In The Black Arts Movement

The hip-hop community has been greatly influenced by the Black Arts Era. Both groups have addressed social, political issue as well as giving voice to the emotional discord of the black man. These groups push the boundaries using words meant to inflame the black man and shock the Caucasians.
One example is the use of the word “fuck”. In my house hold growing up I attempted to use this work once when I dropped a plate. It was the angriest my father has ever been at me. This word is often considered the worst of the curse words in modern English. This simple utterance has been in use since the early 16th century. Fuck often evokes strong emotion and response, considered one of the seven dirty words that can’t be said on American broadcast

In these readings, the word is used to express frustration and anger as well as a sense of being abused and forced to endure. Sonia Sanchez uses the compound motherfucker/motherfucka to emphasize her disdain of whites in the poem TCB (Taking Care of Business). At the end of that poem however she says “now, that is sed. Let’s get to work” (Sanchez 723). This seems to have used the “fuck” as a cathartic mechanism to vent her frustrations. Once these frustrations are unleashed Sanchez conveys her willingness to “get to work” on the issues she has with the cursed whites. June Jordan uses fuck to describe both the physical and mental rape that occurs in her “Poem about My Rights”. Disgust with a French law that stated if a man penetrates a woman but does not ejaculate then he is not guilty of raping her, Jordan responds to this with asking if she smashed his head in with hammer and he and his buddies fuck her that she consented because they did not ejaculate. She then states how this “fucked me over” (Jordan 767) because she is in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong color skin so she must have wanted to get

Both movements use “rhythm and poetry” (Gladney 291) to address social issues affecting the black man, including racism, education and drug use. These movement can both be linked to extreme examples of frustration and rage felt be a large part of the black community, like “the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968” (Gladney 292). However, Gladney observed that the Hip-Hop genre has developed more of a focus on commercialism and only in the underground rap world do we still see the idealist who is in touch with the pulse of the black communities. Many rappers in the mainstream lack the political, racial, and social tone of the black community. The notable exception being the groups who use shock and a sold ghetto theme to crossover to the commercial market but maintain their artistic