Additionally, Hip hop is considered as contemporary African-American rhyming games. Previously, rhyming games are used as an inspirational comical approach to indicate race relations between African-American slaves and their white masters and escaping plantations. Such as "Bre 'r Rabbit tales" . Hip-hop journalist Davey D connects the African oral tradition to modern rap: "You see, the slaves were smart and they talked in metaphors. They would be killed if the slave masters heard them speaking in unfamiliar tongues. So they did what modern-day rappers do--they flexed their lyrical skillz." Hip hop has developed as a form of resistance to the subjugation of working-class African-Americans in urban
They thought that rap music could really spread a message, even though the message
Before that Hip Hop was exclusively about dancing, creating unique beats and being poetic across beat alterations. Ever since Grandmaster Flash Hip Hop has changed consistently over the years creating different forms of Hip Hop giving everyone a chance to find out what they enjoy. One form of Hip Hop in today’s world is based around the racial inequalities brought to you by a rapper who displays their people’s daily struggles around the globe and more specifically in America. An artist who uses his voice in the hip hop industry to voice the effects of mass incarceration on African Americans/Minorities as well as many other social issues is Vic Mensa. He is the most crucial social activist you’ve probably never heard of.
Hip hop has a message that reveals the social inequalities of our nations. In addition, McBride wants people to keep an open mind about hip hop and new thing that they may not be used to. In conclusion, he declares hip
There is a group that is frequently misrepresented and discriminated within American society. That group is the black community. African Americans, though having more rights than ever before, are still greatly stereotyped through media, in a negative and an undesirable manner. When I say the words African American most people think of crime, violence, drugs and watermelon, to name a few. “Straight Outta Compton” by the N.W.A. enforces the negative stereotype of African Americans through promoting narcotics, guns, and murder.
It’s amazing to see how stereo types have changed over time. Today there are many stereotypes that say that African Americans cannot swim. Dawson stated that hundreds of years ago, the stereotype was African Americans could only swim well because they were closest to animal decent (13). Now a days, there is little talk about the past, and how judgements have changed. Personally, I didn’t know about the past that African Americans were one of the best swimmers.
Hip Hop was the wildfire that started in the South Bronx and whose flames leapt up around the world crying out for change. James McBride’s Hip Hop Planet focuses on his personal interactions with the development of Hip Hop culture and his changing interpretations of the world wide movement. Many of his encounters and mentions in the text concern young black males and his writing follows an evolution in the representation of this specific social group. He initially portrays them as arrogant, poor, and uneducated but eventually develops their image to include the positive effects of their culture in an attempt to negate their historical misrepresentation.
In her essay “hip hop’s betrayal of black women,” Jennifer McLune implies that “(h)ip-hop owes its success to the ideology of women-hating” (193). She does not agree with Kevin Powell’s article that hip-hop does not mean to “offend” black women, but instead artists are only letting out their temper throughout their music. McLune feels infuriated that many artists in hip hop (including black men) rap about their community and downgrade their own women. In the hip-hop genre, sexism is mainly used, not only by black men but also by many other race hip-hop artists. Artists assume that women-hating in their rap songs will be accepted by women, but do not realize that it is affecting all women.
All of these techniques are fundamental parts of hip-hop. As the years progressed, more elements contributed to hip-hop. Hip-hop formed as a result of the harsh and tiring conditions of the South Bronx. This new movement combatted “the violence...and the negativity that come out of gang cultures” (Swanson, 2010). This makes sense because the people living in the South Bronx had to live through such harsh conditions and needed a break from this stressful life.
Very similarly to rhythm and blues, rock and roll and the Civil Rights Movement inspired hip hop in a variety of different ways, as African American artists worked to find a space for themselves in the music industry. Not many people find a correlation between African Americans and Rock and Roll, but there’s surprisingly a deep history, and it’s not just white people who developed this specific genre, but there was African American-centered and ghetto-centered versions of rock and roll. “There are enough similarities between, for instance, rock & roll and commercial rap, especially rock rap, to make a case for critically engaging them as interracial arenas where black and white youths, among others, put forward messages and advanced ideals that have been not only informed by the Civil Rights Movement and the Hip Hop Movement, respectively, but in turn, even if only implicitly, have influenced the rhetoric, politics, and aesthetics of these movements” (Rabaka 99). There was a strong transition from this type of “rock rap” music being labeled as ghetto music, into universal music that people of all races and ethnicities would listen to.
Hip Hop is seen as something inspiring, but most people see it as a way to speak out the truth about a problem. As in “Hip Hop planet” being able say the truth can sometimes worsen any situation because sometimes what we say can promote violence and whatever happens after is not in our control. The essay is about how hip hop has changed into speaking out the issues that need to be taken care of in order to maintain a proper society. McBride talked about how rappers use violent lyrics to degrade women and gays and because of this it shows how the music has evolved into something entirely different that no one would have ever expected to have changed. In James McBride's essay “Hip Hop Planet,” he argues that hip hop has a negative influence on American Culture despite people thinking of it as inspirational and how people live through different experiences in life despite of your race.
The block parties, graffiti art, rapping, disc jockeying and diverse forms of dancing built Hip Hop by the black youth. They expressed their feelings, thoughts, but most importantly the problems they had to face, which were related to their race, gender and social positions. The rights that were given to black people during and after the Civil Rights Movement left the following generations at a lack of how to continue the fight for black rights. Hip Hop gave them this platform and with the usage of black nationalism, Hip Hop can explore the challenges that confront American-Americans in the post-Civil Rights Movement era. In the 1990’s Hip Hop lived its prime, sub genres started to appear and famous groups, MCs led the whole community, providing a voice to a group of people trying to deliver their message.
¨If Hip Hop has the ability to corrupt minds, it also has the ability to uplift them.¨ Hip hop music, also called rap music, is a music genre developed in the United States by African Americans consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. Mainstream hip hop culture is also filled with misogyny and negative images of women. These artists are unaware that sexism has been forced onto them through the brainwashing from the media, which is controlled by a patriarchal society. Conversely, feminism is the belief that both genders should have equal power.
Nowadays, everyone wears the identity with pride. The genre was a testament to triumphing over hardships, to having enough confidence in oneself not to let the world drag you down, and to rising above the struggle, even when things seem hopeless. Violence in rap did not begin as an affective agent that threatened to harm America 's youth; rather, it was the outcry of an already-existing problem from youth whose world views have been shaped by the inequalities and prejudice they have experienced. The relentless wave of heroic new rappers arriving on the scene formed the golden age of hip hop in the 1980s, a newfound voice which rose from the impoverished ghettos during the 1980s and inspiring a generation of black youth to fight the police brutality they faced on a daily basis.
The Impact of Hip-Hop Ever since its birth in the 1970s in West Bronx, Hip Hop has been known as “Gangsta” music and most commonly associated with black culture. Since its creation it has become a fast growing genre of music and has growing fame all over the world. The popularity of it has increased to all races, age and gender. However the growing popularity of hip hop has come with several controversies among scholars. Some scholars argue that the growing popularity of the genre is very helpful to low income families who can use this as their outlet into going to Universities, on the other side some believe associating the genre to black culture is bad for the culture as a whole and they should not be associated together.
Some of the main cores of Beat Street are the music, dancing, and graffiti art works – all of which are part of hip-hop culture. Scholars note that hip-hop as a movement originated in roots from African American traditions and are mainly used to express their culture as well as identity (Blanchard 24). Rap music, for example, comes from West Africa’s “nommo.” This idea refers to the power to deliver words to act upon objects and to bring it to life. The historical and traditional underpinning of rap, therefore, becomes representative of the rich and distinctive culture of African Americans.