Hip hop is more than just a type of music genre; it is a culture that people live by. Hip hop has many elements such as rap and b-boying. There are many factors that helped make hip hop a worldwide phenomenon and play a role in its foundation. I will be discussing how these factors played a role in bringing hip hop up and making it successful. The main factors that influenced hip hop is the socio-political forces, worldview, and past Afro-American music. Afro-American music has many elements that have influenced hip hop. One element is jazz. There are two. There are two types of jazz, classical jazz and jazz-ragtime. Classical jazz came from New Orleans and is usually played with a cornet, clarinet, trombone, bass, guitar, and piano or drums. Jazz ragtime is improvisation and is not planned ahead. Spanish and Latin America have influences on jazz. There are Spanish rhythms within jazz. Another genre of jazz is jazz-funk. Which incorporates funk music but with jazz rhythms and instruments. Funk was also a huge influence on hip hop. Funk was popular for its drum beats and funky rhythms. Hip hop mainly adopted the drum beats that everyone knows and loves. One important social factor is the conditions that blacks had to live in which helped influence rap. An expressway was being built right through the Bronx where most poor black and Puerto Rican families lived. This forced them to have to move to different locations that were in fact even worse. When they moved they were preyed on by the white youth. They would beat them up and run street battles (Chang 12). When the expressway was being built it forced property owners to sell to slumlords at low prices (Keyes 228). The slumlords did not keep the buildings in good condition in fact they did not care much for the condition of the buildings. When blacks were living in the buildings they had to deal with the horrible rodent infested conditions. Many slumlords even tried to hire people to destroy the buildings in hopes of receiving insurance payoffs. As crime escalated and neighborhoods became more dangerous th