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.