In the mid 1980s, the hip hop music was moving towards to the mainstream of the music business and entertainment. One of the biggest changes was the production of hip hop music. For example, the new hip hop music introduced song forms such as verses, hooks, and chorus, and consisted more musical features to create more dynamics in hip hop music. The major change in production was using “sampling” and increasing the use of the drum machine to create beats (Burr). These beats were then used as the basis for rap, which Tricia Rose defined it as “a technologically sophisticated and complex urban sound” (Rose 95). The rap became a center of the hip hop production during the mid-1980s. According to Rose, rap uses “collage, intertextuality, boasting, toasting, and signifying” for lyrical styles and organizations (Rose 64). Many hip hop artists use signifying to constitute lyrical style. Signifying means taking someone else’s words and turning them around. There are several features that constitute signifying: indirection, metaphor, irony, rhythmic, teachy, and punning. Thus, signifying enriches the lyrics to create a polished rap music. Secondly, the organization of rap is the rhythm, which is “the most perceptible and the least material thing” (Rose 64). In almost all hip hop music, the rhythms are mostly created by heavy bass or drum beats. By manipulating these beats, rappers can produce idiosyncratic rhythms and make their rap songs original. The rap’s lyrical styles and distinctive yet organized rhythms are the central qualities in formulating rap music.
One of the powerful hip hop artists that implements and maneuvers the primary qualities in formulating rap music is RUN DMC. I will use one of their famous pieces, “Sucker MC’s,” a...
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... for my paper because of distinctive, systematic composition of the song. The group members collaborated to create different styles and sounds of hip hop music without using samplings. The lyrics not only convey meaningful messages by using metaphors, but also flow smoothly by using rhymes. Also, by using call and response, RUN DMC made the song livelier and was able to easily excite the crowds. The unique beats, rhythms, and sounds were perfectly arranged by the members to bring originality to the music. Even though RUN DMC had a long hiatus, the group got back together and released new records. Sadly, the group called it quits when Jam Master Jay was murdered in his recording studio. Even though the remaining two members retired after Jay’s death, RUN DMC is still remembered as the legendary rap group that was responsible for popularizing rap and hip hop music.
In Adam Bradley’s “Rap poetry 101” he shows us how rap is more than just songs being sung, it is poetry; it is something that has an empowering ability to make the familiar unfamiliar.In this chapter Bradley creates a new viewpoint too rap. Bradley shows us how rap and poetry has become a very similar piece of art that should be further appreciated. In the chapter poetry 101 Bradley describes how rap is a form of public art, and how rappers have become our greatest public poets. The importance of rap as poetry is shown throughout Bradley's book as well as the evidence behind the reasons rap is poetry.
If there was one defining characteristic to hip hop in 1997, it was the jiggy factor- an aesthetic of unapologetic flash, fashion and glamour that ruled everything around us and made hip hop life nice and organized. Of course, for each movement there always exists a counter-movement; for each yin there is a yang; and for each designer-label clad champagne sipper, there must be an uncompromised figure lurking in the shadows, ready and willing to reclaim rap from the penthouse to the pavement. Embracing this return to the anarchy, enraged and raw, Def Jam Records presents 1998 as the Year of Pandemonium. The human embodiment of such exhilarating and unadulterated chaos exists in none other than Ruff Ryders/Def Jam's very latest lyrical sensation, DMX. "I love to write rhymes," says the Yonkers-born MC. "I love to express what real niggas feel, what street niggas feel. They need to be heard. They need to know there is a voice that speaks for them, and I am that voice." Within the tumultuous annals of hip hop's dog-eat-dog history, second chance opportunities are few and far between. However, every now and then the experienced and distinguished bark of a particularly cagey canine re-emerges from rap's chaotic kennels, representing the triumph and perseverance inherent in true greatness.
Hip-Hop: from the live performances to the lyrics this here brought up many thoughts in my head. I attended a concert on April 2016 and several other old school concerts at the Queen Mary, front row VIP area which included; Debbie deb, Cover girls, Vanilla ice and so on. Going to an old school/hip-hop concert the songs and experiences as a whole are different with every time. New school hip-hop is narrative and with this you can receive the same lyrical experience every time, as for the concert the experience is the same as the next. I am not saying that an old school concert isn’t different in its own way but I do think their not so far apart performance wise. Example going to a “Drake” concert is more narrative compared to an old school
George covers much familiar ground: how B-beats became hip hop; how technology changed popular music, which helped to create new technologies; how professional basketball was influenced by hip hop styles; how gangsta rap emerged out of the crack epidemic of the 1980s; how many elements of hip hop culture managed to celebrate, and/or condemn black-on-black violence; how that black-on-black violence was somewhat encouraged by white people scheming on black males to show their foolishness, which often created a huge mess; and finally, how hip hop used and continues to use its art to express black frustration and ambition to blacks while, at the same time, refering that frustration and ambition to millions of whites.
One of the most influential groups to date who helped paved the way for the second coming generation of rap music in the 80’s was RUN-D.M.C. The group consisted of 3 members: Jay Mizell, also known as “Jam Master Jay”, Darryl McDaniels, and Joseph Simmons. From the years 1981 all the way through 2002, they were changing the game of rap and bringing in new ideas into the field. Rather than switching from one flow to the next on their verses, they finished each other's lines, something no other big group had done before. They were the first hip-hop artists to create entire albums, not just some mixes with singles and some nonsense. It was this same trio who also “introduced hats, gold chains, and untied sneakers” (“Rolling Stone”, para. 1, 2001)
...olka, Petr Bc., and Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel. “Black or White: Commercial Rap Music and Authenticity.” Masaryk University Faculty of Arts, Department of
Light, Alan. "About a Salary or Reality? – Rap’s Recurrent Conflict." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 137-146. Print.
Since hip-hop has expanded from the undergrounds in Bronx in the 70’s it has grew into a popular accepted music genre. Consequently, as it progressed from the golden age it gradually grew away from its original roots. If one were to evaluate the change of lyrics in hip-hop, they would see a difference between early hip-hop and today’s hip-hop. The current state of hip-hop is in a stage where things like hey young world are outdated. Instead of broadcasting out a positive message, hip-hop sends out a message of sex, drug, and violence. The early musicians who helped solidify hip-hop, by producing music that told stories on subjects of race, respect, or even music that had a positive message.
Nowadays if you ask someone to define the hip-hop genre, they probably would say that it’s an African American artist reciting lyrics that rhyme to the beat of music. However, it’s a form of expression where the artist’s lyrics connect to self-image and a meaningful bond to their community. The purpose of my paper will outline the true reality of hip-hop through urban black communities, the act of spreading positivity, and the techniques of hip-hop sounding.
Rap started in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx area of New York City. The birth of rap is, in many ways, like the birth of rock and roll. Both originated in the African American community and both were first recorded by small, independent record labels and marketed towards, mostly to a black audience. And in both cases, the new style soon attracted white musicians that began performing it. For rock and roll it was a white American from Mississippi, Elvis Presley. For rap it was a young white group from New York, the Beastie Boys. Their release “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” (1986) was one of the first two rap records to reach the Billboard top-ten. Another early rap song to reach the top ten, “Walk This Way” (1986), was a collaboration of Run-DMC and Aerosmith. Soon after 1986, the use of samples was influenced in the music of both black and white performers, changing past thoughts of what make up a “valid” song.
Hip hop has multiple branches of style and is a culture of these. This essay will examine Hip Hop from the point of view of the following three popular music scholars, Johnson, Jeffries and Smitherman. It will delve deeper into their understanding of what hip hop is and its relation to the different people that identify with its message and contents. It will also identify the history of Hip hop and its transition into popular music. In particular this essay will focus on what hip hop represents in the black community and how it can be used as a social movement against inequalities faced by them. This will then open up the discussion for the how this has influenced society, and the impact it has had in terms of race issues which hip hop itself often represents through music.
From its conception in the 1970's and throughout the 1980's, hip hop was a self-contained entity within the community that created it. This means that all the parameters set for the expression came from within the community and that it was meant for consumption by the community. Today, the audience is from outside of the community and doesn’t share the same experiences that drive the music. An artists’ success hinges on pleasing consumers, not the community. In today's world, it isn’t about music that rings true for those who share the artists' experiences, but instead, music that provides a dramatic illusion for those who will never share the experiences conveyed. This has radically changed the creative process of artists and the diversity of available music. Most notably, it has called in to question the future of hip hop.
In recent discussion of hip hop culture, a controversial issue has been whether if hip hop makes people believe that money is everything you need to get respect and power. Some argue that you need to build respect and by building respect you become powerful and that will lead you to money. On the other hand, however, others argue that hip hop life helped them a lot by writing the lyrics and saying the things that they can’t do or say. One of this view’s main proponents, “money brings power, ” according to this view, people who have more money will get more power and then they usually use this power to do the most disturbing activities, such as crime. In sum, then, the issue is whether having too much power is good or it’s just a life destroyer.
Today 's rap music reflects its origin in the hip-hop culture of young, urban, working-class African-Americans, its roots in the African oral tradition, its function as the voice of an otherwise underrepresented group, and, as its popularity has grown,
There is a direct relationship between what is portrayed in music and the effect it has on its audience. Generally speaking, in modern music, woman have been placed in a certain mold. The molds portrayed in music have caused women to have negative self-perception. Through the lyrics presented in the songs and the images portrayed in the music videos, certain hip-hop songs may cause women to view themselves in the same light portrayed in the songs. The tone, lyrics, and images presented in the songs effect the intended audiences immensely. Hip hop music that objectifies black women negatively affects their self-perception because they view themselves as commodities.