Planet Rock (song)

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Planet Rock is highly regarded as one of the most influential rap songs of all time, which influenced a entire generation of rappers. It also gave birth to electro funk and electro-hop, and even helped pave the way for modern dance music such as Techno, House and Trance, and helped jump-start the Electro movement in America; before "Planet Rock" hardly anybody popular musicians in America had touched upon electronic music.

Written by Afrika Bambaataa one of the godfathers of hip-hop along with his group Soulsonic Force and produced by Arthur Baker they took elements from electronic artists such as Gary Numan and Kraftwerk and funk artist George Clinton and blended the unearthly electronic sounds with hip-hop breakbeating to develop this song. Although a minor hit in the US and UK, it helped establish new music genres and changed the foundations of hip-hop and dance music forever.

The main melody of Planet Rock is in fact a copy of Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express, and another part of the song contains elements of another Kraftwerk song "Numbers" from the Computer World album, which many of the black people who followed hip-hop, along with many of the rising and established rappers, had been playing in their underground clubs.