Hip-Hoppin All Over The World
What is Hip Hop?
Hip Hop emerged out of the New York Area specifically the Bronx area of New York. Hip Hop is a creative expression of music that has a large emphasis on culture. The culture is relative to whoever is expressing them selves on the song. It i snot just about what’s catchy, but about self awareness, cultural knowledge, and the courage to be one’s true self. Hip-Hop was about a connection to others that were going through the struggle as blacks and the desire for change. This movement gained wide spread recognition in the 1980s and 1990s.
Elements of Hip-Hop
Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop refers to a complex culture comprising four elements: “deejaying”, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” or “rhyming”; graffiti painting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and “B-boying,” which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West described as “postural semantics.” (A fifth element, “knowledge of self/consciousness,” is sometimes added to the list of hip-hop elements, particularly by socially conscious hip-hop artists and scholars.)
Social Implications
Early rap music featured a lot of violence because that was was seen by those that made most of the popular records. They wanted to discuss real issues, and crime, low income, and affordable housing were some of the things mentioned that began to perpetrate a certain stereotype about the black experience here in America. Violence in rap, and in other forms of self-expression, is the manifestation of a feeling of hopelessness and discontent in America’s working class, especially working-class minority communities. By pointing to rap as the cause of violence, politicians attempt to erase from the consciousness of their constituents the history of oppression that has given birth to hip-hop culture. These are two of many songs that expressed their anger with the status of African-Americans in their respective communities.
Hip Hop Today
Hip Hop is still to millenials one of the most popular genres today. New artists include Migos, NBA Youngboy, 21 Savage, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar. Females have been making serious headway on the charts as well like Cardi B, City Girls, Nicki Minaj, Kash Doll, and Megan Thee Stallion. New subgenres of of hip hop music that have been created, such as trap music, mumble rap, and country trap. There have been some criticisms over whether or not these sub-genres really represent the essence of hip hop music or have moved past that to a new form of music. Despite all of that, the argument as to whether to whether they were influenced by older artists of the 70s, 80s, and 90s are without a doubt true.
References
African American Music: An Introduction. Edited by Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby.
-The documentary watched in class, as well as discussion
