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Recommended: Rap Music History
The Introduction
Hip hop as a ding an sich is marked by some confusion. Consider the name; is it "hip hop," "hip-hop" or "hiphop"? You will see all three used in titles in this bibliography. Hip hop is, at the same time, a cultural phenomenon that developed in the late 70's in the projects in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and a musical style from that phenomenon. Nevertheless, hip hop has become a pervasive element of popular culture, as witnessed by this bibliography. There are hip hop exercise videos, children's books as well as books, magazines, magazine articles and theses about it.
Before we get to the bibliography, a brief hip hop history is in order. Hip hop began in the mid- to late 70's, but its roots are much older (indeed, hip hop's use of music from other genres is reflected in Renaissance parody masses). According to one source, the roots of this phenomenon are in Jamaica in the 40's. By the 60's, it was common to find "sounds", or a truck fitted with sound equipment parked at a street corner, playing American rhythm & blues records for the people in the neighborhood. Some of these DJs included Coxson Dodd, Prince Buster, and Duke Reid. By the 1970's this phenomenon was to be found in the US, particularly in the Farragut Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Some of these early DJs were Maboya, Plummer and Kool DJ D, who played mostly disco music. Another of these early figures, Kool Herc, emigrated to the States from Jamaica and settled in the Bronx with his sound system he called "the Herculords." In contrast to some of the other figures, Kool Herc focused on rhythm & blues and funk records. Another of Kool Herc's innovations was to play only the "break," or the musical material between the verses of a song, repeating that break again and again. He did this using two turntables mounted with the same record. This came to be called "break-beat deejaying." People began to perform "strange, acrobatic twisting dance routines" to these episodes that came to be called "break dances."2
Kool Herc eventually hired someone to "MC" these parties. This person would talk to the crowd between the songs to keep the party going. This was the beginning of "rapping." DJ Hollywood, one of the early MC's at Kool Herc's parties would use rhyming verses in his rap...
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..., ed. Drumvoices. University of Illinois, Edwardsville, Illinois, 2004. Contains "The Hip Hop Nation as a Site of African American Cultural and Historical Memory" by James Spady.
Roberts, John W. From hucklebuck to hip-hop: social dance in the African-American community in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Pa.: Odunde, 1995.
Sansevere, John R. Post-bop hip-hop: a tribe called Quest. [Racine, Wis.]: Western Pub. Co., 1993.
Sexton, Adam., ed. Rap on rap: straight-up talk on hip-hop culture. New York: Delta, 1995.
Shabazz, Julian L. D. The United States of America vs. hip-hop. Hampton, VA: United Bros. Pub. Co., 1992.
Shaw, Arnold. Black popular music in America : from the spirituals, minstrels, and ragtime to soul, disco, and hip-hop. New York: London: Schirmer Books; Collier Macmillan, 1986.
Shomari, Hashim A. From the underground : hip hop culture as an agent of social change. Fanwood, NJ: X-Factor Publications, 1995.
Smash, Nick. Hip hop 86-89. Woodford Green, Essex, England: International Music Publications, 1990. Illustrated.
Spady, James G., and Joseph D. Eure. Nation conscious rap. AfroAmericanization of knowledge series; 3. New York: PC International Press, 1991.
Watkins, S. Craig. 2005. Hip hop matters: politics, pop culture, and the struggle for the soul of a movement. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hip-Hop became characterized by an aggressive tone marked by graphic descriptions of the harshness and diversity of inner-city life. Primarily a medium of popular entertainment, hip-hop also conveys the more serious voices of youth in the black community. Though the approaches of rappers became more varied in the latter half of the 1980s, message hip-hop remained a viable form for addressing the problems faced by the black community and means to solve those problems. The voices of "message" hip...
My music culture will be covering the hip-hop culture here in Los Angeles. Hip-hop originated around the late 60’s and stormed the nation with its catchy beats and the ability to creates new dances with it. Although it is agreed that hip hop was given its name in New York, some say a culture that closely mirrored the East Coast hip-hop culture had emerged in the West, existing from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area during the same period. The culture is widely believed to have been a mutual creation which evolved from interaction between people who identified with elements from their respective coasts. Hip hop style was invented and presented because of the fame of block parties in New York which was highly needed by the public, to listen to music in order to relax their minds..
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.
Hip hop has become one of the most commercially promoted and financially successful forms of media in recent years. But as its profits have risen it has become a scapegoat for the many of the public criticisms of young black people. These topic have been discussed in Tricia Rose’s novel “The Hip Hop Wars What We Talk About - And Why It Matters”. The state of hip hop has fallen because the trinity of commercial hip hop has become main topic and caused a lot of controversy. This book is appealing to a person who want to know how hip hop has changed in the past decade and it points out many different attitudes toward hip hop in the Unites States.
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.
Negus, Keith. "The Business of Rap: Between the Street and the Executive Suite." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 525-540. Print.
“Hip hop has been named the most influential musical genre to emerge since 1960, beating the British invasion of the Rolling Stones and The Beatles, soul, punk, prog rock, heavy metal, disco and many more in a new study” (Von Radowitz and Webb).
Forman, Murray. “Conscious Hip-Hop, Change, and the Obama Era.” American Study Journal. American Study Journal. 2010. Web. 9 Mar. 2014.
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 content. 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.
Hip hop has permeated popular culture in an unprecedented fashion. Because of its crossover appeal, it is a great unifier of diverse populations. Although created by black youth on the streets, hip hop's influence has become well received by a number of different races in this country. A large number of the rap and hip hop audience is non-black. It has gone from the fringes, to the suburbs, and into the corporate boardrooms. Because it has become the fastest growing music genre in the U.S., companies and corporate giants have used its appeal to capitalize on it. Although critics of rap music and hip hop seem to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language, this genre offers a new paradigm of what can be (Lewis, 1998.) The potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial. Hip hop has challenged the system in ways that have unified individuals across a rich ethnic spectrum. This art form was once considered a fad has kept going strong for more than three decades. Generations consisting of Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians have grown up immersed in hip-hop. Hip hop represents a realignment of America?s cultural aesthetics. Rap songs deliver a message, again and again, to keep it real. It has influenced young people of all races to search for excitement, artistic fulfillment, and a sense of identity by exploring the black underclass (Foreman, 2002). Though it is music, many people do not realize that it is much more than that. Hip hop is a form of art and culture, style, and language, and extension of commerce, and for many, a natural means of living. The purpose of this paper is to examine hip hop and its effect on American culture. Different aspects of hip hop will also be examined to shed some light that helps readers to what hip hop actually is. In order to see hip hop as a cultural influence we need to take a look at its history.
In Total Chaos, Jeff Chang references Harry Allen, a hip hop critic and self-proclaimed hip hop activist. Harry Allen compares the hip hop movement to the Big Bang and poses this complex question: “whether hip-hop is, in fact a closed universe-bound to recollapse, ultimately, in a fireball akin to its birth-or an open one, destined to expand forever, until it is cold, dark, and dead” (9). An often heard phase, “hip hop is dead,” refers to the high occurrence of gangster rap in mainstream hip hop. Today’s hip hop regularly features black youths posturing as rich thugs and indulging in expensive merchandise. The “hip hop is dead” perspective is based on the belief that hip hop was destined to become the model of youth resistance and social change. However, its political ambitions have yet to emerge, thus giving rise to hip hops’ criticisms. This essay will examine the past and present of hip hop in o...
4. Gladney, Marvin J. "The Black Arts Movement and Hip-Hop". African American Review, Vol. 29, No. 2. 1995, pp. 291-301.
"40 Years on from the Party Where Hip Hop Was Born." BBC Culture. N.p., 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
15 March 2014 Springer.com. Riley. Springer:’’ Rap and Hip-Hop Genre Today’’. April 2004 15 March 2014 Springer.com Ruiz, Jonathan. Cross-Cultural Rhetoric.