The main features of Hip Hop culture are emceeing or rapping, DJing, grafitti or urban inspired art, breakdancing also known as b-boying, beatboxing, slang and an eccentric bling bling fashion. This article speaks about the most important hip hop elements which are considered to be the social and political activism, hip hop lifestyle, slang and double dutching, which consist in an urban inspired form of rope skipping.

The hip hop culture is a nonconformist and spontaneous one. MC is short for Master of Ceremonies. An MC plays a very important role as he is the person who entertains the crowd by making jokes between songs or by returning acid rhymes to its opponents. There are some big names in the history of hip hop such as MC Rakim, KRS or Big Daddy Kane.

Fans agreed that these people have a great gift in using words and rhymes and an endless vocabulary spiced with spontaneity.

Doug E. Fresh is considered to be the wonder kid of hip hop as he managed to popularize Beatboxing. Beatboxing is an important hip hop element, which consists in vocal percussion, the art of creating rhythms and beats using only the vocal cords. The name of this hip hop technique derives from the beatboxes, the first generation of drum machines.

In the 1980's beatboxing had an enormous success and hip hoppers such as Biz Markie or Darren Robinson were very popular. By the end of the '80s, beatboxing was left behind and ten years later, in the late '90s was informally launched all over again by Rahle of The Roots with his 'Make the Music 2000'.

The TV program 'Style Wars' from mid '80s and the 1984 'Subway Art' book were the first ways through which the large public was familiarized with the graffiti art. This urban inspired form of art was very well received by people and it shortly became popular all over the world. Nowadays graffiti art is well spread all over the globe, especially in Japan, Europe, Australia or South Africa, although in the beginning most local authorities disagreed with this artistic phenomenon. Even now, there are many places where it is forbidden to create graffiti on public property and it is considered a criminal offense.

Breakdancing also known as B-boying or B-girling and it is a complex style of dance with dynamic and difficult elements. Well known breakdancers at DJ Kool Herc's parties gave birth to the B-boy term. During these parties, dancers were keeping their best moves for the break part of the song. There are some well documented films about Breakdancing and reviewers and B-boy fans agree that 'The Freshest Kids' released in 2002 is by far the greatest one. Among these type of movies, 'Beat Street' and 'Style Wars' have also had some great reviews.

B-boying was born is South Bronx almost simultaneously with the other hip hop basic elements. During the '80s, it was very common and popular to see groups of young people with a cassette player, performing a B-boying show on the streets. Usually, there were two or more teams in the informal competition, doing their best, trying to impress their audience and win the dance combat.