IT'S been called the Black folks CNN, a music form and lifestyle that has informed, entertained and impacted virtually every aspect of African-American life and American culture. And as hip-hop continues to celebrate its 30-plus years, many are reflecting on its remarkable history, improbable rise and unpredictable future.

Often times celebrated, sometimes controversial, undeniably influential, there is no doubt that the $4 billion-a-year hip-hop industry is an artistic phenomenon the likes of which has never been seen. An attitude borne out of music, hip-hop has moved from the basements of the South Bronx to the suburbs of America, and to some of the world's farthest nooks and crannies.

Today, it is estimated that two out of every 10 records sold in America is hip-hop, with 80 percent of its customers being White. Poised to overtake R&B in annual sales, hip-hop is being celebrated in museums, studied at universities, honored at awards shows and imitated by teenagers as far away as Germany, Japan and Africa.

Surely Jamaican immigrant Kool Herc, generally considered to be the originator of hip-hop music, never envisioned what he was giving birth to when he took to the streets of New York City looking to spread a sound popular in his homeland. It was Herc--although early practitioners like Grand Master Flash, D.J. Hollywood and Afrika Bambaataa are also considered among the hip-hop pioneers--who is credited with being the first DJ to mix the same record back and forth, using the turntable as a musical instrument. He also took to the microphone using in-group references, and call-and-response techniques that became widely popular in New York City.

"Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa were all peers of one another and were all playing records in different parts of Harlem and the Bronx" says Nelson George, music critic and author of the newly revised book Hip Hop America. "Their way of hearing music and the records they played all defined what hip-hop was."