Breakdancing is considered as one of the significant elements that make up hip hop culture. Also known as breaking, b-boying, or b-girling, this street dance was developed in the 1970s among the African-American and Hispanic youths of South Bronx, New York. It is widely believed that breakdancing began as a means of rival street gangs to resolve differences or to set the location for rumbles. Others say it was an offshoot of or was heavily influenced by capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance.

Breakdancing was brought into the mainstream through the proliferation of various dance groups, most notably Rock Steady Crew. Soul and funk legend James Brown also popularized the dance style with his high-energy performances. In the 1980s, breakdancing faded from pop culture and went back to being an underground phenomenon. It made a comeback in the 1990s and since then has become a fixture of pop culture.

There are no set routines or structures in breakdancing. Rather, dancers employ basic moves while embellishing them with more complex styles and power moves. Dancers could start off with the toprock, a relatively simple dance made up of any variation of steps performed while standing up. This serves as a warm-up in preparation for further acrobatic moves. The downrock, in contrast, is performed with the hands and feet on the floor. A common downrock move is the 6-step, which looks like walking in a circle while one hand touches the ground.

By 1946, the swing era was declining rapidly, and by the mid 1950s, America's youth had swapped swing for rock 'n' roll altogether. After World War 2, however, jazz continued to thrive, but it was about to undergo major changes. In the late '40s, a new style of jazz called bebop gave birth to many of jazz's most celebrated drummers, namely Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, and Roy Haynes. The fathers of modern jazz drumming, these players ushered in a whole new approach to playing the drum set. For example, they were among the first to develop intricate left-hand and bass drum comping techniques.

As sub styles of jazz emerged, players such as Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Motian, and many others added their own distinctive stamp to the music, and thus contributed to jazz's rapid percussive advances.

Contemporary jazz, beginning with bebop, brought about radical changes in the ways drummers interacted with a band. Bop drummers were the first to reject the idea that the drums should be used for timekeeping purposes only or for flashy, crowd-rousing cadenza solos. Also, bebop artists found themselves playing small, listening clubs, not large crowded ballrooms. Since jazz was becoming more intimate, drummers began experimenting more with subtle tone colors (especially on cymbals) and knotty rhythmic counterpoint.

Further, rudimental solos became more and more popular as the desire to create melodic lines, like that of a horn, became more prevalent. Increasingly drummers used space more in their playing, and they began to incorporate rhythmic phrases that were angular and disjointed. They created patterns that didn't necessarily end on downbeats or even upbeats. They left dangling sixteenth notes and other unresolved flourishes of notes. Also, they began using poly-metrics to coast over bar lines. Poly-metrics is the superimposing of two or more time signatures on top of one another. The rhythms that result are called polyrhythms. Drummers such as Tony Williams (Miles Davis), Elvin Jones (John Coltrane), and others also began using a great deal of metric modulation, which in basic terms is the morphing of one time signature into another. In the 1960s, jazz became a vehicle for freewheeling, unbridled expression.