Hip Hop Culture And Culture

Hip hop, the creation of electronic sound and enticing language is a style born from the African American and Hispanic cultures. It formed in New York City from block parties and the participation of the youth culture. This style of music began as a minimal change in rhythm to a globally popular culture consisting of graffiti art, dancing, and music. Hip hop was not only a type of tasteful music, but it also became a benchmark in history. When this style of music was created, it served as an outlet for those who did not have a voice, particularly the minority groups. These groups were given rights that they deserved just like everyone else. In the 1970’s is when hip hop began to spread, creating not just

In the global popularity scene, hip hop now rules, and is a dominant cultural form in many parts of the world. Rap gives voice to every culture that produces and circulates it, not just African-Americans. As a new force, rap levels the playing field, opening doors to new cultural players, and ripens for new corporate snakes to pounce on. Circulating ideas, images, sound, and style, it is becoming central to the new multimedia global culture and is an expression of a multicultural world with no borders and limits.

In this article, the speaker must be an expert in politics, ethnicity and the music industry. There is a linkage between the above fields hence the speaker must have had a superlative background on these issues. The audience targeted by this literature were seemingly music enthusiasts to be educated on understanding what Hip-Hop entails and hoped to achieve this as it was established. The subject was Hip-Hop as a music genre that was largely developed by African American men to express their plight on injustice and oppression. The principal issue was how Hip-Hop has been used as a form of resistance and need for deliverance of the African Americans.

Hip-Hop is not what the media portrays it to be. It’s how one carries themselves and expresses themselves. With the many positive aspects of hip hop, the media choses to cornerstone predominantly on the negative, without revealing the positive side of the hip hop culture. “The presentation of hip-hop culture was not based upon an altruistic concern to reveal the environmental, economic, and social challenges of inner city communities, but was connected instead to more basic goal−profits” (Melvin 1). Hip-Hop music is used for so many things than just the negativities that media sets it out to be.

Hip-hop culture began to develop in the south Bronx area of New York City during the 1970s. It had a significant influence in the music industry. Hip-hop music generally includes rapping, but other elements such as sampling and beatboxing also play important roles. Rapping, as a key part in the hip-hop music, takes different forms, which including signifying, dozen, toast and jazz poetry. Initially, hip-hop music was a voice of people living in low-income areas, reflecting social, economic and political phenomenon in their life [1]. As time moves on, hip-hop music reached its “golden age”, where it became a mainstream music, featuring diversity, quality, innovation and influence [2]. Gangsta rap, one of the most significant innovations in

Since its conception, hip hop has been a very necessary and influential art form in the way that it gives a voice to people who would normally not have one. The fact that it was often the sole voice for a marginalized community meant that the genre has often shouldered the “burden of being a genuine political force.” Hip hop’s role in addressing the concerns of urban Black Americans has led people to refer to it as “CNN for Black people.” However, in recent times, the commercialization of the genre (and growing popularity with white audiences) has generated a lot of criticism from many who feel that the essence of hip hop is being destroyed and it does not have as much of a meaningful effect on dispossessed Black youth as it used to have.

Hip-hop, which originated more than 20 years ago, is a musical art form. It has went through many changes during its lifetime. The music and lyrics have always remained centered in urban settings, with most artists of the music rising up from the inner-city neighborhoods. Beginning with a young generation of African-Americans from the Bronx looking to express themselves, it has since evolved to inspire people from all backgrounds across the world. During a time of segregation where clubs and the music played in them were only for white citizens. Hip hop was created in the 1970s and is defined by four key elements; MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching, break dancing, and graffiti writing. People would learn to breakdance to Afrika Bambaataa, who contributed a series of tracks influencing the hip hop culture.

Hip-Hop is a complex cultural movement formed during the early 1970s by African Americans in the slums of South Bronx, New York (Dyson 6), it propagated outside of the African American community in late 1980s, and by the opening of the 21th century it became the most spread culture in the world. Hip-Hop consists of four elements: Deejay, Break-Dancing, Rapping, and Graffiti. (Kenon 112)

Hip Hop music became one of the primary constructive outlets for Black Americans to release their thoughts, pain, and anguish about the injustices and mistreatments of Black people. Even though most of the pioneers in Hip-Hop either were not born in America or are 2nd generation immigrants that proves that common oppression can lead to unity. The fact that that these individuals were impoverished and felt marginalized is what brought them together and lead to the culture today. Deep rooted racism in the United States kept the genre of music suppressed for a while before it was allowed to even be played on the airwaves. Now, in 2011, the main consumers of byproducts of hip hop are White Americans.

Hip-Hop culture is often confused with the Hip-Hop genre. Hip-Hop as a culture is more than just the music, it is a way of life. Hip-Hop music as a genre has changed from being Rap to including Pop. Hip-Hop is an evolving culture, constantly changing as the older generation fades and the newer generation carries on the legacy along with incorporating it's new style. The new generation of Hip-Hop or rather Hip-Hop today focuses more on Partying, music, and Swag rather than the original elements: Deejaying, Emceeing, Graffiti, and B-Boy or break dancing. These elements are still seen in today's Hip-Hop but have adapted a new style.

Hip Hop culture has come from a inner city expression of life to a multi-billion dollar business. At the beginning of the new millennium it was the top selling genre in the pop charts. It had influences not only on music, but on fashion, film, television, and print. In 2004 Hip Hop celebrated its 30th year anniversary. It wasn’t big for the fact that it was still kicking. It was big because the once Black/Brown inner city culture had grown into a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon (Reeves). Hip Hop culture has provided a platform for all walks of life to speak their mind. Over the past 36 years it has provided us with both entertainment and controversy alike and had a huge impact on our nation’s history. `

According to Michael Dyson and Wikipedia, Hip hop music and Hip Hop culture formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York City. The genre became home to and was developed by African American youth residing in the Bronx. Block parties involved DJs playing very percussive breaks of popular songs Then Rapping developed as the primary vocal style of the genre. Hip hop 's early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum-machines became widely available and affordable. This can be seen as a technoscape. Hip Hop and Rap music became an important voice of poor inner city youth. They were often the victims of systematic abuse and stuck in continuous poverty. Hip Hop was referred to as “black music” with serious influences from funk and soul.

Culture itself can be broken into further components. One of them would be material culture. According to the course content powerpoint, this kind of culture is basically the physical objects of a society, and what kind of meaning they are given based on the context it is in. There are a few examples of this. One would be clothing. In hip hop culture, its material culture would consist of clothing that if it was in the early 2000’s, people apart of it would be wearing baggy clothing. The meaning of baggy clothing was a revolt against of what was considered more normal and safe attire, which does relate to the music since hip-hop can get very explicit. Another example of material culture could be an art piece. If a bunch of artwork is

KRS-One may have been one of the first artists to shed light onto the downward spiral of hip-hop culture: from a once powerful beacon of hope to a slave to consumerism. Artists became mere brands of themselves, hip-hop as a voice became an exploitation. Hip-hop now stands at a crossroads: be true to its original vision or succumb to consumeristic pressures and become a hollow manifestation of the unattainable. Talib Kweli’s proclamation “Get By,” released in 2002, laments (Chang 447):

In a different context, Williams (2009) presents the experience of high school students who identified themselves as being part of the Hip Hop culture by using their culture affiliation to change classroom practices towards the use of counter-narratives as a method of analysis of these students' realities, the development of these students' critical discourses, and their achievement of an state of consientização as a means to awake critical awareness of their position within the Hip Hop culture. This culture circle, later called cypher as suggested by one of the participants, developed a “freestyle construction of knowledge about the culture that is lived and loved” (p. 8). Within this culture cypher, these students and educators were able