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Imagine you create a culture and you call it, “my culture”.
For years, people write your culture as, “my culture” (respect, you named it!)
Then one day, a news publication makes a style guide decision to ADD a hyphen to your culture: “my-culture”
That’s what happened to hip hop.
For years, people write your culture as, “my culture” (respect, you named it!)
Then one day, a news publication makes a style guide decision to ADD a hyphen to your culture: “my-culture”
That’s what happened to hip hop.
“Hip hop” was first written with NO hyphen. Walls with graffiti, flyers, on trains, rhyme lyrics, poems, etc. And “hip hop” first appeared in print with NO hyphen in Jan. 1981 (Michael Holman, East Village Eye), and 1982 (Steven Hager, Village Voice).
The Source Magazine’s first issue was 1988. At that time, they were invested in the word “rap”— often using the phrase “rap world.”
In 1990, they switched to using “hip hop”, more precisely, “hip-hop” WITH a hyphen? But why? Jonathan Shecter ( @SheckyGreen), then editor-in-chief of The Source, might be able to tell us why. Were they aware that “hip hop” (no hyphen) was in use? Did they adopt NYT’s style guide?
Today, most magazine and news publications *default to hip-hop (with a hyphen). However, the *house style* of many other publications (academic journals especially) and publishing houses use “hip hop” (no hyphen) exclusively. And lots of music writers write it both ways.
I doubt we’ll ever shift to a *default “hip hop” (no hyphen). (This isn’t *quite like capitalizing the “b” in Black people, so there’s less vested interest.) “hip hop” & “hip-hop” are both acceptable spellings. And which one you use choose usually comes down to habit 
But if you’re unsure, one way I look at this is that, “hip hop” (no hyphen) is more in-line with the roots of hip hop, as this is how it was written for at least a decade after 1973. And it was how “hip hop” first appeared in print, in news and the first book on hip hop.
On the other hand, “hip-hop” (with hyphen) appears to defer to a style guide decision that was made ça. *1990, first by The New York Times (I may be off a year), then by The Source Magazine.
Either way, this is an interesting topic, and I’d love to hear thoughts.
Either way, this is an interesting topic, and I’d love to hear thoughts.
