For five decades, hip-hop has redefined the soundscape of American music and created a billion-dollar industry in its wake. Hip-hop as we know it has evolved way past its humble beginnings in the Bronx, where all DJs needed was vinyl and a set of turntables. While hip-hop is undoubtedly part of the foundation of African American culture, Black Caribbeans played a formative role in the genre.

In the early ‘70s, as the popularity of disco waned, through the beats of funk emerged a trove of streamlined beats that skilled DJs would innovate into hip-hop. At the time, DJs would battle each other, generating new music from existing records that resembled Jamaican dubstep music. Many of the early DJs were Afro-Caribbean, hailing from the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. A Jamaican-born DJ Clive Campbell — known as DJ Kool Herc — is credited as the founding father of hip-hop for inventing the breakbeat, a foundational sound on which hip-hop is built.

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