Digging in the Crates: Tracing the DNA of Modern Music

If you want to understand modern music, one of the best places to begin isn't with the Blues or Jazz—it's with Hip-Hop. Not because Hip-Hop came first — but because Hip-Hop taught generations of listeners how to dig backwards.

Hip-Hop is unique because, unlike many genres that evolved simply by adding new sounds, it grew by rediscovering old ones. Through sampling, scratching and breakbeat culture, Hip-Hop producers became musical historians, breathing new life into forgotten records and introducing entire generations to the artists whose work had laid the foundations decades earlier.

The story begins in the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s.

01 — THE BIRTH OF HIP-HOP

On 11 August 1973, Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc hosted a back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. While playing Funk records, Herc noticed dancers responded most enthusiastically to the instrumental "break" sections—those moments where the vocals stopped and only the drums and rhythm remained. By using two copies of the same record on separate turntables, he extended these breaks, creating what became known as the Merry-Go-Round technique.

Those dancers became known as B-Boys and B-Girls, while the break itself became one of the defining elements of Hip-Hop.

Soon other DJs expanded on Herc's innovation.

Grandmaster Flash refined the turntable techniques with precision cueing, punch phrasing and seamless beat juggling, transforming the DJ into a true performer. Meanwhile Grand Wizzard Theodore, Flash's protégé, accidentally invented scratching after cueing up the start of a record while the fader was still open. What began as an accident became one of Hip-Hop's defining sounds.

Alongside the DJs came the MCs.

Artists such as Grandmaster Caz, Melle Mel, Busy Bee Starski, and later Kurtis Blow transformed crowd hype into lyrical performance, laying the foundations for modern rap. By the end of the 1970s, records like Rapper's Delight by The Sugarhill Gang (1979) had taken Hip-Hop from New York block parties to international audiences.

02 — SAMPLING CHANGED EVERYTHING

During Hip-Hop's first decade, DJs relied almost entirely on playing existing records live. That changed dramatically during the mid-to-late 1980s with affordable digital samplers like the E-mu SP-1200 and the Akai MPC60.

Rather than simply extending drum breaks, producers could now isolate the basslines, horn stabs and drum breaks from different records, chop them up and layer them together into entirely new compositions.

Sampling became an art form.

Few producers demonstrated this better than Eric B., whose work with Rakim on their debut album Paid in Full, combined James Brown breaks, Jazz hooks and Funk grooves beneath Rakim's revolutionary lyrical style.

At the same time, Prince Paul transformed sampling into musical collage on De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, stitching together untold amounts of Soul, Pop, Funk, Disco and children's records into something completely original.

A Tribe Called Quest, largely produced by Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, dug even deeper into Jazz and Jazz-Funk. Albums like People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders introduced listeners to artists including Ronnie Foster, Weldon Irvine, Roy Ayers and The Meters through beautifully crafted samples.

The list of important Hip-Hop contributors during this period goes on, and for many listeners, these records became gateways.

Teenagers searching for the original version of a sampled bassline often found themselves discovering entire catalogues of Soul, Jazz and Funk records. Hip-Hop didn't simply borrow from history—it encouraged people to explore it.

03 — THE ART OF DIGGING

As Hip-Hop matured, producers developed an almost archaeological approach to music.

Record stores became treasure hunts.

Producers searched through thousands of records looking for obscure drum breaks, forgotten basslines and overlooked melodies that could be transformed into something new. This practice became known simply as digging in the crates. In more recent years, this practice has been perfectly refined and delivered by The People Under The Stairs, whose roots, grounded in the crate digging culture of Hip-Hop’s golden age, gave authenticity through their passion for music. 

The most sought-after records often came from genres that had flourished decades earlier—particularly Jazz-Funk, Funk, Soul and Disco.

These genres became the raw materials from which modern Hip-Hop was built.

04 — DISCO: BEYOND THE DANCEFLOOR

Although Disco experienced a public backlash at the end of the 1970s, DJs never abandoned it.

Its extended arrangements, isolated percussion sections and sophisticated production made Disco records ideal for mixing and sampling.

Artists including Chic, Dynasty, Sister Sledge, Peter Brown, The Whispers and T-Connection produced records whose basslines, strings and grooves continue to appear throughout Hip-Hop and dance music.

Nile Rodgers' guitar work with Chic remains among some of the most sampled and replayed sounds in modern music.

05 — JAZZ-FUNK: A PRODUCER'S PARADISE

By the early 1970s, Jazz musicians had begun embracing electric instruments, Funk rhythms and studio experimentation.

Artists such as Herbie Hancock, Roy Ayers, Bob James, Donald Byrd, Grover Washington Jr. and Lonnie Liston Smith created records full of rich Fender Rhodes keyboards, deep bass grooves, layered percussion and atmospheric synthesizers.

Albums like Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters, Roy Ayers' Everybody Loves the Sunshine, Bob James' One and Two, and Donald Byrd's Places and Spaces became some of the most sampled recordings in Hip-Hop history.

Labels including Blue Note Records, CTI Records, Kudu and Fantasy Records unknowingly supplied future generations of producers with an endless library of musical ideas.

06 — FUNK: RHYTHM ABOVE EVERYTHING

Many of Hip-Hop's most recognisable drum breaks originated in Funk.

No artist influenced Hip-Hop more than James Brown.

Songs such as Funky Drummer, Give It Up or Turnit a Loose and The Payback became essential tools for DJs because of legendary drummer Clyde Stubblefield's powerful, syncopated grooves.

Alongside Brown, we discovered hundreds of artists including Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly Stone, The Meters, Bob James and Earth, Wind & Fire who created grooves that producers would sample thousands of times.

Funk shifted the focus away from melody and placed rhythm at the centre of popular music—a philosophy Hip-Hop inherited directly.

07 — SOUL: EMOTION MEETS GROOVE

As producers dug further back, they discovered Soul.

Labels like Motown, Stax and Atlantic spent the 1960s producing timeless recordings from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Otis Redding, The Isley Brothers and The Temptations.

Soul offered memorable vocal hooks, lush string arrangements and expressive musicianship that translated seamlessly into Hip-Hop sampling.

In some cases producers sampled only a single chord. Other times they transformed an entire chorus into something completely new.

08 — RHYTHM & BLUES : BUILDING THE BLUEPRINT

Before Soul we had Rhythm & Blues.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, artists including Richard Berry, Ruth Brown, Percy Mayfield and Louis Jordan blended Blues, Gospel and Jazz into an energetic new style that laid the groundwork for both Soul and Rock & Roll.

Atlantic Records, Chess Records, Speciality Records and King & Federal Records helped establish R&B as one of America's defining musical forms.

09 — JAZZ: THE LANGUAGE OF IMPROVISATION

Many Hip-Hop producers either started with Jazz, or eventually found themselves collecting Jazz records.

Jazz's sophisticated harmony, live instrumentation and improvisation provided endless inspiration for producers searching for unique textures.

Artists such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, John Coltrane and Tom Scott offered rhythms and harmonies that brought a new musical depth to Hip-Hop during the 1990s.

The relationship eventually came full circle as Jazz musicians began performing Hip-Hop-inspired compositions themselves.

10 — BLUES: WHERE THE JOURNEY BEGAN

At the very beginning of this musical family tree lies the Blues.

Emerging in the Mississippi Delta during the late nineteenth century, Blues transformed African musical traditions, spirituals and work songs into a deeply expressive art form built around storytelling and emotional honesty.

Artists including Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Bessie Smith, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker created the musical vocabulary that influenced every genre that followed.

Without the Blues there would be no Jazz.

Without Jazz there would be no R&B.

Without R&B there would be no Soul.

Without Soul there would be no Funk.

Without Funk there would be no Disco.

Without those records spinning on turntables in the Bronx, there would be no Hip-Hop.

Conclusion

Hip-Hop did more than create a new genre, it created a culture of musical discovery.

Every sampled drum break, bassline or vocal hook acted as a signpost pointing backwards through history. Producers became archivists, collectors became historians and listeners became explorers, uncovering forgotten masterpieces one record at a time.

In many ways, the story of modern music is not a straight line but a circle. The innovations of Blues musicians inspired Jazz; Jazz shaped R&B; R&B gave birth to Soul; Soul evolved into Funk, Funk to Jazz-Funk & Disco; Then following the desire for something new as disco was fizzling out, came the birth of Hip-Hop and decades later Hip-Hop reached back, sampled those recordings and introduced them to an entirely new audience.

Today, whether listening to Hip-Hop, electronic music, pop or contemporary R&B, echoes of those original Blues and Jazz pioneers can still be heard. Every generation adds something new, but it does so by building upon the creativity of those who came before, proving that great music never truly disappears; it simply finds a new rhythm.