The Netherlands

Abstract

This article outlines the history of hip hop in the Netherlands from the early 1980s onward. After discussing Dutch hip hop culture’s early days – during which breaking was hip hop’s driving force in major cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and rap music from the Netherlands followed American trends and was strictly anglophone – it focuses especially on the emergence of and later developments in Nederhop (‘Netherhop’): Dutch-language rap music. In the 1990s, Dutch rap groups like Osdorp Posse and rappers like Extince were crucial in this regard, as their pursuit of authenticity eventually led them to rap in their native tongue, a practice which has since become the norm in the Dutch hip hop scene. The article touches on influential emcees from the country’s major urban areas (e.g. Brainpower), while also acknowledging the influence of Dutch artists from smaller cities on the outskirts of the Netherlands (e.g. Opgezwolle, Typhoon and Fresku). The article then proceeds to discuss how in the twenty-first century, artists like De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, Ronnie Flex and Broederliefde managed to reach the mainstream, pushing Nederhop to become the most popular genre of music in the Netherlands, improving the genre’s reception by critics and the mainstream media in the process. Moreover, the article identifies recent developments in hip hop culture in a broader sense, for instance when it comes to the Dutch hip hop media landscape and academic hip hop scholarship in the Netherlands, concluding that Dutch hip hop appears to have a bright future ahead.