Hip-hop as a musical form began among the youth of South Bronx, New York in the mid- 1970’s. Individuals such Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash were some of the early pioneers of this art form.(Fernando 43) Through their performances at clubs and promotion of the music, hip-hop consistently gained in popularity throughout the rest of the 1970’s. The first commercial success for hip-hop was a song “Rapper's Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979.(Potter 45) This helped bring hip-hop into the national spotlight. The 1980’s saw the continued success of hip-hop with many artists such as Run DMC (who had the first rap album to go gold in 1984), L.L. Cool J, Fat Boys, and west coast rappers Ice-T and N.W.A becoming popular. Today, in the late 1990’s rap music continues to be a prominent and important aspect of African- American culture.
Hip-hop was a way for youths in black inner city neighborhoods to express what they were feeling, seeing, and living and it became a form of entertainment. Hanging out with friends and rapping or listening to others rap kept black youths out of trouble in the dangerous neighborhoods in which they lived. The dominant culture did not have a type of music that filled the needs of these youth, so they created their own. So, hip-hop originally emerged as a way "for [black] inner city youth to express their everyday life and struggles" (VOT, 125). Hip-hop is now seen as a subculture that, includes a large number of middle to upper white class youths, which have grown to support and appreciate it.
Many youth in America today are considered part of the hip-hop subculture because they share a common love for a type of music that combines catchy beats with rhythmic music and thoughtful lyrics to create songs with a distinct political stance. Hip-hop lyrics are about the problems rappers have seen, such as poverty, crime, violence, racism, poor living conditions, drugs, alcoholism, corruption, and prostitution. These are serious problems that many within the hip-hop subculture believe are being ignored by mainstream America. Those within the subculture recognize and acknowledge that these problems exist. Those within this subculture consider "the other group" to be those people who do not understand hip-hop and the message its artists are trying to send. The suppresser, or opposition, is the dominant culture, because it ignores these problems and perhaps even acts as a catalyst for some of them.
Originating in the urban Bronx area of New York hip-hop culture emerged in the 1970’s as a way for minorities to form identifies and social status. Contemporarily, hip-hop has evolved to contain numerous activities such as, “spoken word poetry, theater, clothing styles, language, and some forms of activism,” (Petchauer). Also, in his Journal of Black Studies, author Tobey S. Jenkins states that the core framework of hip-hop culture consists of five elements, and those elements are, “the B-boy/B-girl (dance or break dance), the emcee (voice), the DJ (music), graffiti (art), and knowledge (the consciousness),”(Jenkins,2011). Jenkins also states that it is common for society to replace these elements when a person is to affiliate themselves with a product of hip-hop by five core stereotypes of the Black male hip-hop artist: “the nihilistic, self-centered, caked-out mogul with a god complex; the uneducated, lazy, absentee father; the imprisoned and angry criminal;
Hip-hop culture has been a global phenomenon for more than twenty years. When introduced into the American culture, the black culture felt that hip-hop had originated from the African American community. The black community was being denied their cultural rights by the supremacy of the white people, but hip-hop gave the community the encouragement to show their black pride and televise the struggles they were facing in the world. The failure and declining of the movements, the influential, rebellious, and powerful music is what reshaped Black Nationalism, unity and to signify the struggle. The African Americans who suffered from social and political problems found that they similar relations to the political movements, which allowed the blacks to be able to voice their opinions and to acknowledge their culture openly.
“The Hip Hop Wars What We Talk About - And Why It Matters” by Tricia Rose explores what hip hop has done to society in recent years and what people think it has caused. Though it has become one of the most commercially successful genres in mainstream music Tricia Rose explains that the topics in hip hop music have narrowed. Commercial hip hop mainly consist of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and hoes. In the book she looks into the different points of views of people who think whether hip hop invokes violence or if it reflects life in a black ghetto and if it slows down advancement for African Americans in US. The author goes back and forth with the opinion of the mass on hip hop, she says people view hip hop as a music like heavy metal which people associate with violence but she refutes most of these points by showing the positives of hip hop.
In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.
Back in the disco days, in the early 1970’s, began a new genre called Hip Hop. It was born in the crime ridden neighborhoods of the South Bronx. Hip Hop is the extracting rhythms of melodies from existing records and mixing them up with searing poetry chronicling life in the hood. Though, hip hop started on the east coast, it did spread rapidly throughout all the clubs and hotels in New York. Then later on, it began to spread to the west coast in Los Angeles. This is where hip hop began to develop its own musical style. Hip hop is known and described as the voice of a generation that refused to be silenced by urban poverty. It is a genre that is fueled up with a lot of passion and truth that is spreading across the entire world. Hip hop is
Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that emerged from the dilapidated South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s. The area’s mostly African American and Puerto Rican residents originated this uniquely American musical genre and culture that over the past four decades has developed into a global sensation impacting the formation of youth culture around the world. The South Bronx was a whirlpool of political, social, and economic upheaval in the years leading up to the inception of Hip-Hop. The early part of the 1970’s found many African American and Hispanic communities desperately seeking relief from the poverty, drug, and crime epidemics engulfing the gang dominated neighborhoods. Hip-Hop proved to be successful as both a creative outlet for expressing the struggles of life amidst the prevailing crime and violence as well as an enjoyable and cheap form of recreation.
Hip hop originated in the ghetto areas of New York during the 1970’s and is a mixture of DJ, MC, B boy and Beat boxing. In his studies of defining hip hop, Jeffries concluded that these mixtures of art forms do not define hip hop but rather that Hip hop itself is a culture of these elements. “Hip-hop is like a culture, it’s a voice for black people to be heard. Our own style, our own music” (Jeffries. 2011; 28). Jefferies identifies hip hop as a social movement, which stems from the concept of ‘collective identity’ (Jefferries.2011; 27). This can be defined as “an individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community” (Polletta and Jasper. 2001; 84). Which relate to Smitherman’s views that hip hop is a celebration of black culture uniting these individual to form a collective community. (Smitherman. 1997; 20) .These Theorists generally accept that hip hop is culture and it’s the production of its creators and the individuals who consu...
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.
Hip Hop’s according to James McBride article “Hip Hop Planet” is a singular and different form of music that brings with it a message that only those who pay close attention to it understand it. Many who dislike this form of music would state that it is one “without melody, sensibility, instruments, verse, or harmony and doesn’t even seem to be music” (McBride, pg. 1). Though Hip Hop has proven why it deserves to be called music. In going into depth on its values and origins one understands why it is so popular among young people and why it has kept on evolving among the years instead of dying. Many of Hip Hop values that make it unique and different from other forms of music would be that it makes “visible the inner culture of Americas greatest social problem, its legacy of slavery, has taken the dream deferred to a global scale” (McBride, pg. 8). Hip Hop also “is a music that defies definition, yet defines our collective societies in immeasurable ways” (McBride, pg. 2). The
In this essay I will discuss how Hip hop music applies on the statement “commercialisation does not preclude an artist from contributing to a culture of resistance”. Commercialization refers to the procedure of introducing the new hip-hop elements and essentially separating the culture with the purpose of dominating for profit (George-Graves, 2015). Culture of resistance defines “the use of culture consciously or unconsciously, effectively or not, to resist and/ or change the dominant political economic and/ or social structure” (Barnard, 2003, p.115). First of all, how graffiti generates youth subculture through the commercialization of hip-hop music. Besides, how advertised rapping motivates the substance and alcohol use in hip-hop style. Finally, the commercialized hip-hop culture has been produced the uprising number of women break-dancers in hip-hop culture.
Black culture in our society has come to the point where it is allied with pop culture. The most popular music genres, slang terms, to dance forms it all comes from black culture. Hip hop emerged from black culture, becoming the soul of it that is seen in the media. Hip hop helped the black community by creating new ways of expressing themselves, from breakdance, graffiti, rap and other music, to slang. This culture was rooted in their tradition and created from something new. Hip hop created a new form of music that required the use of turn tables, ‘cuts’, loops, rhythm, rhyme, stories, and deep-rooted emotions, but also incorporated black oral forms of storytelling using communal authors.
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...
It is a culture borne of poor, inner-city life in America that has evolved into the rallying cry of those unable to negotiate the nuances of the mainstream.” Hip hop culture besides being just a music, it has the same power as the religions people have on people. It’s the culture of the people who lived in the poorest part of the Americas and didn’t have the power to negotiate their feelings. I agree hip hop is not just a music its a culture or religion, but it is filled with the emptiness and doesn’t go in the right and humanity direction and as Hicks describes "Hip-hop culture deadens the drive toward civility and legitimizes backwardness”.
Dr. Boyce Watkins compares Hip Hop to “Adolph Hitler’s Mien Kampf as a harmless little book or the bible has no impact on Christianity” (KultureKritic). Basically he is trying to say that when you control of a few group of people’s minds you are controlling the people themselves. By corpora ting the airwaves with message serve as a blueprint for our youth to self-destruct by creating a large army of pants-sagging, Blunt-smoking, tattooed-up, uneducated, STD-infected, impoverished thugs.
What is hip-hop? Assuming that you address hip-hop fans, the term alludes to more than simply a musical type - it incorporates an entire society, including dance structures, graffiti symbolization, and fashion (Selke INT). Hip-hop music is portrayed by an entertainer rapping over a track that regularly comprises of loops or specimens of other music woven together (Selke INT). Hip-hop appeared originally in the Bronx around the 1970s and steadily turned into the predominant mainstream music structure by the 1990s, representing a multi- billion dollar industry today (Selke INT).