It was born in the break, all those decades ago — that moment when a song's vocals dropped, instruments quieted down and the beat took the stage.

It was then that hip-hop came into the world, taking the moment and reinventing it.

Something new, coming out of something familiar.

At the hands of the DJs playing the albums, that break moment became something more: a composition, repeated in an endless loop, back and forth between the turntables.

The MCs got in on it, speaking their own clever rhymes and wordplay over it. So did the dancers, the b-boys and b-girls who hit the floor to break-dance.

It took on its own visual style, with graffiti artists bringing it to the streets and subways of New York City. It didn’t stay there, of course.

A musical form, a culture, with reinvention as its very DNA would never, could never. Hip-hop spread, from the parties to the parks, through New York City’s boroughs and then the region, around the country and the world.

And at each step: change, adaptation, as new, different voices came in and made it their own, in sound, in lyric, in purpose, in style. Its foundations steeped in the Black communities where it first made itself known and also spreading out and expanding, like ripples in water, until there’s no corner of the world that hasn’t been touched by it. Not only being reinvented, but reinventing.

Art, culture, fashion, community, social justice, politics, sports, business: Hip-hop has impacted them all, transforming even as it has been transformed. In hip-hop, “when someone does it, then that’s how it’s done.

When someone does something different, then that’s a new way,” says Babatunde Akinboboye, a Nigerian-American opera singer and longtime hip-hop fan in Los Angeles, who creates content on social media using both musical styles. Hip-hop “connects to what is true. And what is true, lasts.”

Those looking for a hip-hop starting point have landed on one, turning this year into a 50th-birthday celebration.

August 11, 1973 was the date a young Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc around his Bronx stomping grounds, deejayed a back-to-school party for his younger sister in the community room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue.

Campbell, who was born and spent his early years in Jamaica before his family moved to the Bronx, was still a teen himself at that time, just 18 when he began extending the musical breaks of the records he was playing to create a different kind of dancing opportunity.

He'd started speaking over the beat, reminiscent of the “toasting” style heard in Jamaica. The style quickly gained popularity in New York City and its metro region.

Englewood, New Jersey youth joined in, crafting rhymes to match the beats. By 1979, they tried out as rappers for Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records. The Sugarhill Gang released "Rapper's Delight," a hit that reached number 36 on Billboard's Top 100 and even topped charts in various European countries.

“Now what you hear is not a test: I’m rappin’ to the beat/And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet,” Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright said in one of the song’s stanzas. Wright says he had no doubt the song — and, by extension, hip-hop — was “going to be big.

“I knew it was going to blow up and play all over the world because it was a new genre of music,” he says.

“You had classical jazz, bebop, rock, pop, and here comes a new form of music that didn’t exist.” And it was one based in self-expression, says Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien.

“If you couldn’t sing or play an instrument, you could recite poetry and speak your mind. And so, it became accessible to every man.”

Female voices also made their mark in the hip-hop scene, with figures like 14-year-old Roxanne Shante from Queens, NYC, gaining recognition in 1984 as one of the earliest female MCs.

She participated in The Roxanne Wars, a pioneering example of rappers engaging in song battles with each other using their tracks.

“When I look at my female rappers of today, I see hope and inspiration,” Shante says.

“When you look at some of your female rappers today and you see the businesses that they own and the barriers that they were able to break it down, it’s amazing to me and it’s an honour for me to even be a part of that from the beginning.”

Numerous women, including Queen Latifah, Lil' Kim, Nicki Minaj, and Megan Thee Stallion, have followed, sharing their perspectives on women in hip-hop and society.

This is just a glimpse, with many international women rappers also contributing to the scene.

They're women like Tkay Maidza, born in Zimbabwe and raised in Australia, a songwriter and rapper in the early part of her career. She's thrilled with the diverse female company she's keeping in hip-hop, and with the variety of subjects they're talking about.

“There’s so many different pockets ... so many ways to exist,” she says. “It’s not about what other people have done, you can always recreate the blueprint,” she adds. The emphasis on self-expression has also meant that over the years, hip-hop has been used as a medium for just about everything.

Express freely – party, wealth, attraction – all in verses. Transform New York's style into diverse vibes – West Coast, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, even worldwide from Egypt to Nigeria – it's your canvas, it's hip-hop. (Now whether anyone listening thought it was any good? That was a different story.)

Mainstream America hasn't always been ready for it. The sexually explicit content from Miami's 2 Live Crew made their 1989 album “As Nasty As They Want To Be” the subject of a legal battle over obscenity and freedom of expression; a later album, “Banned in the USA,” became the first to get an official record industry label about explicit content.

Originating in Black communities, hip-hop served as a platform to address injustice. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's 1982 track "The Message" highlighted the impact of urban poverty, emphasizing the struggle to endure in challenging environments.

Other figures like Common and Kendrick Lamar have also turned to a conscious lyricism in their hip-hop, with perhaps none better known than Public Enemy, whose “Fight the Power” became an anthem when it was created for filmmaker Spike Lee's 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing," which chronicled racial tension in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. Some in hip-hop pulled no punches, using the art form and the culture as a no-holds-barred way of showcasing the troubles of their lives.

Often those messages have been met with fear or disdain in the mainstream. When N.W.A. came “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988 with loud, brash tales of police abuse and gang life, radio stations recoiled. Hip-hop, particularly from Black artists, has had a conflicted connection with law enforcement, marked by mutual distrust.

Valid reasons exist, as certain hip-hop genres involved real associations with criminals, leading to violence and tragic deaths like Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. However, societal biases have also led to stereotypes linking hip-hop to criminality amid systemic suspicion towards Black individuals.

Yes, it's an American creation. And yes, it's still heavily influenced by what’s happening in America. But hip-hop has found homes all over the planet, turned to by people in every community under the sun to express what matters to them. The impact hasn’t just been in one direction.

Hip-hop hasn't just been changed; it has made change. It has gone into other spaces and made them different. It strutted through the fashion world as it brought its own sensibility to streetwear. It has revitalised companies; just ask Timberland what sales were like before its work boots became de rigueur hip-hop wear.

Or look at perhaps the perfect example: “Hamilton,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical about a distant white historical figure that came to life in the rhythms of its hip-hop soundtrack, bringing a different energy and audience to the theatre world.

Usha Jey, a 26-year-old choreographer of Tamil heritage born in France, skillfully blended freestyle hip-hop with the traditional South Asian Bharatnatyam dance.

Through social media videos, she showcased their unique interaction, drawing on her hip-hop training to confidently innovate.

Hip-hop culture “pushes you to be you,” Jey said. “I feel like in the pursuit of finding yourself, hip-hop helps me because that culture says, you’ve got to be you.”

Hip-hop is, simply, “a magical art form,” says Nile Rodgers, legendary musician, composer and record producer.

He would know. It was his song “Good Times,” with the band Chic, that was recreated to form the basis for “Rapper's Delight” all those years ago.

“The impact that it’s had on the world, it really can’t be quantified,” Rodgers says.

“You can find someone in a village that you’ve never been to, a country that you’ve never been to, and suddenly you hear its own local hip-hop. And you don’t even know who these people are, but they’ve adopted it and have made it their own.”