Mathematics tracks the hip-hop 'revolution'

Paris

OF all the music styles to emerge in the last 50 years, none took the world by storm quite like hip-hop, said researchers on Wednesday who tracked pop's evolution with cold, hard stats.

More than disco, funk or heavy metal, hip-hop and its spin-off rap appear "to be the single most important event that has shaped the musical structure of the American charts in the period that we studied", said their report.

Born as a form of expression for disenfranchised youth in New York City's borough the Bronx, the arrival of hip-hop creates a large spike on a series of graphics …