Hip-hop's origins are often summed up with the phrase “making something out of nothing,” though it may be more accurate to say hip-hop was makeshift out of necessity.
In the socioeconomic context of 1970s New York, the youth of underserved black communities, where the resources for instruments were not readily accessible, made an art form within the DJ scene that turned vinyl records into instruments, taking or rerouting electricity from streetlights to power sound systems at block parties.
In “The Foundation” episode of Hip-Hop Evolution, directed by Darby Wheeler, author and filmmaker Nelson George explains how the ingenuity of Grandmaster Flash in his use of records was similar to how many black artists throughout history revolutionized the use of an instrument, such as John Coltrane’s immensely influential legacy as a jazz saxophonist.
Furthermore, it should be made clear that though the communities hip-hop emerged from may have had scarce material resources, cultural resources were abundant. In fact, I would argue that hip-hop’s use of vinyl records as instruments was not even an anomaly, but instead one instance amongst many of black artists being deeply invested in how to use technology to further their art.
The cybernetic nature of black music
In my opinion, there is a very clear recurring theme in black music of artists being completely obsessed with technology, and one does not need to venture too far from hip-hop’s origins in the ‘70s to see examples.
For instance, Head Hunters, Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking jazz-funk album, was released in 1973. While the photography was courtesy of Waldo Bascom, the art direction was orchestrated by Spanish-American graphic artist Victor Moscoso, as stated in Michael Portanova’s 2025 description of the album cover on The People’s Graphic Design Archive.
Moscoso’s cover art depicts Herbie Hancock, with members of his band the Headhunters posed behind him, as he sits at his keyboard in what looks like a kple kple mask, which comes from the traditions of the Baoulé, one group amongst multiple that make up the Akan people who live in the Ivory Coast.
However, the version of the mask on this cover has been augmented with pieces of studio equipment, such as having a VU (volume unit) meter as a mouth and radio knobs for the eyes.
According to Portanova, the combination of the kple kple mask with more modern pieces of technology stands as a visual reference to the blend of old and new at the heart of the album and its musical style, which, in a way, is indicative of the blends of different genres within jazz fusion more generally.
As another example, just a few years before Head Hunters, Jimi Hendrix premiered “Machine Gun,” on which he famously used the electric guitar to create distorted sounds that mimicked machine gun fire and explosions in his condemnation of the Vietnam War.
These effects can be heard in the live recordings of Hendrix, along with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox, performing the song on New Year’s Eve 1969 and New Year’s Day 1970 at the Fillmore East in New York City.
According to a quote from Billy Cox, as seen in an article on “Machine Gun” by Best Classic Bands, Hendrix’s soundscape on the guitar during these performances was created through various effects pedals, specifically a wah-wah pedal, Uni-Vibe, Octavia, and a Fuzz Face.
In the “Blue Funk: The Ugly Beauty of Stank,” chapter of Tony Bolden’s Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk (2020), Bolden explores the deeply intertwined relationship black musicians have with technology in their music, often using instruments as an extension of their body or their embodied presence as a performer.
Of many things he says about Hendrix, Bolden points to a 1969 article for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Janie Gressel, in which she references Hendrix’s tendency to hold and play his guitar in many odd positions in relation to his body, which she viewed as stemming from emotion during his performance. His close relationship to his guitar made it seem as if the instrument was literally a conduit for something being released from his body.
The closeness between Hendrix and his guitar was mirrored not only in how other black musicians used literal instruments, but also in how a number of black singers described their singing ability.
In the “Songbird: Chaka Khan as Funk Queen” chapter of Groove Theory, Tony Bolden references a 2007 interview Chaka Khan did with LaShonda Katrice Barnett, which was published within Barnett's I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft (2007). Here, Chaka Khan explained that her knowledge about how to vocalize as a singer came from hearing horn players such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, rather than singers like Sarah Vaughan or Peggy Lee, who she did like very much.
He goes further back to also show that Billie Holiday had a similar perspective, as she stated that her vocal style was like playing a horn, and that she had a style of improvisation that was similar to how her close friend Lester Young or Louis Armstrong would play a tenor saxophone or trumpet, respectively.
Some black singers went even further than to point out how their vocal style was like that of an instrument’s and instead would use their voice to literally mimic machinery.
In 1937, the gospel group the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet released “Golden Gate Gospel Train,” an acapella number in which the members used their voices to play the parts of the titular gospel train, including the whistle, bell, engine, and the continuous noise of a steam locomotive running down the tracks. One of the members also use their voice to simulate a horn solo, all of which is definitely a precursor to beatboxing in hip-hop.
While each of these examples have been musical, the reason I highlight their connection to technology is that it seems that the artists were concerned not just with playing notes, but more generally in finding out what their instrument was sonically capable of producing, whether that be an instrument external to their body or their voice.
In the “Blue Funk: The Ugly Beauty of Stank” chapter of Groove Theory, Tony Bolden explains that in the early 20th century, it was not uncommon for horn players, as well as other musicians, to imitate noises such as laughter, cries, or even animal sounds, kind of as a precursor to what Hendrix did with “Machine Gun.”
Bolden points to the blues empress Bessie Smith and her song “Trombone Cholly” from 1927, which was written by George Brooks and dedicated to the prowess of her trombonist, Charles “Cholly” Green. On the song, Smith describes Green as being able to sing and talk through the use of the trombone, and also that he can make noises like a cow, which is accompanied by him making a “moo” sound through his instrument.
“Trombone Cholly” is a celebration of a particular black musician’s skill with their instrument, which Bessie Smith was known to use her songs to do.
The song also exists as part of a larger tradition of black recordings celebrating musicians which passed through generations and can be seen in later songs such as James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” which showcased the skills of Clyde Stubblefield, or even further into the future in the various hip-hop songs that celebrated the DJ or gave them a song to show their stuff, such as “Jam-Master Jay” by Run-DMC or “The Magnificent Jazzy Jeff” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.
Out of the hip-hop DJs who were celebrated in this fashion, there is perhaps no one more famous than Grandmaster Flash, who based in part on a lack of resources in his childhood was known not just as a great DJ but also an ingeniously resourceful engineer and inventor, and a great example of how this legacy of black musicians being tied to technology was carried on in hip-hop music.
As Flash explains in the “Uptown throwdown” chapter of David Toop’s The Rap Attack: African jive to New York hip hop (1984), his interest in technology originated from his being obsessed with playing with his father’s record collection, which he would get in trouble for touching.
His mother was also very important, as when she got sick, Flash was sent away to attend and live at the Greer School, formerly Hope Farm, a school for underprivileged children located in Dutchess County, New York.
Since the Greer School asked the parents what profession their kid planned to work towards, Flash’s mother said he was interested in electronics simply because she knew how much he liked to take machines apart and tinker around back home, which again was often due to their not having much money. All the way into his career as a DJ, Flash was known to fix up broken machines, such as those being discarded in the junkyard or in people’s backyards, for his own usage.
After his time at the Greer School, Flash went to Samuel Gompers Vocational High School in the Bronx where he studied electronics even further. He of course grew even more knowledgeable about technology as he became a Bronx DJ and studied the techniques and equipment of DJs like Kool Herc and Pete DJ Jones.
As was immortalized by the Furious Five in their “Flash to the Beat” routine or the beginning of “Superrappin,’” Grandmaster Flash utilized a drum machine he called the “Beat Box” during their performances.
According to the first of a two-part YouTube series JayQuan The Hip-Hop Historian did on the Furious Five, the "Beat Box" was a drum machine made by Vox, I believe called the Vox Percussion King. It was first owned by a drummer who Flash had as a neighbor, whom he eventually convinced to sell it to him.
In the “A New Rap Language” chapter of Steven Hager’s Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti (1984), Hager states that by manning the beat box Flash was able to keep beats going even when he stepped away from the turntables and stopped playing breaks off records.
Moving forward not too far from Flash’s use of the beat box machine, the term “beatbox” in hip-hop culture became something that expanded from referring just to inanimate technology, but also to humans who used their bodies to imitate musical equipment, mainly drum machines.
Buffy from The Fat Boys became known as the “Human Beat Box.” Ready Rock C, the beatboxer for DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, was called the “Human LinnDrum.” Wise from the hip-hop band Stetsasonic was known as the “Human Mix Machine.”
Just-Ice’s beatboxer was the Human DMX, named for the Oberheim DMX, who in the credits for Back To The Old School (1986) was referred to as “The Original Human Beat Box,” which was also the title of one of Doug E. Fresh’s early records from 1984 where he claimed that title.
Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick famously mocked Buffy’s beatbox style on “The Show” in 1985, I believe stemming from the contested question of who was truly the original “Human Beat Box” and deserved to be labeled as such.
Scratch, a former beatboxer for The Roots, had a name that referenced his ability to imitate the sounds and samples utilized by a hip-hop DJ. Scratch’s 2002 album was entitled The Embodiment of Instrumentation, further illuminating this relationship between machinery and the human body within black music.
Rahzel was another beatboxer with the Roots who also had very impressive abilities, as demonstrated on “? vs. Rahzel” from Do You Want More?!!!??! (1995), when he accompanies Questlove’s drum playing with horn and upright bass noises, along with imitations of vocal samples that are famous in hip-hop, including James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” “Impeach the President” by The Honey Drippers, and Mountain’s live performance of “Long Red” at Woodstock in 1969.
In the late '80s, Rahzel, originally from Queens, had provided the beatboxing on songs by Mikey D & The L.A. Posse, such as "Dawn," which was produced by legendary Queens producer and engineer Paul C. The producer and YouTuber El Train made a very informative video about Paul C, which includes discussion of Rahzel's beatboxing.
In particular, on "I Get Rough," the baseline was sampled from "Brick House" by The Commodores. However, instead of directly sampling it, Paul C used Rahzel's beatboxing of the bassline, which he then filtered and enhanced through the SP-12.
While there were of course earlier rap songs that used beatboxing instead of direct samples, such as "La-Di-Da-Di" with Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, "Latoya" with Just-Ice and DMX, or "Rock The House" with the Fresh Prince and Ready Rock C, "I Get Rough" by Mikey D & The L.A. Posse was almost attempting to disguise Rahzel's beatboxed bassline as if it actually originated from a drum machine or a record.
As a quick aside, Marley Marl had used his own voice to stand in as a shaker on "Make the Music with Your Mouth, Biz" in 1986, which I believe was the year before "I Get Rough" was released. Marley Marl had to make the noise himself because he didn't have a machine that featured the noise, as he explains in more detail in his breakdown of the song on the YouTube channel Dubspot.
In any case, in my opinion songs like "I Get Rough" are an example of hip-hop's relationship to technology coming full circle by the late '80s.
Hip-hop music was created based on breakbeats on vinyl records, which live bands recreated on the first rap records. As drum machines began to dominate hip-hop production, various people imitated said machines and recreated breakbeats through their own mouths, until eventually a song such as "I Get Rough" sampled beatboxing as if it was a direct sample, or at least was recreated on a machine.
To circle back to Tony Bolden's Groove Theory, when he discussed Bessie Smith's "Trombone Cholly" and how Charles "Cholly" Green could imitate noises from real life through his instrument, Bolden explains that these weren't just random sounds he was making.
In particular, the wails, grunts, and even animal noises Green could make on the trombone fit within a sonic pantheon that resonated with black listeners who lived or had lived in the South.
Essentially, the trombone was being used as a narrative device that could paint a distinct picture in your ears. In my opinion, hip-hop's use of sampling and sampling technology is no different, though the setting has changed somewhat. Rahzel's beatboxing might not resonate with black communities in the early 20th century, but for black listeners who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, it fits perfectly.
This is evident in the fact that breakbeats and musical samples are not the only things he or his beatboxing peers recreate. On Do You Want More?!!!??! , Rahzel can be heard imitating the dialogue from ‘70s Kung-Fu films all the way at the end of the album, which on a CD I believe would have been a hidden track.
These Kung-Fu films were very popular amongst the listeners of early hip-hop music, evident in groups like the Wu-Tang Clan who often directly sampled from them.
I point this out just to show that in many if not all of these examples there is a cultural underpinning to what exactly is being beatboxed. It was not just that black artists were trying to be entertaining. They were using their bodies to connect to their audience, once again acting out the call and response dynamic which is so vital to much of black music and African American rhetoric in general.