 183rd Street) on walls throughout the New York City subway system. By 1975 youths in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn were stealing into train yards under cover of darkness to spray-paint colorful mural-size renderings of their names, imagery from underground comics and television, and even Andy Warhol-like Campbell’s soup cans onto the sides of subway cars. Soon, influential art dealers in the United States, Europe, and Japan were displaying graffiti in major galleries. New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority responded with dogs, barbed-wire fences, paint-removing acid baths, and undercover police squads.

DJ Kool HercJaimaican American deejay, 2019.

The beginnings of the dancing, rapping, and deejaying components of hip-hop were bound together by the shared environment in which these art forms evolved. The first major hip-hop deejay was DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), an 18-year-old immigrant who introduced the huge sound systems of his native Jamaica to inner-city parties. Using two turntables, he melded percussive fragments from older records with popular dance songs to create a continuous flow of music. Kool Herc and other pioneering hip-hop deejays such as Grand Wizard Theodore, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash isolated and extended the break beat (the part of a dance record where all sounds but the drums drop out), stimulating improvisational dancing. Contests developed in which the best dancers created break dancing, a style with a repertoire of acrobatic and occasionally airborne moves, including gravity-defying headspins and backspins.

In the meantime, deejays developed new techniques for turntable manipulation. Needle dropping, created by Grandmaster Flash, prolonged short drum breaks by playing two copies of a record simultaneously and moving the needle on one turntable back to the start of the break while the other played. Sliding the record back and forth underneath the needle created the rhythmic effect called “scratching.”

American quartet Boyz II Men (left to right) Shawn Stockman, Wanya Morris, Nathan Morris and Michael McClary, 1992. (music, rhythm-and-blues). Photographed at the American Music Awards where they won Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist, Los Angeles, California, January 27, 1992.

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Kool Herc was widely credited as the father of modern rapping for his spoken interjections over records, but among the wide variety of oratorical precedents cited for MCing are the epic histories of West African griots, talking blues songs, jailhouse toasts (long rhyming poems recounting outlandish deeds and misdeeds), and the dozens (the ritualized word game based on exchanging insults, usually about members of the opponent’s family). Other influences cited include the hipster-jive announcing styles of 1950s rhythm-and-blues deejays such as Jocko Henderson; the Black power poetry of Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, and the Last Poets; rapping sections in recordings by Isaac Hayes and George Clinton; and the Jamaican style of rhythmized speech known as toasting.

Rap first came to national prominence in the United States with the release of the Sugarhill Gang’s song “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) on the independent African American-owned label Sugar Hill. Within weeks of its release, it had become a chart-topping phenomenon and given its name to a new genre of pop music. The major pioneers of rapping were Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, and the Cold Crush Brothers, whose Grandmaster Caz is controversially considered by some to be the true author of some of the strongest lyrics in “Rapper’s Delight.” These early MCs and deejays constituted rap’s old school.