Hip house

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Hip house was born at a crossroads: somewhere between a Chicago warehouse and a London recording studio, two of the most vital youth music movements of the 1980s collided. House music, with its insistent four-on-the-floor pulse, had been building in the clubs. Hip-hop, with its rhythmic vocals and sample-flipping energy, was spreading fast. What happened when producers brought the two together was not a compromise but something genuinely new. This documentary traces how that collision sparked a genre war over who invented hip house, how it shaped the UK rave scene, and how a modern form of it resurfaced decades later under a different name.

• 2. The Origin Dispute

  ›

  The British electronic group Beatmasters, working with the rap duo Cookie Crew, recorded "Rok da House" and that track is cited as one of the first hip house records ever made. The Beatmasters later pointed out that the song had originally been written and pressed to vinyl in 1986, which gave them a strong claim to the form.

  In 1988, a U.S. record complicated that story. Tyree Cooper, featuring Kool Rock Steady, released "Turn Up the Bass" and labeled it the first hip house record on vinyl. The Beatmasters disputed that claim directly, and they did not stop at a press statement. They responded musically, releasing "Who's in the House?" featuring British emcee Merlin. The lyrics left no doubt about their position: Merlin rapped the lines "Beatmasters stand to attention, hip house is your invention" and, pointedly, "Watch out Tyree, we come faster."

  The argument over the hip-house crown did not end there. Fast Eddie entered the debate with "Yo Yo Get Funky!", Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock put forward "It Takes Two", and Tony Scott staked his claim with "That's How I'm Living."

• 3. Warehouse Floors and Chart Success

  ›

  After successful releases from the Beatmasters, Deskee, Tyree, KC Flightt, Doug Lazy, and Mr. Lee, hip house found its home in the acid house warehouse scene and the nightclubs feeding off it. The genre was not limited to the underground. It also earned substantial chart success.

  The style fit naturally alongside sample-based records that British artists were producing at the same time. S-Express, Bomb the Bass, and MARRS were all working in that territory, and hip house complemented their approach. Hip house tracks appeared on popular dance compilations, including Telstar's Deep Heat compilation series. DJs such as Chad Jackson championed the sound and helped drive it into wider circulation.

  As house music grew into a worldwide industry by the late 1980s, U.S. acts began applying the hip house formula to mainstream hits. C+C Music Factory used it on "Gonna Make You Sweat." The Belgian group Technotronic and the German groups Snap! and Real McCoy carried the approach into Eurodance and found hits there too.

• 4. Seeding the UK Rave Scene

  ›

  Double Trouble and Rebel MC, Blapps Posse, and Shut Up and Dance were among the UK artists releasing hip house in the late 1980s, and their records carried consequences beyond the dancefloor. Those releases are recognized as an early influence on the UK rave scene that took shape in the early 1990s. The breakbeat hardcore genre grew from that same soil, and the genres that developed from breakbeat hardcore, including jungle, carry hip house's DNA in their ancestry.

• 5. Electro Hop and the Modern Revival

  ›

  A modern form of hip house surfaced in the mid-2000s under the name electro hop, and by the end of that decade and into the 2010s, several artists in the style reached mainstream success. LMFAO, Flo Rida, Far East Movement, Hyper Crush, and Azealia Banks were among them. Pitbull was a notable figure in the revival, particularly through his albums Rebelution in 2009 and Planet Pit in 2011. The British artist Example worked in a related mode, with critics describing his sound as "rave-rap" or "rave-hop."

  Electronic dance music producers also moved into the space by bringing rappers onto their records. Tiësto and Diplo recorded "C'mon (Catch 'em by Surprise)" with Busta Rhymes. Wolfgang Gartner and will.i.am released "Forever." French DJ David Guetta had several hits that fit the hip house pattern: "Memories" with Kid Cudi, "Where Them Girls At" with Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj, "Gettin' Over You" with LMFAO, and "Little Bad Girl" with Taio Cruz and Ludacris. The cycle that began in London and Chicago in the mid-to-late 1980s had, decades on, become a formula familiar enough to anchor global chart records.