Old School Hip Hop
Old school hip hop is the earliest era of rap, from its 1970s beginnings to about 1983, with simple party rhymes over funk and disco grooves.
The first records used live bands or drum machines replaying disco and funk breaks, and MCs traded simple, upbeat rhymes meant to keep a crowd moving. Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang introduced the style to a wide public in 1979. It gave way in the mid-1980s to the harder, sparser new school led by Run-DMC.
Artists it is known for: The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa.
- Family
- Hip-Hop & Rap
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- New York City, 1970s
- Also called
- old-school rap, old skool hip hop
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 9%
About 7,800 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have old school hip hop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Old School Hip Hop artists
50 Cent
2Pac
The Notorious B.I.G.
Nas
Dr. Dre
Snoop Dogg
Ice Cube
A Tribe Called Quest
Wu-Tang Clan
Sir Mix-A-Lot
The old school hip hop artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.