Entry · catalog no. 1217
beatbox
/ /ˈbiːt bɑks/ /BEET-bocks
noun, verb · New York City — principally Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
Vocal percussion: kick, snare, hi-hat and bassline produced with lips, tongue, throat and breath, usually amplified by cupping a hand around a microphone. A human beatbox was originally the person, not the practice, and the phrase existed to distinguish him from the drum machine he was replacing. The skill was born of scarcity as much as of art, since a crew without equipment still needed a beat.
“He would beatbox the whole set because nobody in the crew owned a drum machine.”
2.
To perform that vocal percussion, whether behind a rapper, in a cypher, or as a solo turn.
“Beatbox something for me and I will rhyme over it.”
Origin & Attribution
The words beat box first named the machine: Roland's drum machines of the 1970s and the TR-808 of 1980 were called beat boxes. Young Black men in New York City made the machine unnecessary, and the phrase human beatbox was coined to mark the difference. Darren Robinson of Brooklyn, known as Buffy, recorded Human Beat Box with the Fat Boys on Sutra Records in 1984; Doug E. Fresh of Harlem, billed as the original human beatbox, appeared in Beat Street the same year and put the style on the charts with The Show in 1985. Beatboxing is routinely presented as a novelty act or an internet talent-show trick. It is a Black New York invention of the early 1980s, made by specific named people, and it should be dated and credited accordingly.
1984
Fat Boys release Human Beat Box on Sutra Records; Doug E. Fresh appears in Beat Street
1985
The Show, with Doug E. Fresh beatboxing, becomes a hit and carries the style to a mass audience
2002
Breath Control documents the form's history on film
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
New York City — principally Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx · 1980s
Spoken by
Black New Yorkers in early hip-hop; now a worldwide practice
$BEATBOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady42 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
74/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1984
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Fat Boys, Human Beat Box, from Fat Boys, produced by Kurtis Blow, Sutra Records, 29 May 1984
recording · audio
■
Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, The Show b/w La Di Da Di, Reality Records, 13 August 1985
recording · audio
■
Beat Street, directed by Stan Lathan, Orion Pictures, 8 June 1984
film · video
■
+ Cite a sourceBreath Control: The History of the Human Beat Box, directed by Joey Garfield, 2002
film · video
See also