How Well Do You Really Know Hip-Hop?

Though variants of the story exist, it is generally accepted that Grand Wizard Theodore was playing records at a high volume in his bedroom. Fed up with the noise his mother entered and ordered him to turn the music down. At this point, he looked away from the turntable to face her. While his mother lectured him he continued slowly moving the record back and forth, which produced a sound all its own. When she left the room he was intrigued by the sound the vinyl made when manipulated in this fashion. After months of experimentation, he introduced this technique at a party and thus scratching was born. Many forms of popular music have since used the technique.

Tupac's birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks, but in 1972, he was renamed after the last Incan emperor Tupac Amaru II.

'Juice' featured Tupac Shakur as Roland Bishop in the rapper's debut starring performance.

DJ Kool Herc's first professional DJ job was at the Twilight Zone in 1973.  He wanted to get into another place called the Hevalo, but wasn’t allowed…yet. As his fame rised and peaked, in 1975, the Hevalo club finally hired him to perform there.

Often credited as Canada's "hip-hop ambassador", Kardinal Offishall is regarded as one of the country's best hip-hop producers and is best known for his distinctive reggae and dancehall-influenced style of hip hop.

No one wants to be that guy who makes a few hit records, blows all his money, and then become a hip-hop punchline. But that's basically what happened to MC Hammer. So when Jay-Z rapped "I lost 30 mil, so I spent another 30/Cause unlike Hammer, 30 million can't hurt me," on Kanye West's "So Appalled," Hammer got pissed. So pissed, in fact, that he decided to release the hilariously awful diss track, "Better Run Run" in November 2010.

Ol' Dirty Bastard collapsed at approximately 4:35 pm (EST) on November 13, 2004 (two days before his 36th birthday) at RZA's recording studio (36 Chambers Records LLC on West 34th Street in New York City). His funeral was held at Brooklyn's Christian Cultural Center and drew a crowd of thousands.

Pharrell Williams collaborated with Guy's Teddy Riley on the track.

Released in 1991, Main Source's "Live at the BBQ" also featured Large Professor, Joe Fatal and Akinyele.

In the late 1970s, Bambaataa formed what became known as the Universal Zulu Nation, a group of socially and politically aware rappers, B-boys, graffiti artists and other people involved in hip hop culture.

"Yo! MTV Raps" is a two-hour American television music video program, which ran from August 1988 to August 1995. The program (created by Ted Demme and Peter Dougherty) was the first hip hop music show.

Originally known simply as the Organization, it arose in the 1970s as the reformed New York City gang the Black Spades, a street gang from South Bronx. While the Black Spades were the base of the organization, other reformed gangs contributed additional members, notably the Savage Nomads, Seven Immortals, and Savage Skulls, among others. Members began to organize cultural events for youths, combining local dance and music movements into what would become known as the various elements of hip hop culture.

While it was not the first single to feature rapping, "Rapper's Delight" is generally considered to be the song that introduced hip hop music to audiences in the United States and around the world.

The fourth founding member was P-Body.

The Score became one of the biggest hits of 1996 and one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time. The Fugees first gained attention for their cover versions of old favorites, with the group's reinterpretations of "No Woman No Cry" by Bob Marley & the Wailers and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" (first recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1971, remade by Roberta Flack in 1973), the latter being their biggest hit.

MC Lyte became the first female solo rapper ever nominated for a Grammy after "Ruffneck" scored a Best Rap Single nod in 1993.

The genre evolved from hardcore hip hop into a distinct form, pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A.