Originally Posted by Janszoon

A smattering of funk and soul? I would say it evolved pretty much directly out out of funk and soul, that's hardly a smattering.

And let me just say for the record, my wife comes from a Jamaican family. Many of her aunts and uncles were raised in NYC in the earliest years of hip-hop and they all talk about the original hip-hop shows they went to see back in the day and the people they were into. Not a single one of the people they talk about are from the West Indies, they are all from the New york area. And these relatives are people born in Jamaica with lots of roots still to this day in Jamaica but when they talk about early hip-hop they are talking about NYC.

Likewise I think the influence of European electronic music on hip-hop is often overstated. It's true that Afrika Bambaataa samples Kraftwerk but there's not too much beyond that. If anything, the electronic music coming out Detroit and Chicago was a much bigger influence.